House of Wax (1953 film)

House of Wax
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAndre de Toth
Screenplay byCrane Wilbur
Based on"The Wax Works"
by Charles Belden
Produced byBryan Foy
Starring
CinematographyBert Glennon
Peverell Marley
Edited byRudi Fehr
Music byDavid Buttolph
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release dates
  • April 10, 1953 (1953-04-10) (New York)[1]
  • April 25, 1953 (1953-04-25) (US)
Running time
88 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1 million[2]
Box office$23.75 million

House of Wax is a 1953 American mystery-horror film directed by Andre de Toth and released by Warner Bros. A remake of the studio's own 1933 film, Mystery of the Wax Museum, it stars Vincent Price as a disfigured sculptor who repopulates his destroyed wax museum by murdering people and using their wax-coated corpses as displays. The film premiered in New York on April 10, 1953 and had a general release on April 25, making it the first 3D film with stereophonic sound to be presented in a regular theater and the first color 3D feature film from a major American studio. Man in the Dark, released by Columbia Pictures, was the first major-studio black-and-white 3D feature and premiered two days before House of Wax.

In 1971, House of Wax was re-released to theaters in 3D with a full advertising campaign. Newly struck prints of the film in Chris Condon's single-strip StereoVision 3D format were used for this release. Another major re-release occurred during the 3D revival of the early 1980s. Warner Bros. released a loose remake of the film in 2005.

The Library of Congress later selected the film for preservation in the National Film Registry in 2014, deeming it "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[3][4]

  1. ^ "House of Wax". AFI Catalog of Feature Films. Archived from the original on June 23, 2018. Retrieved June 22, 2018.
  2. ^ "House of Wax". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on February 11, 2021. Retrieved December 27, 2020.
  3. ^ "New Films Added to National Registry - News Releases - Library of Congress". loc.gov. Archived from the original on December 25, 2020. Retrieved November 1, 2016.
  4. ^ "Complete National Film Registry Listing". Library of Congress. Archived from the original on December 17, 2014. Retrieved June 25, 2020.