House of Wax
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This came out in 1953 (well before I was born), but I didn't see it until 2025. It's a remake of a 1933 film called "Mystery of the Wax Museum", which I haven't seen. It was filmed in 3D, but I only saw it in 2D. However, there are some points in the film that you can definitely tell were meant to be seen in 3D. But I was fine without that experience. I do think the movie barely qualifies as horror, by modern standards, but it was okay.

Set in the early 1900s, we meet a was sculptor named Professor Henry Jarrod (Vincent Price), who is passionate about his work. One night, his business partner, Matthew Burke, burns down Jarrod's museum to collect insurance money. The two of them get in a fight as Jarrod tries to stop him from destroying the sculptures that mean so much to him. Jarrod loses, and is apparently killed in the fire.

Then one night, Burke is killed by a disfigured man (whose face I would say sort of resembles melted wax, ironically), and it is staged to appear to be a suicide. Shortly after that, the disfigured man kills Jarrod's fiancée, Cathy Gray (Carolyn Jones, who I didn't recognize even though I knew she was in the movie and was actively trying to recognize her). Cathy's roommate, Sue Allen, discovers the dead body, while the killer is still in the room. She escapes through a window, and he chases her. But she manages to elude him, running to the home of her friend Scott Andrews.

Later, a potential investor in Jarrod's museum, Sidney Wallace, is invited by Jarrod to his new establishment. He's surprised to learn that Jarrod survived the fire, but he's now essentially bound to a wheelchair, and can no longer sculpt because his hands were hurt in the fire. It's probably also surprising to viewers that his face looks just as it always did, which presumably means he can't be the killer. Jarrod has a couple of pupils now, who do the sculpting under his direction. They include a deaf-mute named Igor, and another man named Leon Averill. Anyway, Wallace invests in Jarrod's new House of Wax, which includes the types of wax figures he'd made in the past, as well as a chamber of horrors, which seems odd, because he had previously refused to make such an attraction, when Burke suggested it before starting the fire. That part of the exhibit includes figures of various people who had been killed throughout history, as well as more recent victims such as Burke. There's also a figure of Joan of Arc, which resembles Cathy Gray, which Sue becomes obsessed with after visiting the museum with Scott. Despite her unease over the resemblance, she agrees to model for Jarrod for his a figure of Marie Antoinette that he wants to make. Meanwhile, Scott, who is also a sculptor, begins working with Jarrod.

Sue eventually goes to the police over her suspicions about the Joan of Arc figure. And um, one night she's supposed to meet Scott at the museum when he finishes work for the day, but Jarrod sends him away on an errand. When Sue shows up, she eventually gets tired of waiting for him, and enters the museum... And that's as far as I want to go in my description of the plot. Suffice to say, horror ensues.

Well... I really think it was more of a thriller than actual horror, but I'm putting my review under "classic horror", anyway. It does have a rather horrifying premise, though, and some plot points that cause some serious tension. And I guess I'm glad I watched the movie, even if I only kind of liked it. I suspect I would have liked it more if I'd been around to watch it when it first came out. But I've been spoiled by modern horror movies, and even modern thrillers. This movie feels sort of quaint, by comparison. Which isn't a bad thing, it just doesn't evoke quite as much dread as it could. Oh, and I meant to say I found it interesting, perhaps a bit amusing, that Cathy had a higher-pitched, more childish voice when talking to Burke than she did when talking to Sue.