It's hard to believe that this film came out the same year as The Exorcist and just one year before The Texas Chain Saw Massacre -- cutting edge horrors that went all out to shock their audiences: Terror in the Wax Museum is strangely old-fashioned and unlikely to have viewers fainting from terror, it's well worn plot and well-established cast (Ray Milland, Elsa lanchester, John Carradine, Broderick Crawford) making the film feel like something from a decade or two earlier.
However, that's not to say I didn't have a good time with the film: I have a soft spot for wax museum movies, and this one is all too aware that it's treading very familiar ground, director Georg Fenady and his players clearly having fun exploiting every possible trope of the genre. There's the old museum owner who dies leaving a fortune hidden somewhere in the building; a greedy old aunt and her innocent ward; a streetwalker with a heart of gold; a killer posing as Jack the Ripper; and a disfigured hunchback who lives in the basement: how can that not be entertaining? The scares are tepid, sure, but this is the perfect comfort movie for fans of old school horror.
However, that's not to say I didn't have a good time with the film: I have a soft spot for wax museum movies, and this one is all too aware that it's treading very familiar ground, director Georg Fenady and his players clearly having fun exploiting every possible trope of the genre. There's the old museum owner who dies leaving a fortune hidden somewhere in the building; a greedy old aunt and her innocent ward; a streetwalker with a heart of gold; a killer posing as Jack the Ripper; and a disfigured hunchback who lives in the basement: how can that not be entertaining? The scares are tepid, sure, but this is the perfect comfort movie for fans of old school horror.