House of Wax * * *

Given the all the worthless remakes lately, I had nothing but the lowest expectations for House of Wax. The fact that they hired publicity prostitute Paris Hilton almost convinced me to avoid it entirely. However, the lure of seeing her tortured and killed proved too strong an incentive. Something I'm sure the filmmakers were counting on. Luckily, the film has a lot more to offer than the mansion-trash princess being sliced & diced.

The 2005 version bears little resemblance to the original starring Vincent Price. It actually has a lot more in common with 1979's Tourist Trap, which featured a creepy Chuck Conners living in a town full of Mannequins. Both films involve a carload of kids breaking down and one by one meeting a horrible fate.

The only connection the remake has to the original is the killers’ love of dripping wax on people and then displaying them in his museum. Otherwise its teen-slasher plot structure 101 - isolate the victims and then knock them off one at a time. I won’t go into detail but I will say they did a nice job with the ending. All that wax, it must have been an incredible mess to clean up afterwards!

House of Wax is a return to good old-fashioned B-Movie Cheese. For most of us horror fans this is meat and potatoes, with a bloody scoop of Paris Hilton for dessert! Whats not to like...