Nightmare In Wax Movie Review 355

Nightmare in Wax is a 1969 horror/thriller directed by Bud Townsend and starring Cameron Mitchell and Anne Helm.

Mitchell stars as Vincent Renard, head of the make up department at Paragon Pictures. He is seeing an actress called Marie Morgan(Helm) and they are in love. Marie is going to quit Paragon Pictures and the boss Max Black(Berry Kroeger) doesn't want her to leave. She is a big star and he won't let her go. He is jealous of Vincent and while Vincent lights a cigarette, he throws a glass of something into his face, setting him alight and disfiguring him for life. What are the odds of that happening? Anyway, after the accident, Vincent turns mean and he pushes Marie out of his life. He buys a waxwork museum and he makes displays that are eerily lifelike. If you have seen House of Wax with Vincent Price, then you get the idea....

So, stars from Paragon Pictures are disappearing and there is no trace of them. The cops are investigating and they come to Vincent. He talks to them but they don't really suspect him of any wrongdoing. The cops also talk to Marie about Vincent. Ironically, Vincent is making a wax figure of  a guy called Tony, who just happened to be Marie's lover..How odd is that? Marie calls Vincent and she asks him over for dinner.
She wants the wax figure of her lover. Vincent thinks that this is a bit strange. He wants Marie to pose for a waxwork in exchange for the figure of Tony.  He warns her not to tell anyone. Vincent has a helper guy called Mick who is a bit of a drinker and Mick tells Vincent that he thought he saw a waxwork move. Vincent persuades him that it was all in his imagination.

Vincent knows an actress called Theresa(Victoria Carroll) and she is close with Max so he asks her to bring Max to the waxwork museum to see her in wax. They arrive and he shows them the waxwork of Theresa.
Vincent drugs Max and he tells him that he will be going into his waxwork display. He turns on Theresa and he kills her. Max tells Vincent that the cops are outside. They followed him there and if he doesn't come out, then they will come in. Vincent dresses as Max, puts Theresa in the car and drives away/ The cops tail him and he crashes the car and runs off. The cops find Theresa and assume that Max killed her and ran off.
They chase Vincent but they lose him. They show up at Vincent's later and they are suspicious. Vincent has Max over the hot wax, ready to dip him in. He also has Marie held captive. He reveals that he uses a drug to inject his victims and it paralyses them and they turn into zombies. He has complete control over them and they have to do his bidding. He tries to get them to kill the cop when he comes back but it doesn't work. Vincent ends up falling into hot wax and that's it. This movie has a weird ending. You would think that he is dead after falling into the wax, but he is seen at the end alive, so I don't really know what that means. Was it a dream or some mental breakdown? Who knows, who cares. This is not really one that you would watch again. It is not original as House of Wax was a better movie and this is kind of a rip off of that film...I will say that it was worth a watch, but don't expect too much! I will give it a 3/10.