Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933)

God, I love wax museum stories.

This isn't quite the first horror movie about a wax museum, as that plum goes to the 1924 German film Waxworks (or, to use the much more evocative German title, Das Wachsfigurekabinet), but it's a pretty close follow-up. It was filmed in two-strip technicolor, which gives it very weird, vivid colors, especially lots of pastels for a very, well, peculiar look.

As a movie it's actually pretty good, though not as atmospheric as I could've liked (which makes sense, as it's less of a horror movie and more of a mystery, hence the title). The actors mostly do good work, especially Lionel Atwill, but the standout bit is Glenda Farrell's spunky girl reporter protagonist, who gets most of the best lines and delivers them all in an incredibly rapid patois that is almost impossible to understand at times.

Though the movie may not be as heavy on the atmosphere as, say, the Universal monster movies of the same era, it has the incredible set design that I've come to associate with older horror films. The London Wax Museum at the beginning is amazing, both outside and in, and the workroom set at the end of the movie is equal parts Dr. Frankenstein's lab and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Beautiful.

Special mention should also go to the makeup design of the villain, which is remarkably iconic and deserves to rank alongside many of the Universal monsters as emblems of early horror cinema, at least if you want my take on it.