A Major Disappointment

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

Gothic horror has a major place in world cinema that goes back to the silent era and continues to this day. The idea of dark streets of mostly European cities (usually foggy London) stirs the imagination to come up with all sorts of grizzly acts of every type of nefarious nature. In this case, it is the setting of a horror museum which features all sorts of wax figures reflecting notable historical figures and other notorious members of society who were more known for their murderous ways rather than being world leaders or contributors to the art world. It is the second batch of wax figures that this film deals mainly with, particularly the recently missing Jack the Ripper, still notorious to the Scotland Yard inspectors who were unable to figure out who he was, and for museum proprietor John Carradine, the presence of Jack's wax figure is enough to stir up tons of nightmares. After one such particular nightmare, he meets his fate at the hands of Jack's apparent walking wax corpse, and this brings in his niece Nicole Shelby and her companion (an over the top Elsa Lanchester) as the apparent heirs to his beloved business, managed by the rather cranky Ray Milland.A cast of veterans supports the top-billed Milland and Lanchester, with brash Broderick Crawford, 1940's heartthrob Louis Hayward, Shakespearean master Maurice Evans and former handsome leading man Patric Knowles in fine form, and "Oliver's" Shani Wallis singing repeatedly the same music hall song as if she was an early 1900's version of Nancy Sikes from Dicken's classic. This is a top notch mix of horror and comedy, perfectly entertaining but probably easy to figure out for most and thus quickly forgettable. Steven Marlo emulates the Hunchback of Notre Dame as the pathetic Karkov, a mute but sweet half wit who holds undying love for the kindly Shelby, one of the few people to treat him with tenderness. His presence in Carradine's basement and frequent appearance under a sewer grate is often horrifying for its amazing cruelty, and thus he ends up being the heart and soul of this film. A great gothic atmosphere also helps bring this above average, but unfortunately, that's not enough to change its predictability. The horror isn't in its garishness, but in the not knowing of what's going to come next, and that makes the frequent usage of comedy within the film somewhat distracting.

This was a great old movie, with a stellar cast of veteran horror actors. The pace is nice, the story holds together, and it was all done without CGI, gratuitous violence, or sex and nudity for the sake of it. I missed this film when it first aired when I was a kid, and enjoyed the chance to watch it now. If you like old house mysteries, this is an excellent example of the genre, and great for when you just want to relax with a good old movie.

Caught this awful movie on TV the other night, and could see how bad it was going to be in the first 5 minutes, but because of the cast list, I just had to watch it. I cannot yet believe that a couple of Oscar winners could sink to this level, no matter how badly they needed the money. Ray Milland (must have felt he was in a DT scene from his great "Lost Weekend") and Broderick Crawford, probably glad he was done in half-way through, hit rock bottom. Some well-known supporting players of yesteryear were also there like Louis Hayward, Elsa Lanchester (looking even worse than she did in "Bride of Frankenstein") and Patric Knowles (who must have wished he was back in Sherwood with Errol Flynn). Oh, the story was terrible , but no worse than the acting, except for the wax figures who showed more animation than the stars. This was a real doozie - so bad it was watchable!

This is a cheaper BCP film than ARNOLD, and much less fun! What a terrible waste of a good cast.....the greatest horror is listening to poor Shani Wallis sing that stupid song OVER and OVER! What a shame to see a good singer/actress such as Wallis go from OLIVER to these BCP cheapies.