About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

House of Wax (2005 film)

Encyclopedia : H : HO : HOU : House of Wax (2005 film)

House of Wax is a 2005 horror/thriller film, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra. It is a loose remake of the 1953 movie of the same name starring Vincent Price and the 1933 film, Mystery of the Wax Museum. It was released to theaters May 6, 2005, and to DVD on October 25, 2005.

Contents

Synopsis

[Spoiler warningSpoiler warning]: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The film starts out in 1974. There's a scene of a woman melting wax to put onto a facial mask. The woman says nice things to one little boy who is sitting in a high chair eating a bowl of cheerios. Then the dad comes out of another room into the kitchen with a screaming and kicking rageful little boy. The dad restrains him in the high chair with leather wrist restraints and puts duct tape on top to reinforce the restraints. This boy's wrists are bleeding from tightness of the restraints. The boy kicks the table and causes mom's facial mask to fall off the table and break apart. She verbally abuses the little boy and proceeds to smack him in the face.

Then the movie fast-forwards to the present day...

While driving through Louisiana on their way to an important college football game, six teenagers stop at a camp site. They notice a horrid stench emanating from somewhere nearby in the forest surrounding their camp site. Then they have a confrontation with a trucker, whereby one of the male teenagers throws a beer bottle at the truck, breaking one of the headlights. The next morning they suspect that their car has been tampered with, since the fan belt was broken. To avoid being stranded, two of the teenagers (Wade and Carly, who are boyfriend and girlfriend) accept a ride into a small deserted town nearby named "Ambrose" by a man they encountered dumping animal carcasses into the woods (lots of deer, chickens, etc.). He claims his job is to pick up the roadkill from the interstate and other roads nearby to take them to this "pet cemetery." This is where the foul stench had been coming from the night before. The other four teenagers drive away in a separate vehicle to get to the college football game on time.

Wade and Carly go into the town of Ambrose after being dropped off at the town's edge by the man who gave them a ride. They are drawn to Trudy's House of Wax, a museum with surprisingly life-like wax sculptures. Carly notices that all the pieces of wax-work are signed by someone named "Vincent." Carly notices in a mirror hanging on the wall that someone was spying on them through the window.

Suspiciously, all the buildings in Ambrose are closed and there is no one walking around on the deserted town streets. Wade and Carly go to the town church and mistakenly believe they interrupted a funeral service. A man (named Bo) comes out of the church and yells at Wade and Carly for interrupting the funeral service. However, Bo tells them that he works at the gas station and will help them find the replacement for their car (fan belt) so they can get back on the interstate.

Meanwhile, back on the interstate, the other four teenagers (Nick, Dalton, Paige and Blake) are stuck in gridlock traffic. They decide that they aren't going to get to the college football game before it ends (since it was already half-time). With some resistance from Blake he drives them back to the camping site they had left Wade and Carly earlier that day.

Afternoon arrives and Bo offers Wade and Carly a ride back to their car. However, They have to stop at his house to get the correct size fanbelt, since he didn't have it in the gas station. Wade asks if he can use Bo's bathroom, Bo allows him to do so. They go inside while Carly stays in the truck outside. Carly gives Paige a call on her cellphone and tells them that she is in a small town not too far away with Wade and a man who worked at the gas station who is going to drive them back with the fan belt to fix Wade's car. At the same time, Blake tells Nick and Dalton that he needs them to go to the town so that he can have an opportunity to have sex with Paige (played by Paris Hilton). Thus, Blake gives Nick his keys (even though Dalton wanted to drive) to go to the town. They drive toward the town, but notice that the truck's satellite navigation system doesn't show any town anywhere near them. They both think this is strange.

Back at the town, Wade wanders through Bo's house looking at various objects and the lights go out. Suddenly his ankle is cut by Vincent (revealed as Bo's twin brother) with a pair of scissors and he falls to the ground. He gets thrown down some stairs by Vincent and is restrained. His facial hair is waxed off and he is injected with some clear fluid (probably morphine). He goes unconscious and awakens to find himself sitting upright in a metal restraining structure in a basement dungeon-like room with various steaming pipes and furnaces. Wade's entire naked body is sprayed with hot wax, except for his eyes (which are pulled open with metal pins).

In the car, while Wade is being victimized, Nick and Dalton talk about whether they like Wade or not. They both agree that they like Wade. He's a nice guy.

Bo comes out of his house without Wade and Carly at this point realizes that Bo is the trucker from the night before and she's in his truck. She locks the doors to the truck and Bo smashes one of the windows to get at Carly. She drops her cell phone and it falls underneath the front seat and she can't reach it. So she turns the engine on and puts the truck in reverse to get away from Bo (who is grabbing one of her legs and trying to pull her out of the car). The car gets stuck on a cement ledge and then Carly gets out of the car and runs toward the town. She yells for help but no one in the town responds to her screams for help. Bo catches Carly after she goes into the church to hide. She realizes that all the people sitting in the pews of the church are all wax figures (who once were living people underneath the wax).

Bo takes Carly to the basement of the gas station, turns on loud heavy metal music (Dried up, Tied and Dead to the World by Marilyn Manson) and restrains her with duct tape. Bo is locking up the gas station when Nick (Carly's twin brother) appears outside, causing Bo to cover Carly's mouth shut, after that, he shuts her mouth with super glue, as he makes a comment about how it's a shame to close her mouth. He approaches her puckering up his lips. Instead of kissing her he blows on her mouth to dry her glue, then kissed her. He walks up to see Nick and Nick asks Bo if he has seen his sister and Wade earlier that day. Bo feigns ignorance. Carly sees Nick and Bo talking through the metal grate in the pavement above. She is able to get loose of the duct tape in time to put her index finger through the metal grate, trying to get Nick's attention. Unfortunately, Bo sees her attempt before Nick does and crouches down and cuts the tip of her finger off with a pair of pliers. Carly's finger bleeds furiously. Bo, having joy from this, takes her severed finger in his pocket. As Nick is walking away, Carly tears her lips apart and screams to get Nick's attention. Nick runs into the gas station office and locks the doors, keeping Bo from getting in. Nick goes to the basement and rescues Carly from the restraints Bo put her in.

Meanwhile, at the House of Wax, Dalton is looking for Carly and Wade. He happens upon the wax figure of Wade. At first Dalton thinks it's Wade just sitting there. Then he notices that it's Wade with wax covering his entire body. Wade's eyes are moving, but he can't speak or move because his lips were sealed shut by the hot wax. Dalton tells Wade that he's going to get him out of there, and begins trying to pick off the wax, ending up tearing off pieces of Wade's cheek to expose his bloody flesh underneath. It's quite a disturbing scene. Vincent appears and chops off part of Wade's face with an axe (apparently causing him an indelible deal of pain) while lunging for Dalton, then chases after him; Dalton falls down a flight of stairs and is killed when Vincent decapitates him with two giant machetes.

Nick and Carly are running through the town toward the House of Wax, but Carly remembers seeing an elderly woman look out of her window earlier that day when Wade and she first walked through the town. She goes to the house where the elderly woman looked out the window and Nick knocks on the window. The elderly woman looks out the window again. This time, since Nick and Carly are close up to the window, they notice that the old woman is made of wax and is roboticized with various mechanical arms, etc. Nick and Carly realize that the entire town is "rigged."

Back at the camping site, Paige and Blake are making out in the tent. Paige strips down to her undergarments. They have the portable stereo playing some funky music. Suddenly, the music stops. Blake goes out of the tent to check on the stereo. Just as he turns the music back on he gets stabbed by Vincent in the neck and dies. Then Vincent goes after Paige in the tent, but she escapes just barely. She runs half naked into an abandoned barn that has various abandoned cars stored inside of it. She hides in the dark until Vincent turns on the lights. She then hides inside a car. Vincent sees her and she gets away from him again. She hides behind a car. In order to see if Vincent is nearby, she sticks her head up to look through the car windows and sees Vincent throwing a metal spike at her. The spike goes straight through the two car windows and splices through her forehead. Blood drools down her face and hair. Vincent slides the spike through her head with his foot.

Walking through the town, Nick and Carly happen upon a store that shows a bow rifle on display in the storefront window. Nick breaks the window and grabs the bow rifle as his defense against Bo. Nick and Carly decide to go inside the town theater to hide from Bo when they get shot at by Bo with his hunting rifle. Once inside, Carly hides herself among the various wax figures sitting in the theater watching a black and white film. Right when Bo notices that Carly is in the audience and aims to shoot at her, Nick shoots him with an arrow with the bow rifle. Nick shoots him in the chest and arm. Bo falls to the ground in agony. Nick grabs Bo's rifle and runs out of the theater with Carly.

Nick and Carly go back to Bo's place to find Carly's cell phone in Bo's truck. However, the cell phone isn't there. So they go inside to see if the phone works. The phone line is dead. Inside Bo's place, Carly finds various photos and newpaper articles about the history of Bo's family. Bo apparently was a Siamese twin. The twin brother was named Vincent. Bo and Vincent's father was a surgeon who was banned from the medical profession for various outlawed and controversial surgeries he conducted. Bo and Vincent's mom was an artist who had a vision to make a Wax museum (with everything made out of wax). Carly also happens upon the high chairs of Bo and Vincent when they were little boys. The high chair which had leather restraints attached to the metal arms was actually Bo's, not Vincent's, showing he had a wicked nature almost from the start as opposed to his rather docile brother.

Bo returns to his place with the arrows still stuck in his body. Nick and Carly hide. They witness Bo take out the arrows from his body. Then Vincent returns in a truck carrying the dead bodies of Paige and Blake. Vincent tries to help Bo with his wounds, but Bo rejects this offer of compassion by verbally abusing Vincent (telling him that he's a freak, etc.).

Then Nick and Carly sneak down into the basement and find the various power switches to the town and begin turning different ones on and off in attempt to find light for the basement. Bo and Vincent witness the lights in the town flickering on and off and realize that Nick and Carly went down to the basement. Nick and Carly happen upon the wax spraying device where Wade was sprayed with hot wax earlier. They find Dalton's body covered in wax. Nick tries to remove the head restraining device from Dalton's head and causes his head to break off from his body, not realizing that Vincent already cut Dalton's head off earlier. Nick and Carly cry in disbelief and horror. Bo appears and Carly ends up killing Bo by beating him with a baseball bat.

The entire House of Wax is starting to melt due to the flame (that falls) that heats up the cauldrom of wax that Vincent uses to cover his 'victims' in wax. It causes the wax floors to melt and the various wax people to burn up, and the wax-figure Wade (who, unfortunately, is presumably dead by this point, or at least unconscious from the pain of having his achilles tendon cut, body covered in wax and cheek peeled off) disappears through the disintegrating floor and into the inferno.

Vincent goes after Carly, chasing her to the upstairs bedroom. She tries to reason with Vincent about his past and how he doesn't have to listen to Bo anymore. However, Vincent doesn't want to listen to Carly and tries to stab her with his knife. In the end, however, Nick shows up and helps Carly kill Vincent, after breaking off his facial mask off to reveal a deformed face underneath. Vincent falls through the melted wax floor and lands on top of his twin brother. They drown together in the melted wax.

Nick and Carly tear through the wax wall to escape the flames and hot melting wax inside the house. They barely escape alive.

The movie cuts to the next morning. Police, Fire Department officials, and Emergency Personnel were on the scene. Nick asks the police how it was possible that a town like this could become deserted and get taken off the maps the way it did. The police explain that the town was so far away from everything that they don't come out to the town very often. It appeared that for over 20 years these brothers were preying upon innocents traveling on nearby roads or who happened upon this small town to add to their House of Wax collection. It wasn't until the authorities saw the flames and smoke from the fire that they decided to go to the town after so many years to see what was going on. The police told Nick and Carly that there were actually three brothers in the family. It dawns on Carly as she and Nick are escorted away from the town of "Ambrose" in an ambulance that the third brother was the man they encountered the day before dumping animal carcasses into the roadkill cemetery.

The "animal carcass man" looks at Carly through the ambulance window and smiles...

Lawsuit

In January 2006 it was announced by Warner Roadshow studio owners Village Theme Park Management and Warner World Australia that they were suing special effects expert David Fletcher and Wax Productions because of a fire on the set during production.

The $7 million lawsuit alleges that the Mr. Fletcher and Wax Productions were grossly negligent over the fire which destroyed part of the Gold Coast's Warner Roadshow studios. The alleged grounds of negligence included not having firefighters on stand-by and using timber props near a naked flame.[link]

Awards and nominatations

Won
2005 Golden Raspberry Awards 2005 Teen Choice Awards
Nominations
2005 Golden Raspberry Awards 2005 Teen Choice Awards

Main cast

See also

External links

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: