Mystery of the Wax Museum / Doctor X
- This is a past program
The UCLA Film & Television Archive presents classic film and contemporary cinema in the Hammer's Billy Wilder Theater.
For this in-person screening, the Archive and the Hugh M. Hefner Classic American Film Program present two Los Angeles restoration premieres on 35mm.
Register at cinema.ucla.edu to attend this in-theater screening.
Mystery of the Wax Museum
This legendary horror classic was the last and best of Hollywood’s two-color Technicolor features. A fire destroys sculptor Ivan Igor’s (Lionel Atwill) London museum, with its dazzling array of historical wax figures. When Igor opens a new museum in New York City, people and corpses suddenly begin to disappear, and his daughter (Fay Wray) becomes ensnared in the mystery. Director Michael Curtiz’s innovative camera work is accentuated by Anton Grot’s ethereal production design and Ray Rennahan’s cinematography. (1933, dir. Michael Curtiz, 35mm print from the UCLA Film & Television Archive, technicolor, 77 min.)
Doctor X
One of the most gruesome of the early sound horror movies was also the first filmed entirely in two-color Technicolor. A series of brutal murders involving cannibalism occur under a full moon near Dr. Xavier’s (Lionel Atwill) laboratory, whose residents include his daughter (Fay Wray) and a quartet of weird scientists. Will reporter Lee Taylor (Lee Tracy) unmask the Moon Killer in time? Doctor X was scripted by Robert Tasker and Earl Baldwin, with exquisite production design by Anton Grot. (1932, dir. Michael Curtiz, 35mm print from the UCLA Film & Television Archive, technicolor, 76 min.)
Alan K. Rode, author of Michael Curtiz: A Life in Film, will be in person.