When movie makeup man Vincent Renard (Cameron Mitchell) and actress Marie Morgan (Anne Helm) publicly declare their love for each other, Marie's previous boyfriend, movie mogul Max Black (Berry Kroeger), throws a drink in Vincent's face in a fit of jealous rage. Unfortunately, Vincent is smoking at the time and goes up in flames like a roman candle; after plunging himself in a nearby lake, he emerges badly burnt and missing one eye.
Disfigured and bitter, Vincent rejects Marie and becomes curator of the Movieland Wax Museum, creating the exhibits; his latest lifelike figures are of movie stars, all of whom have have had a romantic connection to Marie and who have subsequently disappeared. I wonder...
Unlike films like Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), House of Wax (1953), Mill of the Stone Women (1960) and Carry On Screaming (1966), in which figures are created by covering corpses with molten wax, this low budget cheezefest sees Vincent using a special serum to paralyse his victims, after which he puts them on display. Amazingly, no-one who views the exhibits realises that they are looking at living people, not even museum guide Nick (Hollis Morrison), even when he sees one of them blink!
Directed by Bud Townsend, Nightmare in Wax is an incredibly dumb film, one that starts off in fine B-movie form, but which gets less and less enjoyable as it progresses. Cameron Mitchell seems to lose interest after a while, as does Townsend, who pads out his film with a pointless musical scene featuring a group called The T-Bones and a bunch of scantily clad go-go dancers, and closes his movie in an extremely clumsy manner that makes very little sense.
3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for the bloody aftermath of Vincent's flaming head.
Disfigured and bitter, Vincent rejects Marie and becomes curator of the Movieland Wax Museum, creating the exhibits; his latest lifelike figures are of movie stars, all of whom have have had a romantic connection to Marie and who have subsequently disappeared. I wonder...
Unlike films like Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), House of Wax (1953), Mill of the Stone Women (1960) and Carry On Screaming (1966), in which figures are created by covering corpses with molten wax, this low budget cheezefest sees Vincent using a special serum to paralyse his victims, after which he puts them on display. Amazingly, no-one who views the exhibits realises that they are looking at living people, not even museum guide Nick (Hollis Morrison), even when he sees one of them blink!
Directed by Bud Townsend, Nightmare in Wax is an incredibly dumb film, one that starts off in fine B-movie form, but which gets less and less enjoyable as it progresses. Cameron Mitchell seems to lose interest after a while, as does Townsend, who pads out his film with a pointless musical scene featuring a group called The T-Bones and a bunch of scantily clad go-go dancers, and closes his movie in an extremely clumsy manner that makes very little sense.
3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for the bloody aftermath of Vincent's flaming head.