As far as the typical stumble in plot, occasional flat acting (two things one accepts in Italian horror), a miscast lead actor, and a horrible, but mercifully brief, finale, the film is average, well paced, and thoroughly entertaining. It has modern touches in gore, CGI effects, and some titllation, while maintaining classic horror elements like looming shadows, mad doctor laboratories, and so on, making an intriguing mix of old and new.

The DVD looks quite good, a fine transfer with sharp image and great color hues (Stivaletti saturates colors very vividly throughout the film). The only extra is a short slide show of behind the scenes photos. Fans of Italian horror should be well entertained with this modestly priced disc. A C+. As far as this genre goes, you can certainly find better, but most of all, you can find a whole lot worse.


Far better than expected expoloitation trash   March 8, 2001
 3 out of 4 found this review helpful

This is pretty much a remake of "House of Wax" but updated with CGI effects and liberal doses of nudity and gore. Suprisingly well done, stylish, lowbrow, sleazy and lots of fun. It maintains an engrossingly weird and dream-like atmosphere--from the lovely opening shot of fireworks bursting over the Eiffel Tower to the bizarre Terminator-eque finale in, of course, a burning wax museum. Costumes, cinematography, art direction and music are first rate and some amusing plot twists occur (courtesy of Lucio Fulci and Dario Argento). Highly recommended to fans of Hammer films and European horror.

The DVD is non-anamorphic widescreen. Clean print. Nice, solid transfer. No extras aside from a small effects photo gallery but don't let that deter you.


Good fun   April 29, 2001
 3 out of 6 found this review helpful

If you are familiar with italian horror, you get exactly what you expect here. Adequate to terrible performances, atrocious dubbing, gaudy visuals at the expens of characters you actually care about and imaginatively staged murders. However, this film was better than i expected, since director Stivaletti is primarily a make-up man and tried his hand at directing here for the first time. The (I suspect limited) budget is used well with varied locales for the different scenes, nice art-direction and costumes and crisp camerawork. Pace is well maintained throughout the movie which distracts you from some of the less obvious plot-holes. The waxmaster himself does quite a good actingjob, not hamming it up. As for "the good guys", the leading lady is adequate but at bit dull. Our supposed "hero" is however damagingly miscast and comes over as a complete bore. As is usually the case with italian horror, the visuals are at the fore here with rich colours (which of course includes crimsonred blood), lovingly filmed and accompanied by a good and appropriately romantic score. The finale, as a few others have stated, is quite bad but fun in a way with some terminatoresque touches that are unexpected, to say the least. And the murders, surprisingly few, are competently put together with a sufficient amount of gore to satisfy fans. Overall, entertaining and good fun, if you dont expect "Citizen Cane".