THE WAX MASK

Late 19th century Rome, a certain Professor Boris runs a wax museum, inside which he displays his works: magnificent wax statues, so perfect in every detail that they seem really "alive". Meanwhile, in the capital, a mysterious killer reaps victims, whose bodies are no longer found. A journalist, helped by the young Sonia who works as a costume designer in the museum, manages to unmask the culprit and discover the secret of the ghostly doctor. The film that was supposed to mark the birth of the artistic collaboration between Dario Argento (as producer) and Lucio Fulci (as screenwriter and director) could not be so due to the premature death of the latter and ended up marking the directorial debut of the special effects magician Sergio Stivaletti. The story, inspired by the short story "A Night in the Wax Museum" by Gaston Leroux, had already been brought to the screen several times ("The Wax Mask" by Curtiz, 1933; "The Mill of the Stone Women" by Ferroni, 1960), so perhaps the film seems to lack a bit of originality, but the good special effects (cared for by the same new director Stivaletti) and an effective direction make it at least smooth and "watchable" until the end. The central figure of the film is that of the mad-doctor driven mad by his passion for science but also by the amour fou for Sonia, who reminds him of the loved woman and whom he himself killed. Classic elements of the gothic tradition, therefore, which however blend with others more modern and "shocking": the final monster with a look almost cyberpunk, the method of petrification of the bodies no longer entrusted to the classic, and little credible, pouring of wax over the cadavers but to the injection of a liquid into the victims still alive that throws them into a state of apparent death of non-life etc... An attempt to modernize the themes of "classic" horror that however only succeeds in part and that does not fully convince, especially in the final sequences of the film. As for the cast, the performance of the young Romina Mondello is really convincing, much less that of the protagonist, the veteran Robert Hossein. In short, a discreet and encouraging directorial debut for the great Sergio Stivaletti, his "M.D.C." represents one of the few attempts to produce and direct a horror film in Italy in recent years... and that is already something.