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House of Wax | 2005 | R | - 5.9.5
A group of people on their way to a football game are stranded near a small town whose claim to fame is a wax museum. When one couple ventures off to find replacement parts for their car, they quickly discover that the town is filled with the wax-coated corpses of previous visitors. With Elisha Cuthbert, Chad Michael Murray, Paris Hilton, Jared Padalecki and Jon Abrahams. Directed by Jaume Collet-Sera. [1:26]
SEX/NUDITY 5 - A man and a woman lie in a tent kissing, and she gets up and does a striptease for him: we see her in bra and panties (part of her butt cheeks are exposed) and the man (he's bare-chested) motions for her to join him, and they kiss.
► A car with four people pulls up next to a car with a man and a woman and we see the woman's head bobbing up and down near the man's lap; the four in the other car assume that she is performing oral sex on him, but she says that she dropped her phone on the floor.
► A person sculpts a female wax figure and we see breasts and nipples taking form. A woman changes her shirt (we see her bare back and bra strap) and a man looks on with interest. A woman wears a low-cut top and shorts that reveal cleavage and bare thighs. A woman wears a low-cut top that reveals cleavage through much of the movie and a bra and panties with a short robe through the rest. A man comes out of a tent wearing his underwear (boxers).
► After gluing a woman's lips together a man comes close to her as if he will kiss her but does not. A man and a woman kiss in several other scenes.
VIOLENCE/GORE 9 - While snooping through a house, the power goes out, and a man is locked in a room; a man comes out of a hatch in the floor of the room and with scissors cuts the man's Achilles tendon (we see blood gush and the man falls to the floor), and the man with the scissors then cuts the man on his shoulder and arm.
► A man comes from behind another man who is startled, and then pushed down a flight of stairs (we see the man on the floor with a bloody face); the man tries to get away, the other man stands over him with two knives and thrusts them down and cuts off his head. We see the man's head, with his eyes still blinking and blood around the neck wound, roll away from the knives as the man drags the rest of the body down a hallway.
► A man chases a woman into an old factory, she hides, then walks along a grate, and he pokes a knife through the holes slashing her foot (we see blood) and nearly stabbing her in the chest and face when she falls, but she gets away and hides in a car; the man climbs in the car, she hits him with a metal pole, gets out of the car and hides again, but when she peers up over a car she is struck through the forehead with a metal pole (we see her with the pole through her head and blood all around the wound, and the man pulls the pole out of her head and we see more blood and hear squishing).
► A woman sleeping in a tent hears a noise, she turns on a light and sees a strange man over her, she screams, runs, falls on the ground next to a man with a knife in his throat (the man is twitching and gurgling with a lot of blood on the wound), and she gets up and continues running.
► A woman sticks her finger up through a grate in a street, a man on the street sees her finger and cuts part of it off with wire cutters; blood gushes from the wound, and we see the stump and the severed bit of finger on the street.
► A man and a woman fight with another man, the woman hits him with a baseball bat, he falls to the floor, he gets up, punches the woman in the face, and holds the man up by the throat; the man being held grabs a piece of arrow that is lodged in the other man's shoulder and pulls on it causing him to let go. He then stabs the man in the leg, the woman hits him with the bat and then pounds him repeatedly in the face (we see his bloody, disfigured face).
► A man and a woman walk through a dark basement, they find a room where wax figures are made, they see a man clamped into a metal framework, but when the man tries to free him his head falls off.
► Two men fight, one peels a mask off the face of the other (we see badly disfigured features), and a woman stabs one of the men who falls back through a melting floor and crashes onto another body several floors below.
► A woman pulls on her glued lips to separate them (we see the flesh pulling and we see them bleed). A man pulls an arrow out of his arm (he screams) and blood pours from the wound; he tries to pull another one out of his chest and he vomits from the pain. A man walks through a wax museum, and sees a friend, walks toward him, touches his face, and the outside layer of his cheek peels off to reveal blood and tissue beneath wax, and we see his eyes darting back and forth and hear him moan.
► A man is clamped into a metal framework with rods pointing to his eyes and screws pressing against his forehead; hot wax is pumped through a mechanism and sprays on the man (the man is nude although nothing is clearly visible other than his bare chest, shoulders, abdomen and thighs).
► A man is dragged down a darkened hallway by his foot (the other leg is bent back unnaturally), the man is placed on a table and another man cuts his clothes off; we see the man's wounds and the other man begins to stitch them up (the man moans and whimpers), then he gives the man an injection, pours hot wax on his face, puts a cloth over the wax, and then pulls hard removing his facial hair (eyebrows, beard, mustache).
► A man grabs a woman, she gets away and runs, he chases her, tackles her, she screams for help, he pushes his arm against her throat, carries her, straps her into a chair and super-glues her lips together.
► A man shoots a shot gun at a man and a woman, they hide in a movie theater, the man shoots at the woman, she ducks and the bullets tear the face off a wax figure; the man is shot in the arm with an arrow, then he is shot in the chest (he falls to the floor and we see blood on his wounds).
► A house made out of wax is set on fire and begins to melt with three people inside; the floors melt out from under them, the walls melt away and it all sloshes into a puddle of burning paraffin. A woman is frightened when she discovers a room full of wax figures: she leans on the arm of one and it breaks off (we see blood, bone and matter when the arm comes off).
► A man tries to stab another man who punches him, and he gets away and locks himself in a gas station. A woman hides in a man's truck, he breaks the window and tries to grab her, she struggles to get free, and starts the truck and speeds away with the man dangling from the window; she slams on the brakes, he is thrown, and she runs.
► We see a woman's bloody hand (where a finger had been cut off) and her bloody lips (where she pulled them apart after they were glued together) in several scenes. We see two dead bodies with bloody wounds in the back of a truck. We see photos of conjoined twins who are attached at the head (one's face is attached to the back of the head of the other); one has deformed features after they are separated. A man pulls up near a pit of animal carcasses, he throws another deer into the pit, and he walks through the pit (we hear squishing and see slime sticking to his boots).
► A woman walks through woods following a bad smell, she slips down a hill and falls head first into a pit where many dead deer are collected (we see bloody carcasses and dismembered bits, and we see what looks like a human hand with maggots wriggling around but it turns out to be a mannequin hand); she struggles to get out and is eventually pulled out by a man.
► A boy being carried by his father, kicks and growls as he is placed in a high chair, then strapped in at the ankles and wrists, tape is placed over the straps, the boy scratches his mother's hand and she slaps him hard across the face.
► A man and a woman fight with a man who has knives and is trying to slash them; they shove him away, they dump flaming wax, he runs through the flames, and the man and woman run.
► A woman screams when she sees something moving outside a window and a man goes to investigate. People sleeping in tents hear footsteps outside, one woman walks through the camp to see what was making the noise (it seems as though someone is watching her) and is startled by a man who's come to find her.
► A man pulls a knife out of his belt and slams it into the dashboard of his truck. A large truck pulls up near a campsite and shines its headlights on the people sitting around a campfire, and one of the people throws a bottle breaking one of the headlights. A man breaks a store window with a stone and then steals a crossbow. We hear that a man stole a car and was arrested for the crime.
► A man reaches to pet a dog that he thinks is made of wax, the dog barks and lunges toward the man, who falls back onto the floor. A woman finds a wax figure with a badly malformed face, and she screams and runs. A man repairs a damaged wax face with a heated spoon (it sizzles). We see a woman pouring melted wax into a mask shaped like a human face.
► We hear that a woman had a cyst in her brain that made her insane and her husband committed suicide. We see people gathered and mourning at a funeral. We see many body bags being loaded into ambulances.
► A spilled jar of food is covered with wriggling maggots. A man finds jars that contain what looks like animal embryos, medical equipment and tools. Two men urinate outside (we hear a trickle). A woman goes to the bathroom in the woods: we see her squatting and then she stands up pulling up her pants (nothing is visible). A man picks his nose and has very discolored teeth. After setting up a campsite several people notice an offensive odor coming from the woods near the site.
LANGUAGE 5 - 8 F-words, 1 obscene hand gesture, 8 scatological terms, 7 anatomical terms, 20 mild obscenities, 2 derogatory terms for homosexuals, name-calling (freak, stupid), 3 religious profanities, 8 religious exclamations.
SUBSTANCE USE - A man drinks beer in several scenes, a man drinks a beer and smokes a cigarette, and a woman and a man smoke cigarettes.
DISCUSSION TOPICS - Siblings, conjoined twins, serial murder, wax museums, death of parents, orphaned children, foster families, unplanned pregnancy, long distance relationships.
MESSAGE - Don't go into the wax museum.
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CAVEATS
Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.
We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.
Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.
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The Union - 3.5.5
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