Lousy Lottery 37: Ooey Gooey Gore with 2005's House of Wax
Welcome, friends, to the Lousy Lottery! Here’s how it works. First, I post four movies to a poll on Twitter. Fans vote to pick which movie to make me watch that week. I watch it, review it and spread the word about an amazingly awful, terribly terrific b-horror flick.
This is week 37! This week we melt into the ooey gooey goodness that is House of Wax! But first, let’s talk plot.
A group of friends decide to take a road trip to an LSU football game. Their plan, for some reason, is to camp in a random spot in the woods on their way. I say for some reason because while some people do, in fact, do this on road trips, this doesn’t seem like the crew to do that. They’re all hot youngsters driving nice cars and recording videos to post online. Hell, one of them is Paris Hilton. I have a hard time buying that this particular group would do this, but, hey, they did and almost immediately shit gets weird.
During the night, a truck shows up and just sits there watching them. It eventually drives off, but things get weirder when they discover a pit nearby full of animal bodies, blood and the occasional arm or hand. This finally convinces them to leave, but, wait for it, they stay the night first and leave in the morning. Sure, yeah, that seems smart given what’s transpired. I have two chief complaints with this movie and one of them is already on full display. These characters are like walking horror stereotypes in terms of their decision making. Spooky rednecks are watching them sleep? Let’s stay the night! Obviously freaky looking haunted house? Let’s go inside! In every situation there’s a very obviously bad choice to make and, boom, they make it, without fail. This is the first example, but they abound throughout the rest of the movie. Remember when I said it was one of two things I couldn’t stand? Well, you’ll just have to wait for that.
The gang goes to finally leave and head to the game and notices the fanbelt on one of their cars is cut. Huh, must be a coincidence. They certainly don’t put two and two together, as seen by what happens next. Some creepy redneck archetype shows up in a truck identical to the one they saw last night, to dump more carcasses into the pit. That’s the guy, right? Time to run, right? Psh, c’mon! Nah, they ask him for a ride into town to get a new fanbelt! For fuck’s sake. Part way there, they decide they don’t like how creepy homeboy is and ask to be let out to walk the rest of the way. Sure, nothing safer than getting isolated from the rest of your group of friends and purposefully becoming alone in the woods with only the redneck creep nearby.
They do survive and make it to town, only to discover that it seems all but abandoned. They check the church because there are cars there and awkwardly walk in on a funeral. They leave and a fella comes out to ask if he can help them with something and they mention the fanbelt. Turns out, he’s the one who runs the auto shop, but, you know, there’s the funeral going on and all. So, they decide to kill some time by checking out a house of wax nearby. Might as well see the sights, eh?
This house of wax isn’t like others. There are no celebrities. It’s not set up like a museum. Instead, the whole thing, from floor to ceiling, is a work of art. The tables, the floors, the walls, windows, doors, they’re all wax. The occupants of the building are also all wax. These figures are just standing around or doing mundane things like cooking a meal or reading a newspaper. It’s odd and incredible and this leads me to mention the second thing that really annoyed me in this movie. It took forever for us to finally get here. I kid you not, at this point of the movie, we’re just over an hour in. The movie is under two hours and more than one hour has been leading up to things finally getting good. Not character development, not exposition, no, it just felt like they weren’t getting around to it. The movie up until this point could be rated PG, as seriously nothing happens.
So, 2/3 of the movie is a boring slog, but goddamn if they don’t crank things up in that final act. Once the house of wax and town come into play, shit gets fantastic. The production design of the house of wax is incredible and the gore comes in like a flood. It’s almost as though the viewer sees two movies. The first movie, the first 2/3’s of the flick, sucks. It’s slow, boring and the characters are frustrating. Then it becomes another movie and becomes a bloody beauty. One of the first to die is Paris Hilton who gets a steel bar through the face. In addition to it being an utterly incredible kill, I also love the subtle symbolism of the movie getting so much better once Paris dies. I’m not sure it was intentional, but it’s still pretty great.
You see, it turns out the people who owned and operated this wax building were also horrendously abusive to their children. After enduring years of this abuse, the children decide to kill their parents and add them to the collection of figures in the house of wax. They don’t stop there, though. They kill the entire town one by one. The town’s not a ghost town, it’s a wax town! Those people at the funeral? Wax. The people at the store? Wax. Everyone has been killed and turned into wax figures. All those statues in the house of wax look like regular folks because they are.
One by one the group of friends falls into this little trap of a town the boys have created, like flies to a venus flytrap. There is very little cgi, you can tell when there is because it’s horrid, and the effects are nearly all practical. Each death is a treasure. People get skinned, decapitated, impaled, burned and it’s all super well done. Perhaps I shouldn’t say well done, exactly, but, rather, they’re super impressive to see. The best part by far is when, in desperation, one of the group sets the house of wax on fire and it melts as they fight their way out of it. This bit is absolutely incredible. It’s gooey and melty and the characters seem genuinely to struggle with the flames, the melting wax and the suffocation that comes with both. There’s a reason this all seemed quite realistic and part of why I can’t really say ‘well done.’ You see the effects team wanted it as realistic as possible and the fire and wax and all that caused injuries and damage due to negligence and poor handling of the shoot. The result for the viewer is spectacular, but the head of special effects was found by a court to be ‘grossly negligent’ and the studio was sanctioned $7 million for all the damage and injuries.
Well, I wouldn’t have wanted to be on that set that day, but goddamn if it didn’t make for one hell of a climax to this movie. If I had to point to a single way this movie went wrong, it’s that it took itself far too seriously. The characters are vapid, one-dimensional and make the dumbest decisions in the history of decisions. It’s not a Julliard production of Hamlet. They sure thought it was, though, and marketed it accordingly. I mean, for crying out loud, it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. If they didn’t take this movie so seriously, gave it a fun and gory tone from the get go, I think this movie would be beloved. Instead it’s thought of as ‘that Paris Hilton horror movie’ and most don’t give it a shot. Hell, I personally hadn’t seen it until this, never being interested. For the first 2/3’s of the movie, my hesitations were confirmed, but then that final 1/3 came along. If the whole movie was like that and if it was marketed as a silly, fun, spooky gore-fest, it’d be a solid hit.
Instead, it holds a 23% on Rotten Tomatoes and was nominated for Worst Picture at that year’s Razzie Awards. Is it good? Well, the last act is. Is it worth a go? Certainly, especially for the insane practical effects in that final act. Is the writing and acting good? Uh, no, no it’s not, with the one exception being Brian van Holt, who gave perhaps the only natural performance in the whole movie. At the end of the day, it’s not going to change your world or blow your mind, but if you’re a fan of gore and practical effects like me, then that final act is well worth the price of admission. If you must, you could almost fast-forward the movie until about the hour mark and be just fine. I know I had a blast watching it and would definitely recommend it, maybe with a fair share of junk food and weed to compliment the level of quality. You can find it currently streaming on Tubi. Check it out and let me know what you thought!
Thanks for coming along with me on this journey. I hope you got some laughs out of it and scratched your head right along with me. Also, don’t forget to see what’s coming next in the Lousy Lottery. Make sure you tune into Twitter later today and vote for Lousy Lottery 38! My handle is @MrJosh79, look for it and don’t forget to vote!
Don’t want to miss anything on the site? Sign up for our newsletter HERE
Want more Lousy Lottery? Just search below:
