NightmareinWax

Nightmare in Wax (1969)

Cameron Mitchell plays a former makeup man named Vincent Renard in this take on the classic Wax Museum story. Renard had it all; he was a famous makeup man for one of the big movie studios and was romancing one of their beautiful stars. All this ends for him though when a drink is thrown in his face by the studio head in a fit of jealousy. The cigarette Renard is lighting ignites the drink and his face is burned terribly. Later when the studio’s young talented actors and actresses start to disappear Renard, who is now running a wax museum, comes under suspicion. Of course as the audience we already know that Renard is up to no good. This isn’t really a spoiler as we find this out early on. And I think that might be part of the problem that I had with this movie.

There are some things that I thought worked well. First of all the idea behind it is pretty cool. Renard has some sort of concoction that allows him to paralyze his victims and put them on display. I thought that was fun. Cameron Mitchell also does a great job in the role as Renard. Now he does chew up the scenery and his performance is way over the top, but for a schlocky 70s drive-in flick (which this clearly is) it works. Heck not only does it work, but in a way the script almost requires that it not be taken too seriously. The other thing that really impressed me was the location. They shot some of the movie in an actual wax museum, which gives the movie a cool vibe and atmosphere. That is at least in the scenes that are set in that location.

As much as I enjoyed the previous parts of the movie, overall it is kind of weak. Again Mitchell is really good in his role, but the rest of the cast is very weak. This includes the normally reliable John 'Bud' Cardos, who appears in a lot of bad “B” movies, but normally always puts lots of effort into his role. Here he is playing a cop that I think is supposed to be comic relief. I only say this because the cop characters are written very poorly and I’m thinking they were supposed to be funny. The pacing of the movie is also very bad and feels like the runtime was padded. The movie is a bit over 90 minutes long and could have used a good editor to trim maybe 10 or 15 minutes out. I only say this because there are points in the movie where it is really god awful slow. Right in the middle of the movie there is also an extended flashback to setup the Renard character and how he became disfigured that is way too long and kills the momentum the that the movie had built up until that point.

I’m a big fan of drive-in movies and can tolerate a lot of the foibles that come with a movie made for that market. Cheesy acting, bad production values, and a goofy story line are all par for the course. Hell they are almost badges of honor for flicks like this. But being boring isn’t good, and Nightmare in Wax ends up being boring. Because of this I can’t really recommend it.

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer