Later in her career she became a celebrity contestant on game shows and then did public relations for CBS. She was also an activist, campaigning against capital punishment in the late 1950s and funding preschool programs in the Watts area after the 1965 riots.
PHYLLIS KIRK HOUSE OF WAX TV
Kirk's other TV credits include appearances on "Your Show of Shows," "The Loretta Young Show," "The Red Buttons Shows," "Studio One," "Robert Montgomery Presents," "The Twilight Zone" and "The F.B.I." She and Peter Lawford played the sleuthing couple Nick and Nora Charles based on characters by Dashiell Hammett and made popular by William Powell and Myrna Loy for film. Kirk also made a mark on the small screen with an Emmy-nominated performance in "The Thin Man" series. In light of the recent release to 3D Blu-Ray of contemporary classics Creature from the Black Lagoon and Dial M for Murder, here's hoping this stately chiller gets a similar treatment sometime soon.Her other film credits include "River Beat," "Johnny Concho," "Back From Eternity" and "The Sad Sack." House of Wax is a fun, old-fashioned horror story told with a certain flair and skill. Still, we fans of fantastic cinema are used to overlooking these sorts of plot inconsistencies, and in the end they didn't really bother me much. We can assume that the new, older gentleman friend she goes to meet is indeed Jarrod, though this is only hinted at and not spelled out in any way, nor his reason for wishing her dead given its proper due. Jarrod's murder of Sally also seems to lack proper motivation. Perhaps I've been spoiled by the elaborate deaths featured in the Phibes films and Theater of Blood, but I can't help feeling that Jarrod's lack of panache in taking out his victims robs House of Wax of a good deal of potential power.Īnd while it's a nice visual conceit, the idea of the disfigured Jarrod being able to maintain his smooth public facade under a wax mask of his original, aristocratic face is pretty ludicrous. I expected at least a bit of delicious, Grand Guignol-style mayhem as Price goes on his revenge spree, but he merely garrotes his enemy in seconds, without even a single moment of threatening conversation or time taken to revel in Burke's comeuppance.
I suppose my main problem is the almost casual, throwaway dispatch of the villainous Burke.
PHYLLIS KIRK HOUSE OF WAX MOVIE
The movie basically belongs to Price and he carries it through to its moderately suspenseful climax, but the story overall seems too simple and rather truncated, like certain important story beats were left out.
Unfortunately for Sue, Jarrod sets his sights on turning her into his newest wax masterpiece, Marie Antoinette. Only sensitive Sue, gazing upon a figure of Joan of Arc which bears a striking resemblance to her dead friend Sally, suspects the truth - that Jarrod is using actual corpses to imbue his new wax figures with their uncanny life.
PHYLLIS KIRK HOUSE OF WAX SERIES
His badly burned hands no longer capable of doing fine sculpting work, Jarrod is assisted by mute, hulking henchman Igor (Charles Bronson, in unconvincing pancake make-up) and an alcoholic ex-con in creating new figures for a series of tableau reenacting famous crimes and scenes of torture and death, which make the new House of Wax a notorious and immediate success. With the financial backing of kindly art critic Sidney Wallace (Paul Cavanaugh), a seemingly normal - if wheelchair-bound - Jarrod opens a new, grislier and sensationalistic gallery. Sally's friend, down-on-her-luck Sue Allen (Phyllis Kirk), comes upon Sally's dead body just in time to witness Jarrod's monstrous appearance, and is pursued by him through the fog-lined New York streets, until she reaches the safety of the family home of her beau, young sculptor Scott Andrews (Paul Picerni). Next, he targets Burke's mistress, social climber Sally Gray (Carolyn Jones).
The murderous Burke has little time to enjoy his spoils, as Jarrod, clad in black cloak and slouch hat, sneaks into his office, strangles him, and arranges his body to drop down the elevator shaft in a semblance of suicide.
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