"Mystery of the Wax Museum" restoration

antoniod · Post by **antoniod** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 12:18 pm

I'm curious.I'd read in one of William K. Everson's books that "Mystery of the Wax Museum" was duplicated onto Eastman stock "as cheaply and with as little effort as possible". Was it any more complicated then that?.The 35mm showprint was better than the TV prints, though still washed out, with no flaming reds or bubbling greens.The VHS and DVD versions seemed to have restored more of the color.Was this the Eastman color negative juiced up electronically(VHS), then digitally(DVD)?.I've been told the DVD was taken from an original two-strip Technicolor print, but then why were there still these short bits of even more washed out and blue-er film preceding some reel changes?

Jack Theakston · Post by **Jack Theakston** » Wed Feb 16, 2011 12:30 pm

The problem is that someone has really messed around with the color on the DVD. It's absolutely not a reliable reproduction of what the film looked like.

There are a number of prints of the film in various archives, including a nitrate that was recently deposited at UCLA that was inspected by yours truly. There's a lot of detail on the original print that was plugged up in the '70s dupe, which wasn't all that bad, but rather soft (that may have be inherent on the original print).

sethb · Post by **sethb** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 8:21 am

It's interesting to hear that there are now a number of prints floating around. I recall reading in Ron Haver's book about the "Star is Born" restoration, that in the search for the missing Garland footage, one surviving print of "Wax Museum" was found (and it wasn't located in the studio vaults, as is sometimes the case).

I have the 2003 Warner Home Video DVD of "Wax Museum." While the color looked a bit odd compared to 3-strip Technicolor, I didn't think it was all that off. And the film itself seemed in pretty good shape, it didn't even look dupey to me. Maybe I'm just not that discerning!

But now that additional copies have apparently surfaced, perhaps a better or more accurate restoration can be done? SETH

Scoundrel · Post by **Scoundrel** » Thu Feb 17, 2011 9:36 am

WB released an excellent restoration of DOCTOR X from the UCLA Film and Television archives.
Why they chose to manipulate and botch THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM is beyond me.
The sound is also seriously compromised.

Thank goodness I still have a copy of the LD, but I don't see this one receiving any sort of restoration
on a par with GONE WITH THE WIND or THE WIZARD OF OZ anytime soon.

http://greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot. ... useum.html

WaverBoy · Post by **WaverBoy** » Sun Feb 20, 2011 1:43 pm

The color was messed with on DOCTOR X too, just not nearly as much. I too have still got my nice gatefold LD of those two. Hopefully someday they'll hit Blu-ray, restored but unmanipulated.

Post by **Christopher Jacobs** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 4:25 pm

The unnaturally blue DVD transfer of MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM can be largely corrected to its original look by playing with your TV's "tint" and "color" settings, shifting it more to the green and boosting the chroma slightly, but it shouldn't be necessary when the Laserdisc version looked the way it was supposed to. Depsite color anomalies, the DVD is substantially sharper than the Laserdisc for both WAX MUSEUM and DOCTOR X. I thought the DVD of DOCTOR X looked very close to the 35mm print I saw. Both these early Technicolor films are much grainier than black and white of the time, a grain that's even visible on DVD, so both would seem unlikely for re-scanning in HD for Blu-ray at this point (and might inspire uninformed technicians to do some disastrous digital grain reduction).

--Christopher Jacobs
http://hpr1.com/film
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs
http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs/Old ... BluRay.htm