Old-fashioned murder mystery at a house of wax in England
At the turn of the century in Victorian London, the owner of a wax museum (John Carradine) is offered to sell by a Broadway producer (Broderick Crawford). But his associate doesn’t want him to sell (Ray Milland) and there are relatives who have an interest in the property as well (Elsa Lanchester and Nicole Shelby). When people start winding up dead, a Scotland Yard inspector (Mark Edwards) tries to solve the mystery.
“Terror in the Wax Museum” (1973) is a Victorian murder mystery in the tradition of Poe’s "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," which started the genre in 1841 and influenced Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes, amongst others. The best film version of “Rue Morgue” is arguably the 1986 one with George C. Scott, Val Kilmer and Rebecca De Mornay. I bring it up because this is cut from the same cloth. Other comparisons include “House of Wax” (1953), Hammer's "The Two Faces of Dr. Jekyll" (1960) and Klaus Kinski's "Jack the Ripper" (1976), as well as "Edge of Sanity" (1989) and "From Hell" (2001).
This one isn’t as sensationalistic as some of those as it prefers to focus on the murder mystery and the seasoned actors. It’s basically “old-fashioned” horror that’s timelessly entertaining since these types of films keep being made decade after decade. "The Limehouse Golem" is a well-done example from more modern times.
Redhead Shani Wallis stands out in the beauty department as the tavern singer while Nicole Shelby is worth a mention as the brunette who may inherit the museum and catches the eye of the young detective.
While not exactly great, if you're in the mood for a Victorian milieu, black coats, cobblestone streets, gas lamps, horse-driven carriages, London fog, pub entertainment, ghastly killings, fortune tellings and quaint mystery, this nicely fills the bill.
The film runs 1 hour, 33 minutes, and was shot at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.
GRADE: B-