FIGURES DE CIRE (1914)
aka The Man of the Wax Figures
Article 3162 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 2-9-2010
Posting Date: 4-11-2010
Directed by Maurice Tourneur
Cast unknown
Country: France
What it is: Early psychological horror

A man accepts a bet to spend the night alone in a wax museum. Can his nerves stand the strain?

My copy of this short silent movie has title cards in French, but the plot isn’t really that difficult to scope out; I was able to figure out the basic plot before I hunted up some plot descriptions, and they match. I won’t give away too much on this one because I honestly wasn’t sure which direction this was going to go, and I think the movie is best off that way. Let’s just say that it manages to work its way up to a nice shock ending. This movie was considered lost for many years, but was rediscovered in 2007, and the print shows quite a bit of damage at one point. Nevertheless, this is an effective and fun early horror movie.