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Poster for House of Wax
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Released
1953 · FILM

House of Wax

A meticulous sculptor strives to launch a prestigious wax museum of historic figures, but his ambitious partner pushes for lurid attractions that threaten his artistic vision.

“You've never been scared until you've been scared in 3-D.”

Directed by
Andre De Toth
Written by
Crane Wilbur, Charles Belden
Runtime
88 min
Horror
Streaming on
  • Paramount+

Synopsis

A sculptor establishes a wax museum to display lifelike figures of notable historical personalities, but soon faces conflict when his business partner insists on making the exhibits more sensational in an effort to boost revenue.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 19

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by Rudi FehrShot by Bert GlennonScored by David Buttolph

Box Office

1953 · Box office

💰 Box-office hit — grossed 24× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$23.8M

Budget$1.0M
Worldwide gross$23.8M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Das Kabinett des Professor Bondide
  • L'Homme au masque de cirefr
  • La maschera di cerait

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