Hollywood’s obsession with remakes is nothing new. Long before André De Toth’s House of Wax (1953), the legendary Michael Curtiz —yes, the same man behind Casablanca— had already explored this story in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). De Toth took Curtiz’s film as a foundation but had to tone down the macabre and sexual elements of the original to comply with the strict Hays Code, which governed Hollywood from the 1930s through the late sixties. Decades later, the gruesome allure of the tale would be revived once again in House of Wax (2005), directed by Spanish filmmaker Jaume Collet-Serra and starring, among others, Paris Hilton, offering a bloodier and more commercial reinterpretation of the classic horror story.

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