Vincent Rinard (Cameron Mitchell) is a make-up artist with Paragon Pictures. He is in love with lead actress Marie Morgan (Anne Helm) and they plan on getting married. First Marie needs to tell her former lover and the studio head Max Black (Berry Kroeger). At a dinner party Marie breaks the news to Max. He doesn’t take it too well. In a fit of temper he throws his drink in Vincent’s face while Vincent is lighting a cigarette. The alcohol bursts into flames and half of Vincent’s face and one eye are burned. The loss of his right eye and the scarring of his face changes Vincent mentally. He stews in his anger.
Vincent starts working as a wax artist creating wax figures of celebrities for his wax museum “Movieland Wax Museum and Palace of Living Art”. His relationship with Marie ends. Marie begins seeing and falls in love with Tony Dean (Phillip Baird). The night they announce their engagement Tony disappears. Tony is not the first star to disappear. There have been three that recently went missing, Stella Costello (Mercedes Alberti), Leslie (Barry Donohue) and Ralph Tenier (Virgil Frye). All three have wax figures in the museum and Vincent is working on the figure of a fourth, Tony Dean.
The police, in the form of Detective Haskell (Scott Brady) and his assistant Sergeant Carver (John Cardos), are investigating the disappearances. They question everyone, including Rinard. Although they are focused on Max, Rinard is a close second. What no one knows is that Rinard has totally gone off the deep end and is exacting revenge on basically all of Paragon Pictures. Rinard has invented a solution that can turn people into mindless frozen puppets. They stay frozen in place until Rinard tells them they can move. He then puts them in his wax museum.
Vincent is friends with a brain fried blonde named Theresa (Victoria Carroll) who happens to be dating Max at the time. Vincent has been working on a wax head of Theresa. For the unveiling he tells her to come over late and bring Max along. He injects Max with his zombie formula and kills Theresa. When he finds out that Max is being followed by the police he needs to divert their attention and make it look like Max is responsible for Theresa’s death and the disappearance of the other actors. He then turns his attention to Marie.
“Nightmare in Wax” was released in 1969 and was directed by Bud Townsend. It is an American horror film.
Wax museums are naturally sinister to begin with. It’s something about human looking statues with eyes that stare at you. Plus the lighting is usually low. So movies about them are plentiful. The most popular films about them are “Mystery of the Wax Museum” 1933 and “House of Wax” 1953. Both great in their own way. Of course “Nightmare in Wax” can’t compete but it does have something the makes it unique. It has Cameron Mitchell’s insanity.
Vincent’s homemade zombie elixir is ridiculous and the makeup for his scared face is amateurish. There’s no mystery as to what happened to everyone and who did it. There are actually a lot of things wrong with the movie, but put them all together on top of Mitchell’s bat-shit crazy performance and the movie is a wacky ride into creepy funland. In addition you have a couple detectives that are borderline incompetent and some average actors playing some over the top selfish Hollywood people. I actually enjoyed the psychedelic and the psycho of it. The only part that I wasn’t crazy about was the ambiguous ending. Other than that I enjoyed the lowbrow tacky wax museum tropes. They went all out and the effort shows. I can appreciate that.
The waxworks scenes were filmed in the real “Movieland Wax Museum and Palace of Living Art” in Buena Park, California.