 Decemberdike # 22
Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)
Lionel Atwill gives one of his finest performances as Ivan Igor, curator and sculptor extraordinaire of a famous London house of wax who ends up disfigured because of a fire which is suspected of being arson by the police. Driven to madness he kills those he deems responsible encasing them in wax as exhibits in his new house of horrors wax museum.
One of the very first films produced in the two strip Technicolor process this is an outstanding example of early thirties horror that doesn't rely on, well, Universal monsters, to put it bluntly. Michael Curtiz, who would later go on to make The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) and Casablanca (1942) among a career of notable movies now seen as Hollywood classics, pulls out all the stops with some fine sequences of suspense culminating in one of the most memorable sequences in the history of horror as a frantic Fay Wray claws at Atwill's face until it cracks open to reveal a horrifically scarred countenance beneath.
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