Halloween 2025: September 1st

 

Genuine (1920)
Genuine, die Tragödie eines seltsamen Hauses

The Germans didn't invent the horror movie but you'd be forgiven for thinking they did. The Expressionist movement defined the visual language of the genre in the late 1910s, horror movies remaining shadowy and gothic well into the fifties. Robert Wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" remains perhaps the most influential of these works. That landmark film was released in February of 1920. Seven months later, Wiene would release another horror movie that was made with much of the same team. "Genuine, die Tragödie eines seltsamen Hauses" – the German subtitle of "Tragedy of a Strange House" often converted into "Tale of a Vampire" in English markets – was and continues to be overshadowed by the earlier project. A contributing factor to this, no doubt, is "Genuine" being most readily available as an abridged 48 minute cut. The complete 88 minute version has never been released on disc but a fan restoration, combining two separate prints into as close an approximation of Wiene's vision as we're likely to get, floats around the internet. I always like to begin my Halloween marathon with a silent film and, given Germany's significance to the early days of horror, "Genuine" seems like a good place to kick-off 2025's Horror Around the World series as well. 

In the modern day, a painter named Percy has become obsessed with his recently completed portrait of Genuine, a legendary figure from local folklore. After rejecting a bid to buy the portrait by a wealthy customer, Percy falls asleep while reading tales of Genuine. In his dreams, we see how the wild-haired and beautiful Genuine was abducted from a far away land by a rival tribe. She arrives at a slave market, where she is purchased by rich eccentric Lord Melo. Melo locks Genuine up in a chamber beneath his house, determined to possess her beauty solely for himself. The next day, an apprentice barber named Florian arrives at Melo's house to give the old man a shave. Genuine, having escaped her room, instantly bewitches Florian into slitting his master's throat. She next attempts to convince Florian to take his own life, the boy refusing and fleeing. Melo's grandson, Percy, arrives to settle his grandfather's affairs. He too is quickly enchanted by Genuine, who shares his infatuation and is made an honest woman by his love. However, her previous victims are still lurking about and the high priestess' venomous ways soon return to haunt her. 

Obviously, the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of German Expressionism cinema is its visual elements. "Caligari's" surreal sets and costumes have cast a long shadow. The wild hair, pale skin, sunken eyes, and dark fashion of the actors would become the primary blueprint for goth fashion. These hallmarks are very present in "Genuine." It seems improbable that Fern Andra's look as the title character – with her black mess of hair, dark and wild eyes, and elaborate spider web gowns – didn't influence Siouxsie Sioux. Production designer Cesar Klein would return from "Caligari." While this film's set dressing isn't quite as extreme as Klein's last collaboration with Wiene, it does feature a number of similarly memorable images. Genuine's bedroom is centered around a silken, round mattress surrounded by jutting, abstract, plant-like shapes. She ascends an ominous, endless seeming staircase to reach Melo's main chamber. That room is decorated with a clock perched atop an enormous skeleton. Sharp angles, wild shapes, chaotic patterns, bones and shadows, and homes with surreal silhouettes are present in nearly every frame of the film. 

Also much like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," "Genuine" excuses its unearthly appearance with a framing device and a twist ending. While the former film was revealed to be the delusions of a mad man, this one is explicitly characterized as a dream. Much the same way "Caligari" blurred the line between reality and visions, "Genuine's" framing device has figures and ideas from the dream seemingly leaking into reality. The portrait of Genuine enchants the young painter, as she does every man, before climbing out of the frame and escaping the room. That Lord Melo's main timepiece recalls a dead body seems to suggest the film is ticking down to his own demise. That staircase Genuine climbs gives the impression of an escalator out of Hell, the titular character – a vamp only in the figurative sense, despite what the English language subtitles suggest – acting like a demon that has crawled out of the underworld. The themes of control, madness, and a township helpless to defend against it also follows from "Caligari." I don't know if any book-length essays have been written about how this film also speaks towards the rise of fascism in Weimar Germany but one could easily make many of the same parallels. "Genuine" also depicts a world gone mad from the horrors of World War I and unprepared for lurking dark forces that enslave the mind and prey upon the weak. 

Unlike the timeless "Caligari," and Wiene's earlier "Fear," "Genuine" does not resist the attitudes of its time and place. The title character is a straight example of exoticism at work, a beautiful but wicked (white) woman from a vaguely African jungle that threatens European men with her untamed sensuality. This causes you to notice how the film associates horror with jungle-like visuals. Among Melo's staff is what the film calls a "Negro" in a turban, one of several signs that the script never quite interrogates the morality of slavery. Genuine's feminine powers of seduction endangers all the men around her but the chaste, pure love of the right man is enough to save her. Percy and Genuine's romance is a plot device, her falling in love with him and becoming a "good girl" over the course of a single scene, to reinforce a reductive moral about how proper women should act. Queer subcultures and women equality movements were begrudgingly tolerated by the Weimar government and deeply intertwined with the Berlin's art scene. Which means a degree of theatrical camp irony might be at play inside "Genuine." However, there's not much to suggest that within the movie itself. 

In general, the characters and narrative are simple in a somewhat dull fashion, not the archetypal and evocative way "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" was. Surely because the most complete version is stitched together from different sources, "Genuine" is sometimes hard to follow and some of its subplots remain superfluous. Everything involving the villagers eluded me. A film that's one hundred and five years old having antiquated politics is inevitable. I don't hold that against "Genuine." However, a repetitive and half-formed narrative and a lack of apparent depth does make the movie harder to embrace. Simply put, directly comparing something to "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" isn't going to do the competition any favors. If Wiene's follow-up isn't as provocative and brain-teasing as one of the greatest horror films of all time, it still produces some memorably bizarre and poetic visuals. Fern Andra is an unforgettable villainess, even if she is doomed to be tamed and shamed by the movie around her. Perhaps we should merely be grateful that the film survives in any condition at all. [7/10]

The Maze (1953)

The technology to project movies in three dimensions, to make the audience feel like the images are coming off the screen at them, has existed since 1915. Yeah, I was surprised it was that early too. However, most of us classic cinema dorks associate 3-D movies with the early 1950s. The fluke success of killer lion flick “Bwana Devil” in 1952 – and a desire to get people away from the new-fangled invention of television and back into theaters – led to a short-lived burst of films that called for red-and-blue polarized glasses. “It Came from Outer Space” and “Creature from the Black Lagoon” probably remain the most iconic B-movies to emerge from this fad. Those two are also linked by starring Richard Carlson. It would seem Carlson filled an extremely specific niche, as he starred in a third, often overlooked 3-D creature feature around the same time. While his biggest roles used sci-fi plots to make bug-eyed beasties jump at audiences, “The Maze” is pure gothic horror. Rarely mentioned today, the film does have a small cult following among monster kids. 

Gerald McTeam is a Scottish baron living in the United States. He is engaged to a dancer named Kitty and the two are very in love. Which makes it all the odder when McTeam calls the engagement off without warning. It seems his uncle has died and he's been called back to the family estate. Determined to get to the bottom of things, Kitty travels with her aunt to the McTeam ancestral home on the Scottish moors. The dreary old castle is surrounded by an elaborate hedge maze. Upon meeting Gerald again, Kitty sees that he's visibly aged and his attitude has totally changed. He commands her to go and gives her special instructions to stay away from the maze. However, Kitty is not so easily deterred and sticks around, trying to win her lover's heart back. This will lead her to uncovering the bizarre and monstrous family secret, lurking in the dark corners of the castle and the winding hedges.

"The Maze" was the final directorial credit of William Cameron Menzies. Menzies previously directed sci-fi classics like "Things to Come" and "Invaders from Mars." However, he's probably better known for his work as a production designer, a job title he's credited with inventing way back in the silent era. His advances in special effects, sound design, Technicolor, cinematography, and set dressing would win him three Academy Awards. This means "The Maze" looks far classier than you'd expect a cheesy horror flick from 1953 to. The castle setting is bathed in shadows, cold and foreboding. The film is rich with foggy ambiance, paired with the dusty interiors of its primary set. While leading lady Veronica Hurst is tossed towards the camera a few times in the early scenes, Menzies mostly utilizes the 3-D gimmick with long tracking shots that take us through the maze and the castle halls. I watched the movie flat and I still think it looks really cool. Moreover, it suits a story about exploring creepy old locations that are filled with strange secrets, making us feel like we are creeping through the maze alongside Hurst. 

"The Maze" is based on a novella by Maurice Sandoz, the most famous edition paired with illustrations by Salvador Dali. I haven't read the book and can't compare the movie to whatever far-out visuals Dali surely contributed. However, "The Maze's" narrative does recall another trailblazer of that time. The story of dark family secrets and a cursed bloodline was reportedly inspired by the legend of the Monster of Glamis but reminds me of America's own H.P. Lovecraft. That the script repeatedly draws attention to how much Gerald has changed, aged prematurely and made into a real asshole by whatever he's seen, suggest he's laid his eyes on some incomprehensible cosmic horror. When paired with repeated references to the recently deceased uncle and the family history, I half-expected "The Maze" to feature some "Strange Case of Charles Dexter Ward" body-swapping. Or perhaps the titular location is a gateway to some time loop or other dimensional plain, a hedge maze on the borderland. By the time the film gives us a fleeting glimpse at some slithering thing in the darkness, dragging sea weed behind and leaving a soggy footprint on the cobblestone, my imagination was really fired. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, "The Maze" cannot pay off on the sense of mounting intrigue it generates throughout. Though the finale does feature the kind of batrachian horror Lovecraft could've dreamed up, the execution could've used some work. The creature design is rather underwhelming. The movie does nothing to disguise the seams once the reveal comes, the monster tumbling right into the camera before the end, making sure we see its floppy rubber limbs. Rather than lean on the cosmic horror angle – incorporating whispered-about profane rituals committed by blaspheming ancestors long ago, summoning things that should not be – a rather plain sci-fi explanation is given for the family secret. (That will sound familiar to any "Hideous Sun Demon" fans in the audience.) The ending is weirdly upbeat, everything soundly resolved, and the threat characterized as merely misunderstood and not beyond human comprehension. This flushes all the lingering themes of familial resentment and dark secrets eating away at the soul, turning "The Maze" into just another monster movie in its rushed-through denouncement. 

This goofy climax and lack of commitment to the ominous energy the plot suggests up to that point is what keeps "The Maze" from being an all-timer. However, I'm not going to lie to you and say that I didn't find its gasping, rubbery monster – which inexplicably makes elephant noises, despite very evidently not being an elephant – kind of charming too. Menzies' visuals are so damn effective and clever, the first hour of being nicely spooky and dusty, that it's easy to forgive the underwhelming reveal in the last twenty minutes. I'm used to black and white horror flicks having an awesome atmosphere that they can't pay off at the end. If I saw "The Maze" on the big screen and in the intended three dimensions, I probably would give it even higher notices. Richard Carlson gives a fine performance here, undergoing a convincing physical change. He would appear in a few other sci-fi flicks, directing one too, but none others were presented in 3-D. It's not a classic like "Creature from the Black Lagoon" or "It Came From Outer Space" but "The Maze" is still a fine way for fans of soggy horrors and cursed castles to spend an hour and a half. [7/10]

 

Fright Night (1985)

It's a question most horror fans likely have an answer to: What's your favorite vampire movie? The undead bloodsuckers are perhaps the genre's most versatile archetype, mutable to nearly any meaning and adjustable to absolutely every tone. We've seen countless variations on the idea over the decades and yet audiences still flock to new takes on it. (Some of which I'll be talking about soon...) If you were to ask me that question, a few candidates would come to mind but my immediate answer would probably be "Fright Night." I saw the movie as a budding young horror nerd, edited down to basic cable standards as part of AMC's annual MonsterFest marathon. It was, by far, the newest film included in the program that year, a sign of the network's incoming abandonment of the "Classics" label. As an extended homage to Hammer horror, it fit in anyway. Moreover, I immediately loved the flick, the blending of eighties monster effects and campy theatricality appealing to me. It still does but enough time has passed since my last re-watch that I probably have some new things to say about this particular cult classic.

Written by Tom Holland in a post-”Psycho II” burst of creativity, “Fright Night's” premise essentially mashes up “Rear Window” with a classic movie monster. Charley Brewster is a kind of nerdy teenager. During a failed attempt to escalate a make-out session into something more intense by his hapless girlfriend Amy, he notices something strange: A casket being moved in next door. Charley – much to the chagrin of Amy and “Evil” Ed, his only real friend and an even bigger horror nerd – becomes increasingly obsessed with the idea that his new neighbor, Jerry Dandridge, is a vampire and responsible for the recent slaying of sex workers in the area. Charley is right and Jerry soon targets him directly, promising to kill him the next night. With few other options, Charley pursues the assistance of his idol, washed-up movie star and recently out-of-work horror host, Peter Vincent. Vincent is reluctant to help at first but, needing the cash, agrees to do so. He accidentally confirms that Jerry actually is a vampire. Afterwards, Evil Ed becomes the next victim of the vampire while Jerry sets his sights on Amy, who resembles his lost love. Charley and Peter Vincent team up to stop this bloodsucking threat and save his girl from an eternal darkness. 

For me, "Fright Night" did for bloodsuckers what "An American Werewolf in London" did for werewolves. It gives the vampire the same sort of self-referential treatment. The characters in both movies live in a world where horror films exist and the rules around classic monsters are common knowledge. "Fright Night" takes it further by making its heroes fans and stars of such films. Charley is a regular watcher of a late night horror host show. When he exhausts his knowledge of vampires, he consults Ed, a nerdier devotee. Drawing his name from Mr. Cushing and Mr. Price, Peter Vincent seems to have starred in cornier, cheaper equivalents to the Dracula movies Hammer was producing. That self-aware streak goes hand-in-hand with a generous sense of humor. Peter Vincent's out-of-work status, the cluelessness of Charley's mom, and some of the goofier teen romance shenanigans are all mined for light-hearted, well observed comedy. This creates an easy-going tone that is immediately charming. When paired with the genre references, it feels like you are hanging out with some friends who know and care about the same trivial, niche topics as you. 

The peek we get at one of Peter Vincent's movies comes close to functioning as parody, suggesting a less than respectful approach to older horror flicks. That attitude is not reflected in the rest of "Fright Night." The movie is actually thick with foggy, classic horror ambiance. The shots of an unseen force taking to the air outside Dandridge's house or a shadowy alleyway at night invoke the vampire classics of old, while the interior of Dandridge's home – with its wall of cuckoo clocks and elaborate stain-glassed window – makes for a clever suburban update of Dracula's castle. Much like "American Werewolf," Holland's film seeks to take an original monster archetype and pump it up with modern special effects. When hungry for blood, these vampires turn into grotesque beasts with pointed nails, animalistic features, and a mouth full of jagged fangs. Jerry doesn't change into a mere bat but a leathery winged demon the size of a Doberman. His Renfield-like thrall oozes green slime in death before crumbling into a steaming skeleton. A cross held to Evil Ed's forehead leaves a bubbling, blackened scar. When he's staked while transformed into a wolf, it results in a painfully drawn out sequence of body horror, of the dying vampire twisting between human and animal. That kind of excess carries over to the finale, where the villain's fate escalates from a stake in the heart to an exploding giant bat skeleton belching green fire. All of that is proceeded by Dandrige rising from his coffin, perfectly straight, just like Nosferatu, confirming the film's loyalties to the classic texts of the vampire universe. 

Describing its elaborate special effects and clever updating of classical hallmarks doesn't truly give the impression of how satisfying a watch "Fright Night" is. The film may very well have a perfectly constructed, utterly concise screenplay. The entire plot takes place over the course of a few days but it's so packed full of incident, and so perfectly paced, that it feels like a grand epic anyway. The events – of Charley uncovering Jerry's undead status, being threatened by him, contacting Peter Vincent, the vampire attempting to disguise his true nature before it is accidentally uncover – all build perfectly atop each other. Peter Vincent has an ideally executed character arc, going from a washed-up has-been and a total skeptic of the supernatural to a someone brave enough to confront a vampire head-on with nothing but the power of his faith. Small details are set up smoothly without being lingered on, a painting that looks just like Amy in Jerry's home granting so much more depth to the standard plot point of the villain trying to steal the hero's girl while firing the imagination. Little bits, like Charley's janky looking car contrasting with the posters of shiny chrome he has on his bedroom wall, make this world feel fully developed. "Fright Night" functions as a full cinematic meal that is delivered with the ease of a well-timed joke.

Holland's script also endures because of a queer subtext that has been endlessly discussed over the years. That makes it tempting to say this element of the film is perhaps overstated, made more evident do to Stephen Geoffreys' future career in hardcore gay porn. Charley, our hero, is very hetero and he seeks to protect his girlfriend from another man, about as normative a motivation as you can give a hero. Jerry Dandridge has an ambiguous relationship with his live-in man-servant but also pursues Amy and a bevy of female prostitutes. Despite that, the homoerotic undercurrents are tricky to dismiss. Jerry beckoning to “Evil” Ed feels like an older man seducing a younger guy who isn't quite comfortable with his sexual preferences. That Ed, especially once he becomes a vampire, comes across as a bit flamboyant – even cross-dressing sort of, at one point – furthers that feeling. Not to mention the presence of Roddy McDowell always brought with it some gay energy, no matter what part he's playing. Considering Jerry also awakens a sexual longing within the rather conservative Amy, perhaps “Fright Night” is more specifically a movie about repressed desires coming to the surface. Either way, the vampire is definitely used here as a symbol of something provocative to polite society, something that subverts and “corrupts” the functions of Charley's quiet suburban existence. 

Geoffreys' performance is far from the only one operating on a consciously campy level. In fact, most of the performances in the movie do. Chris Sarandon makes every smirk and look either an act of seduction, manipulation, or intimidation. However, once he goes full vampire, he over-enunciates every line, delivering each word as a bellowing shout. That approach makes sense though. The characters here are archetypal. Charley is as much of an average teenage boy as possible. Amy is the definition of the shy girl next door. Amanda Bearse and William Ragsdale's performance reflect that gee-shucks nostalgic quality. McDowall often brought a bit of campy detachment to his roles which is definitely reflected in Peter Vincent, an over-actor for the camera and a coward in his personal life. All the performances are operating on a level one step removed from reality. In a lot of other movies, that could've been irritating. “Fright Night” makes it works, functioning as another branch of its extended homage to classic horror tropes. 

Right before the credits start, that cheesy-ass theme song kicks off. The breathy vocals of J. Geils Band's lead singer, the corny lyrics, synth-heavy production, and heavy use of claps and whoops make it almost seem like a parody of eighties pop music. In fact, all the music in the movie is kind of like that, from Brad Fiedel's hollow sounding electronic score to generic pop songs in the club scene from Ian Hunter and Evelyn King. (All of which appear on the soundtrack album alongside C-list hair metal bands Autograph and White Sister and some mediocre Devo and Sparks B-sides.) It all adds to the charms of “Fright Night,” a movie I can't help but love. It serves as such an effortlessly entertaining good time, a clever upgrade of vintage ideas for the then-cutting edge eighties with its tongue thoroughly in cheek without sacrificing the stakes of its own story. [9/10]
 

House of Wax (2005)

Horror fans usually dismiss remakes on principle, as cynical pillaging of beloved fan favorites by money-grubbing studios. And that is usually true. At the same time, more than a few enshrined classics are remakes themselves. 1953's "House of Wax" is the movie that established Vincent Price as a horror star. It's also a remake of 1933's "Mystery of the Wax Museum." In theory, that would have at least had me willing to entertain the possibility of a new "House of Wax" in 2005. Except this version was being made by Dark Castle Entertainment, whose brand of MTV style horror junk always annoyed me, then and now. This "House of Wax" was also an in-name-only adaptation, drawing nothing from the original film other than the idea of bodies encased in wax. Any respect sixteen-year-old me might have had for the project went right out the window when Paris Hilton, the singularly most reviled pop culture figure of the time, was cast in the project. I dismissed "House of Wax" as mall horror glop that I would not dignify with a viewing. Dark Castle's "House of Wax" did win some fans at the time, who claimed it was actually a fun slasher flick. That was twenty years ago, somehow, and the film's reputation has only grown since, developing a cult following who have assured me it's actually worth seeing. Past attempts to reevaluate Dark Castle's output has swayed me in no way but, what the hell. Enough time has passed that I'm willing to give this "House of Wax" a shot. 

Carly hopes to reconnect with troubled twin brother Nick, and convince him to like her boyfriend Wade, on a road trip with a group of mutual friends. They are headed towards Baton Rouge for a football game. They are delayed and camp out in the woods for a night, where a mysterious pick-up truck threatens them. The next morning, Wade discovers his vehicle sabotaged. The group heads to the near-by town of Ambrose to find a replacement part. It is sparsely populated and the entire community seems to revolve around Trudy's House of Wax, an elaborate attraction where everything – from the statues inside to the building itself – is made of wax. Carly, Nick, and their friends soon discover that a dark secret lurks inside. The sculptor behind the business had twin sons, born conjoined at the face and separated at birth. One of the boys, Vincent, was left disfigured and insane by the surgery. He now seeks to continue the family business, killing visitors to Ambrose and turning their bodies into new wax figures for the attraction. Carly, Nick, and their friends have unwittingly made themselves the latest targets of this wax mask wearing, knife-wielding lunatic. 

2005's "House of Wax" is, in many ways, an almost painfully shallow slasher flick. It features a cast of characters that can be considered cartoonishly one-note even by the standards of this formulaic subgenre. The heroine is bland, her boyfriend is blander, and the backstory with her ex-juvie brother provides the thinnest sort of tension. They are played by Elisha Cuthbert, Jared Padalecki, and Chad Michael Murray, actors plucked from teen-targeted TV shows. Their performances are about at that level. Their friends are defined no further than singular descriptors like being the funny one, the vapid party girl, and the black guy. Guess which one of those is Paris Hilton? Miss Hilton plays her role as a person who is “sexy” in the most disaffected and passionless way possible, giving the impression that she considered acting in a movie merely another boring stop on her endless media tour. I suppose she's as good as you'd expect someone cast solely because her presence – and her inevitable graphic death scene – would grant the movie way more attention and infamy than it otherwise would have gotten. Granted, all the characters are terribly written. A good actor would have struggle with material like this. Paris Hilton clearly is not a good actress and the more professional performers around her are still mediocre at best.

Much of “House of Wax” is written in a sloppy, half-hearted manner. The characters randomly pair up, wander out of the story for a bit, and return only to be killed. It's a movie that functions more on a handful of ideas than an actual narrative construction. Complaining about the acting and plot in a slasher movie makes me very stupid, obviously. People watch eighties slasher movies for other reasons, such as how they function as accidental time capsule of their place and time. Amusingly, “House of Wax” does much the same for the year 2005 as “Friday the 13th Part VI” did for 1986. Aside from Paris Hilton being here, she also wears a lime sweat-suit and sports a tacky spray-on tan, one of many fashion choices indicative of my high school days. Jared Padalacki has an asymmetrical haircut and wispy goatee, flip phones are all over the place, and the soundtrack is packed with emo and nu-metal. “House of Wax” being a product of the middle 2000s is also evident in its violence. People have their skin slowly peel away, get their fingers bloodily clip off, are slowly pushed down onto the pipe impaling them. There's two separate ankle slashing sequences. A movie like this probably would've been better served by “fun” kill scenes that emphasize the ingenuity of the special effects and not the suffering of the characters. But 2005 was the year “Hostel” and “Saw II” came out, making the torture horror approach another trend the movie is hungrily chasing. 

A surprising number of the horror movies Dark Castle made can be described as indistinct, borderline obnoxious characters wandering around rather neat sets. “House of Wax” continues that approach. As dumb and thoughtless as this motion picture is, the titular location is a neat idea. The entire building being made of wax means it all starts to melt and fall apart once the climatic fire breaks out. Characters sink into the floor or narrowly escape massive holes opening up around them. It is easily the most creative touch in the movie. This was the feature directorial debut of Jaume Collect-Serra, before several other schlocky horror films, multiple Liam Neeson vehicles, and two green-screen encased movies with the Rock. Credit where it is due, Collet-Serra does show some bombastic flair. The movie features far too many jump and overly loud musical cues. However, there are a handful of eye-catching visuals, a Bette Davis looking wax model melting in a blaze or the muscle of the cheek exposed with the slice of a blade. Perhaps as a homage to the original "House of Wax" being in 3-D, numerous objects are thrust into the camera. A thrown blade, a falling bit of molten wax, and a body slowly turned to exposed the camera are a few examples of this approach. By the ending, this "House of Wax" had almost won me over with the silly but novel way it embraces multiple aspects of the "made of wax" gimmick.

While 2005's “House of Wax” has only a loose connection to the movie it shares a title with, the remake shares far more similarities with another cult classic. The plot of road-tripping youths coming across a creepy wax museum, operated by a masked killer with a supposed twin brother, recalls 1979's perpetually underrated “Tourist Trap.” There's no telekinetic shenanigans and the detail of conjoined twins being separated seems nicked from “Basket Case” instead. However, the parallels are still hard to ignore. Especially since there's a scene here where a victim is restrained and has their face covered over with hot wax, which is a direct adaptation of a moment from “Tourist Trap.” Vincent, with his shock rocker hair and dragon-handed daggers, isn't as interesting as Chuck Conner's bizarre Mr. Saulsen. However, the hint that Vincent is as much a victim of his abusive brother as any one he kills adds a bit more depth to an otherwise typical masked marauding maniac. Then again, that element – which doesn't appear until the last act anyway – was likely stolen from “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.” Meaning Collect-Serra's film really is little more than a remix of stolen elements from older, better horror movies. 

Ultimately, Dark Castle's “House of Wax” is less annoying than their remake of “House on Haunted Hill,” less convoluted than their“13 Ghosts,” less tedious than “Ghost Ship,” and not as preposterous as “Orphan,” which Collet-Serra would direct for the company next. That doesn't mean the movie is good either. Upon release, the movie owed much of its success to the dubious merits of seeing incredibly annoying tabloid fixture/genuine bad person Paris Hilton getting gorily offed. The advertising leaned into this, T-shirts with the slogan “See Paris Die!” eventually being printed up. (This was still not able to make the film enough of a box office success to justify a follow-up, gratuitously set-up before the credits roll.) Miss Hilton's cultural relevance is a far-off memory now, meaning all Collet-Serra's “House of Wax” has going for it currently is a cool setting and an okay climatic utilization of it. Movies have gotten further with less, so I understand why some defend this. I was left largely uncharmed by this waxy facsimile of more compelling originals. [5/10]

The Sitter (1977)

It's one of those urban legends so ingrained into the culture, that everyone knows it. Despite being thoroughly discredited since the invention of caller ID and the cell phone, “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs” endures. Possibly inspired by a real life incident in 1950 – when a 13 year old Missouri babysitter was assaulted and murdered by an intruder, despite her panicked calls to the police – the story has been adapted many times. Fred Walton's “When a Stranger Calls” is probably the most famous version and that film was an expansion of a short Walton had made two years earlier. “The Sitter" concerns a teenage girl named Jill, tasked with babysitting Dr. Mandrakis' kids while he goes out with the wife for the night. The wards already tucked into bed, she chats with a friend on the phone about a crush. Shortly afterwards, she begins to receive threatening calls. An unknown man repeatedly asks her if “She has checked the children.” The harassment continues and she calls the police, who promise to trace the call... Which reveals that the man has been in the house all along, having already murdered the children and calling from a second line upstairs.   

It has often been said that the first twenty minutes of "When a Stranger Calls" are a shot-for-shot remake of "The Sitter." Though much of the script was reused, this is otherwise not true. While the feature focuses on the interior corners of the house, "The Sitter" mostly watches its protagonist from a distance. We see her walk across the living room in a long shot. A striking moment frames her sitting on the couch in the darkened room, visible through the picture window. The camera often moves through the home, as if taking the perspective of this unseen stalker. When on the phone with the cops – useless, as in every horror movie and real life – they tell Jill she's safe inside the home. This, of course, is not true, as the end reveals. The watchful, prowling cinematography establishes this idea subtly early on, that our stately suburban homes do not keep us as safe as we'd like to think. That the safety of our polite, cloistered existence can be easily pierced by anyone willing to do so. 

The biggest difference between the short and the feature is the girl. Carol Kane – with her saucer eyes, squeaky voice, and dowdy sweater – was like a little kid, totally asexual in appearance and approach. In "The Sitter," Lucia Strasler wears a tiny mini-skirt, knee socks, a buttoned-up blouse, and a tomboy haircut, looking like the prototypical school girl from any adolescent fantasy. (From what I can recall of the twenty years later straight-to-TV sequel, "When a Stranger Calls Back," Walton dressed Jill Schloen in the same outfit there, also suggesting the wardrobe was chosen for a reason.) Her friend chastises her for being "square," for wearing a bra, and emerges as a rival for the boy they are both crushed on. It's not only peer pressure pushing sexuality on this girl on the edge of adulthood. Dr. Mandrakis wobbles his eyebrows at her, flirtatiously. The cop on the phone speaks softly, sweetly. The mysterious man upstairs watches her, the girl seeming halfway between horrified and excited as she sits in the dark and presents herself to him. When his words turn into an orgasmic cry of wanting her "blood all over him," that's when Jill has finally had enough. She flees, attacked on all sides for the crime of being a girl becoming a woman. 

That the killer repeatedly implores her to "check the children" seems to be another imposition of motherhood, of patriarchal gender roles, on this young girl. Notably, that's one thing Jill never does. In both "The Sitter" and "When a Stranger Calls," the girl holds onto her maidenhood despite the call to child-bearing. That the killer wants her to come up to a bedroom to be with him also implies a degree of sexual menace. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. Either way, "The Sitter" crackles with suspense. The creaking electronic musical score here is not as effective as the orchestral music in "When a Stranger Calls." That and some slightly classier photography is all that makes the movie version slightly scarier than this already supremely intense twenty minute presentation. Either way, both have that masterful touch of the girl slowly moving through the dark towards a door, forgetting to unhook the security chain as the shadow of the madman creeps towards her. Dynamite stuff, in other words. If you've always been bummed out by the rest of "When a Stranger Calls," "The Sitter" is a crystallization of everything that worked about that opening. [8/10]