Mystery of the Wax Museum

Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) is a horror film by Michael Curtiz that you can watch online on iFILM, shot in early two-strip Technicolor — a real rarity for the genre at the time.

After a fire destroys his London collection and leaves him crippled, sculptor Ivan opens a new museum in New York. A sharp-tongued reporter named Florence notices that one figure looks exactly like an actress who recently took her own life, and whose body vanished from the morgue. The deeper she digs, the clearer it becomes where the wax gets its lifelike faces.

Lionel Atwill plays the sculptor, and Fay Wray is the woman in peril (the same year she screamed in King Kong's grip). The film was believed lost for nearly two decades until a single print surfaced in Jack Warner's private vault. It was remade in 1953 as House of Wax with Vincent Price, yet this original plays meaner and stranger. Stream Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) online on iFILM.