House of Wax B-Movie Review

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HOUSE OF WAX - 2 Slimes

Rated R

Reviewed by Cath on 24 January 2008

The Characters:

Carly - Elisha Cuthbert! The good twin with a bland boyfriend. She survives, but with a stumpy finger.
Nick - Chad Michael Murray! The evil twin; he probably wishes Blake hadn't bailed him out of prison.
Wade - Jared Padalecki! As bland as his counterpart in Gilmore Girls. Gets turned into a wax figure by Vincent.
Paige - Paris Hilton! The token slutty girl. Might be pregnant. Gets impaled by Vincent.
Blake - The token black guy; gets knifed by Vincent.
Dalton - I think he was just stuck in the movie as an afterthought. Gets the axe by Vincent.
Bo - Crazy evil dude; apparently keeps fan belts at his house. Gets bludgeoned to death.
Vincent - Silent, deformed, and quite possibly the best character in the movie. The obvious homage to Vincent Price.

The Plot:

The movie starts out in 1970 something, but I was too busy eating milk duds to really notice. There are several artsy shots of melted and then solidified wax. We then pan out to reveal a woman melting wax on her stove. Throughout the rest of the "prologue," all the heads of the actors are chopped out of the scene, in an attempt to be "artsy." It's mostly just obnoxious. A little boy in a high chair happily eats his cheerios.

The woman pours the wax into a face mold, and I popped a few more milk duds, wondering when the heck this movie was going to get scary. A man carries in a screaming wild child, and he and the woman strap and duct tape him to his high chair. We see a few more artsy scenes of bloodstains where the restraints hurt the kid. Slightly sad, I suppose. The kid scratches his mom, and she slaps the crap out of him.

We then go to a diner where a bunch of stupid kids talk about New York for some reason. They're going on a road trip to Baton Rouge for some football game. Chad Michael Murray is not much liked by the movie kids, but much liked by all the females in the theater.

Then, in the first five minutes of the movie, I realize their grand mistake could have been avoided had the token black kid been smart. NEVER EVER try to find a short cut with your GPS in your car. You will get horridly, horridly lost. Speaking from EXPERIENCE here.

Anyway, Paris Hilton makes out with him, jokes are made about her sex video, and then we see them driving. More stuff I don't care about (mostly Nick making fun of anyone), and more jokes are made about Paris' sex video. Their shortcut is blocked off, so they pull over to camp. Stupid idea, of course. They hang around, doing what stupid kids do. Nick is mad at the world (he's the evil twin, Carly is the good twin).

How sweet. Two sets of twins.

Anyway, Dalton is running around with a video camera. Paris Hilton then proceeds to give him a makeover, and I cannot for the life of me fathom why. Some guy drives up in his truck and shines his lights on the kids for like, five minutes. We see an arm hanging out of the window, and that this arm has scars on the wrists. It's the bad twin from the beginning! Frankly, I'd go up to the truck and see what he wanted (arming myself of course), but the stupid kids only have Nick throw a beer bottle, breaking the front headlight. The truck drives off.

Everyone's asleep, and I'm wondering why Paris and Blake have their own tent and the other four have to share. Someone stole the video camera, and is taping the girls' faces. Why? I have no idea, but Carly wakes up and goes exploring in her hotpants. Her boyfriend scares the crap out of her and then they go back to bed, Carly insisting she heard something.

Randomly through the evening they smell dead animal smell. In the morning, Paris and Carly are doing their business and smell the bad smell again. They go to investigate, like stupid people.

The fan belt of Wade's car is revealed to have been broken, despite the fact that it was brand new. Carly tumbles nearly headfirst in a pit of dead animals, and she screams for help as she tries to push herself back up the hill. Boyfriend Wade comes to the rescue, pulling her out. A truck drives up, and the kids decide it's not the one from the night before because its headlight isn't busted. He backs up, and tosses a roadkill deer onto the pit.

Nick gives Carly his wife beater, which is a bit big, but magically transforms to fit her two scenes later. The roadkill guy offers Wade and Carly a ride into a nearby town to get a new fan belt as the rest go on to the football game. Everyone stupidly agrees. The guy is creepy, and further proves his creepiness by whipping out a bowie knife and embedding it into his dashboard.

The road to the town is water blocked, but Carly and Wade decide to walk the rest of the way because they're afraid the guy is going to slash them or something. The guy agrees, but is pissed off that they didn't accept his kindness, since the town was just around the bend. The town IS just around the bend, and Wade proclaims he's an a**hole. Carly agrees. The gas station is empty (as is the rest of the town), so they go to the church to ask questions. A funeral is going on, and a man in black is inexplicably kneeling in front of the casket while the preacher is giving the eulogy. Highly suspect.

They leave, embarrassed, and the man in black comes out and yells at them. He goes back in, and Wade proclaims he's an a**hole twice today. Carly agrees. The man comes out seconds later, apologizes, and hits on Carly, saying he'll be at the gas station (he's the owner, Bo), in half an hour to give them the fan belt.

Wade and Carly agree, and Wade is mad at Carly because Dalton has a crush on her, and now this guy. Carly proclaims he's three times an a***ole today. Wade asks if he's her favorite a**hole. This is "funny."

They see the House of Wax, and stupidly go in to look around. Their arrival signals a man with beautiful girl hair who is sculpting a woman's bosom. He goes to investigate. Wade exclaims that the house really is made of wax. I can't bring myself to care. They go in. The sculptures are creepily lifelike, but everyone in creation who's seen the preview knows that it's because they're real people. In fact, everyone in the town is a wax sculpture; the idiots just haven't realized it yet.

Wade plays around on the piano and Carly notes that every sculpture is done by a guy named Vincent who has very nice handwriting. She dusts off a mirror and sees a reflection of a man with beautiful girl hair in the window. She freaks, and Wade goes to investigate. There is nothing. It's getting dark, and Wade and Carly leave the House of Wax.

We flash back to see that the other kids couldn't get through traffic and turn around. The other kids reach the campsite, and are called by Carly, who asks for them to pick her and Wade up at the road block. The black kid won't go because he wants to make some sweet loving to Paris (who, earlier, said she just might be pregnant, but I didn't remember because the fact that a slut might be pregnant just isn't "shocking"). Nick and Dalton go to pick up the wayward couple.

Bo comes by the gas station, where Carly and Wade already note that he doesn't have the right size fan belt. He says he does at his house, and Carly and Wade are suspicious, and rightly so. They walk over to the house anyway, and Carly waits in the car while Wade uses the facilities and Bo changes his clothes and gets the stuff.

Wade snoops, and while doing so, Vincent is coming through a trap door and uses scissors to cut through Wade's Achilles tendon, and also stabs him in the shoulder. He (that is, Vincent), is sporting a mask that reminds one of Mike Myers from the Halloween series that never ended. Except Halloween III, because that one had absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the series and made one wonder whether they rented the right movie. He drags him down into his wax works, waxes his eyebrows (why?!), and sews up his shoulder and ankle. He then strips him and gives him a nice relaxing wax shower.

Bo comes back with the fan belt, but Carly is scared because Wade never came back and she discovered the truck is the same one from the night before. He asks her what's wrong, and she locks the truck so he can't come in. Bo breaks the window with his elbow, and tries to grab her. She manages to put the truck in gear and drive around (upside down!), and fling Bo off. She drives over a ditch, effectively getting the truck stuck. She hops out and runs for town.

Paris is doing a strip tease for Blake. Then she realizes she has to tell him she's pregnant. After she's gotten him all...well, you know. Before she can tell him, their music goes off, so Nick goes out and checks the boom box. He sees Carly tried to call, and listens to the message. He is concerned.

Carly goes into the church, and realizes all the mourners and preacher alike are wax. Big surprise. She looks at a bulletin, and realizes the service is for the mother of the twins, and the wax sculptor who created the House of Wax. Earlier, the creepy roadkill guy had explained that she went crazy from a brain cyst, and her husband killed himself. I couldn't bring myself to care.

Bo is coming for her. She hides. Bo tells his mama he's sorry, and goes around looking for Carly. He eventually finds her under the Priest's robe. For some reason, that struck me as incredibly hilarious. He carries her back to the gas station, where he straps her into a seat like in a dentist's office. I noted that he's not intending to rape her since he tapes her legs together. I don't know whether that makes me happy or puzzled. We also see Bo's wrists, and we now know he's the insane twin from the flashback at the beginning. He then applies super glue to her lips, so she can't scream. Obviously, a normal gag will not work. Either that or he just was itching to use it lately so he'd have an excuse to get high. He moves in as if to kiss her (although, I don't know why she's so freaked out by it... why would he glue his lips to hers?), but he just blows on the glue. Bo's obviously rather screwed up in the head.

Nick and Dalton show up in town, but can't find Wade or Carly. They stupidly split up to find them. Nick notes everything in town is closed, and goes back to the gas station. Dalton goes into the House of Wax, where he sees Wax Wade sitting at the piano. He peels wax off his cheek, and realizes he's still alive. It's also pulling the skin off Wax Wade's bones, but Dalton can't realize it. Vincent gives both him and wax Wade the ax. Dalton is decapitated. I can't bring myself to care.

Carly manages to free one arm, and Bo and Nick chat about how Bo didn't see wax Wade or Carly. He's obviously lying, even to Nick. Carly sticks her finger up through a gutter grate to get her brother's attention, but Bo uses clippers and cuts off her finger at the first knuckle. I was so surprised they actually did that, I was stunned. Carly peels her lips apart and screams for her brother, who comes to the rescue by trying to kick the crap out of Bo. It doesn't work. Nick locks himself in the gas station and goes down to unstrap Carly and bind her finger. Bo is pissed.

Paris goes to bed because Blake never came back, but soon enough she goes out to investigate in her underwear. We already knew she was marked for dead because she was a slut, but she just signed her own death warrant there. She sees her boyfriend dead, and Vincent chases her to a Sugar Mill that inexplicably appeared out of nowhere. She runs upstairs, and Vincent tries to stab her feet through the grating. It works. She runs downstairs, tries to dial out from a pile of cell phones, and then hides in a car. Vincent impales her through the head with a stake. He then films himself with the other kids camera as he pulls it out.

Nick arms himself with a cross bow, and he and Carly are chased by a shotgun totin' Bo into the movie theater where a creepy old movie is playing, and they pretend to be wax sculptures. It doesn't work too well, but Nick shoots Bo through the arm, and they end up in the lobby, where Bo's then again shot by another bolt through the upper chest. There are no more shotgun shells, so Nick and Carly go find the cell phone.

It's not in Bo's truck, so they go inside his house to look for some other stuff. Carly finds articles about Siamese twins, and it's obvious that's what Bo and Vincent were. Vincent was joined at the back of Bo's skull, and was removed, but was deformed forever. Thus the mask. I couldn't bring myself to care. They see guns, but Bo is coming back, so they hide. Carly sees him go to his sink and pull the crossbow bolts out. Vincent shows up in a tow truck with Blake's truck and his and Paris' bodies. Carly is upset. So is Bo, because he yells at his brother that he's a freak and shouldn't go off alone. Vincent doesn't seem to care, much like me.

Bo then says they're almost done with what their mother started, and wouldn't she be proud? Vincent is too busy smoothing the wax on his mask to care. Bo hears a noise, so he goes to investigate; Carly runs upstairs and is caught by Nick, who shushes her. They inexplicably find a trap door on the second level (what the crap?), and go down through the basement connecting the wax works. It's dark, so Nick tries the fuse box, and stupidly pulls all the fuses randomly at the same time. The lights of the town flash, and Bo sends Vincent to kill them.

On a side note, I wonder what it is with people in horror situations who feel the need to pull all the fuses randomly and at the same time. Whatever happened to trying them tentatively one at a time?

They end up in Vincent's wax works, where they try to free Dalton, but find out he's decapitated. Vincent comes, and they fight. They somehow put the fire for the melting of wax on high, and get the hell out of there, making a barrier of fire that Vincent can't cross.

They find Wade, and Carly is sad. Bo appears, and Nick and Carly kick the crap out of him - Carly armed with a baseball bat she grabbed in Bo's house. Vincent appears, after using a mattress to cross the flames (again, what the crap?), and they all fight. Nick is stabbed in the leg, and he tells Carly to run.

As this is happening, the house of Wax is melting.

So what does this genius do? She runs upstairs while the freaking house made of wax is melting. Smaaaaart. Vincent follows. She runs into a room with a cradle where two wax conjoined twins are. I think we're supposed to care about this plot point, but I couldn't muster up the caring. Carly tries to talk Vincent down, saying he's not a freak and that he doesn't have to listen to Bo. Once again Vincent is not able to bring himself to care. Nick sludges up the melting steps and attacks Vincent. Carly pulls the knife from his leg (twisting it, the idiot), and stabs Vincent.

The house is melting fast and Vincent falls through the bed onto a dead Bo much like how they were conjoined as babies. They die. I was sad, because I liked them. Label me a freak if you will, but I gotta like a couple of insane twins who kill annoying celebrities. Carly and Nick try to escape, but the stairs are destroyed. So they push through the melting wall and crawl out just in the nick of time.

Scene changes to the next morning where there's a bunch of cop cars and ambulances. Carly's getting her finger worked on, and some sheriff tells them they didn't know what was going on because the town was abandoned years ago. Apparently a lot of campers went missing, due to their stuff being in the randomly appearing sugar mill.

Nick steals the video camera as they're driven off to a hospital. I still chuckle when I think what a shock he and his sister are going to get when they watch that and see the impaled Paris Hilton. Obviously, the film makers forgot this point because it's never brought up again. As they're driving off, there's a voice over of a cop saying they ran the Sinclair's (the twins' last name) through that police program, and realized the parents didn't have two sons...they had three.

We see the road kill guy wave to Carly and Nick...and I am asking myself for the millionth time...

"IS that supposed to be... surprising? WHY THE HECK DO WE CARE?"

I'll stick with Vincent Price, thank you very much.

Things I Learned From This Movie:

All sets of twins have a good half and an evil half.
New York has buildings as tall as the sky.
Grown men crap their work pants quite often.
Elton John is gay.
Crazy glue is the superior gagging method of choice.
Never stick your finger up through a sewer grating.
Most parents won't let their sons marry Paris Hilton.
There are no rednecks in New York.
No one suspects anything unusual is happening if you order rather large shipments of wax on a regular basis to a ghost town.
Wax melts.

Stuff To Watch For:

5 mins - No! Not the GPS!
7 mins - Ah, Paris is reliving her sex video days...
16 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A HEADLIGHT!
19 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A TENT!
20 mins - I wonder if she was sitting in poison ivy.
30 mins - I wish gas was that cheap now.
34 mins - I wonder how it managed to survive numerous summers.
45 mins - NEVER TRUST THE GPS!
50 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A CAR WINDOW!
58 mins - That's not the ONLY thing that's been under his robe.
67 mins - Oh Dalton. Now Carly will NEVER go out with you.
72 mins - Now is probably not the time to tell him you might be pregnant.
76 mins - The scene 3/4ths of the audience went to see the movie for.
81 mins - RANDOM ACT OF VIOLENCE AGAINST A WAX SCULPTURE!
99 mins - Yeah, that'll keep him out of a door made of WAX
102 mins - ...Delicious...
105 mins - Depends on your idea of good memories, Nick.
106 mins - I really hope that's not a sequel I'm smelling.

Audio clips in wav format

SOUNDS

Starving actors speak out

	File	Dialog
	housewax1.wav	Wade: "Sorry. There were two drunk rednecks wrestling in the bathroom." Carly: "Really?" Paige: "There's no rednecks in New York." Wade: "No. There's not."
	housewax2.wav	Wade: "What? What is it?" Carly: "I just saw someone." Wade: "Probably just a wax thing." Carly: "No, no, it wasn't a wax thing. It was moving and it was freaky looking."
	housewax3.wav	Carly locks Bo out of his own truck.
	housewax4.wav	Carly: "What about Wade? I think he has him too. What if he turns him to wax?" Nick: "What do you mean: wax?" Carly: "You don't get it! They're all wax, everyone!"

Click for a larger image

IMAGES

Scenes from the movie

Watch a scene

VIDEO

MPEG video files

	housewax1.mpg - 4.7m
	Wade gets his face waxed. Man, the latex covering his real eyebrows looks terrible. Maybe the script should have included Wade stumbling into a yellow jacket nest before this scene. At least that would explain the puffy flesh.