See Paris Cry.
After kicking off 2023 with a re-do of one of our earliest episodes (The Perfection), we moved on to Todd Haynes’ AIDS allegory Safe before tackling Guillermo del Toro’s Gothic romance Crimson Peak. Now, we’re venturing back into the world of Dark Castle Entertainment with a fun discussion of Jaume Collet-Serra‘s 2005 remake House of Wax.
In the film, a gang of college friends, including Wade (Jared Padalecki), his girlfriend Carly (Elisha Cuthbert) and her twin brother Nick (Chad Michael Murray), are en route to a school football game when their car mysteriously loses its fan belt. They are forced to seek help in the nearby town of Ambrose, which boasts a literal house of wax. Once inside the spooky and seemingly abandoned building, they find the works on display are not quite what they seem, and the friends soon discover that they are being hunted by the insane twin brothers (Brian Van Holt) who run the museum.
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Episode 214: House of Wax (2005)
We are not here to see Paris die but we are here to discuss Jaume Collet-Serra’s mean and stylish 2005 remake House of Wax (and yes, we know it has more in common with Tourist Trap)! Wanna see what happens when a really dumb slasher script gets a $40 million budget thrown at it? This is it!
Join us as we discuss the film’s controversial “See Paris Die!” marketing campaign (and the emotional toll it may have taken on Paris Hilton) that preceded the film’s release before going all in on this 2005 time capsule that fell in that awkward period for horror between post-Scream slashers and torture porn.
Plus: twincest, Penny Can, sexy super glue blowing, a fiery finale and an unexpected(?) queer reading of Chad Michael Murray’s Nick.
Oh, and here’s the link to the 5-part documentary series Movie Life: House of Wax that aired on MTV the month before the film was released. It’s…something.
Cross out House of Wax!
Coming up on Wednesday: Long live the new flesh because we’re heading back to Cronenberg Land to discuss 1983 nightmare Videodrome.
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for more than 222 hours of additional content! We’re wrapping up the year with episodes on Netflix’s Edgar Allan Poe-focused murder mystery The Pale Blue Eye, Shudder’s anthology sequel Scare Package II: Rad Chad’s Revenge, the creepy found footage film Skinamarink, Blumhouse’s killer robot movie M3GAN, and an audio commentary on Cloverfield, just in time for its 15th anniversary!