A vital lesson to be learned from horror movies is to stay the hell away from people who work in certain professions. Biogeneticists, morgue attendants, night watchmen, camp counselors, and wax museum proprietors are people whose dire karma draws death and dismemberment like cheap motels draw unsightly stains. Nightmare in Wax, starring Cameron Mitchell in a sustainable performance that depletes few acting resources, is a 1969 testament to the dangers of socializing with persons who fall into that last category.
The Nightmare Begins
Movie producer Max Black hosts a swinging party at his house. Black, who could pass as Truman Capote’s taller brother, announces the engagement of Tony Deen and Marie Morgan to the partygoers. The pair are the stars of his next low-budget fiasco.
Later that night, Deen is about to step into a lift when deranged wax museum proprietor Vincent Renard knocks him out with a tranquilizer injection. Renard is a man of singular appearance. He sports an eye patch, wears a Dr. Robert Schuller knock-off robe, and bears a burn scar on his face that looks like mauve cake icing.
Three months after Deen goes missing, Renard woos a lovely female head poking through a table top in his waxworks studio. Two cops, Carver and Haskell, pay him a visit. They ask him if he knows anything about Deen’s disappearance. He says he doesn’t, then shows them Deen’s supposedly wax head, also poking through a table top.
Renard flashbacks to happier, pre-scar days, when he ran the make-up department at Black’s movie studio. He and Marie were an item back then. Furious with how Black has been ogling her, he urges her to quit working for the old lech.
That night, at Black’s house, Marie gives Black her notice. “Nobody does this to Max Black!” he roars. Renard, looking on, guffaws at Black’s melodramatics.As Renard lights a cigarette, Black throws a glass of wine in his face, which bursts into flames. But these aren’t just any flames. These are magic flames suspended in the air, several feet from his face. He stumbles screaming into Black’s swimming pool to douse the lousy special effect.
Haskell and Carver speak with Marie. She casts her mind back to the time she visited Renard in hospital. Head wrapped in bandages, he’s sculpting a monstrous clay head. He tells her to take a hike. After his order is denied, he rips off the bandages and forces her to gaze upon his vacant eye socket. “Look at it!” he snarls. “Look at it! I want you to look at it!” She flees the room in horror. A victim of Renard’s rage, the clay head soon lies smashed beyond all recognition on the floor. He clutches it to his bosom and sobs. Sure, it was a monstrous head, but it was his monstrous head.
Back in present day–when present day was 1969–Marie phones Renard and invites him over to her place. He gladly accepts the invitation. Stirred by Renard mentioning his fiancée’s name, Dean says “Hello, Marie” over and over again until Renard ends the mindless mantra with a tranquilizer injection.
Renard bumps into Black at Marie’s place. Their chance meeting is surprisingly amicable seeing how Black scarred him for life. Marie asks Renard to give her what she thinks is Deen’s wax figure but is actually Deen himself. He agrees. But first she must pose for a wax figure he wants to make of her.
Dressed in a Keystone Cop uniform, Nick, the wax museum’s inebriated caretaker, notices that the wax figure of a young woman is blinking. He reports this to Renard, who persuades him that it was just a figment of his alcohol-impaired imagination.
Renard gives the woman a stern talking to. She’s not to blink, squirm, or flinch without his express permission. Just to be on the safe side, he tranquilizes her.
Kicking back at his favorite discotheque, Renard is joined by Theresa, a dishy go-go dancer with an IQ of minus twelve. It was her wax head he was chatting up earlier. She’s eager for him to complete the figure.
Black sends Alfred Herman, the director of his next movie, to the waxworks on a location-scouting mission. Herman recognizes the formerly blinking young woman, who acted in a vampire flick he directed. “She’s so lifelike,” he remarks. “Hard to believe she’s gone.”
“Maybe she isn’t,” Renard says. “Maybe she’s been hypnotized–by a maniac.” He points out that by using a certain combination of drugs it’s possible to put people to sleep and then wake them centuries later.
Theresa lures Black to the museum on the pretext that Renard is going to unveil her wax likeness there. He collapses after drinking spiked champagne. Renard gloats that the old lech is about to become one of the museum’s main exhibits.
A witness now to Renard’s criminal activity, Theresa asks him what he intends to do with her. “Kill you,” he calmly replies. Screaming hysterically, she makes a run for it. He chases her around the museum, then kisses her passionately before shoving a knife in her gut.
Renard spots Haskell and Carver parked outside the museum. He speeds off in Black’s car, with Theresa’s corpse in the front seat. The two cops pursue him. As Black’s car swerves along the darkened city streets, Renard kisses Theresa and professes his undying love for her. He then abandons her so he can give the cops the slip on foot.
The following morning, a newspaper headline reads MAX BLACK MURDERS SHOWGIRL, even though the cops have yet to charge or question him.
Marie arrives at the museum. She’s come to view Deen’s “wax doppelganger.”
Meanwhile, Haskell sneaks inside the building and slips past Nick, who’s too unnerved by a gaggle of twitching wax figures to notice him. Time to bring Renard to justice!
Assisted by Deen, Renard prepares to make exhibits out of Marie and Black. He commands some wax figures to lend him added support.
Haskell makes his move but is quickly overpowered by Renard’s mesmerized helpers. Incidentally, what happened to Carver?
Death looms for Black. He’s about to be lowered into a vat of molten wax, but rather than beg for mercy he cackles like a loon. Infuriated by Black’s levity, Renard lunges at him but misses and plunges into the bubbling liquid.
Renard wakes from a nightmare. Distraught over the shocking events he dreamed, events that seemed so frighteningly real, he relives a few of the movie’s numerous highlights.