The 2005 remake of House Of Wax featured some gruesome deaths, but by far the worst fate was reserved for Jared Padalecki’s character. The 2000s saw studios digging into their vaults to remake any horror film with a familiar title, including The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Omen, The Hitcher and many more. While some of these films weren’t half bad, they typically couldn’t hold a candle to the originals, whilst others – like 2005’s The Fog – were actively awful.

This horror remake trend seemed to have more or less died with 2010’s A Nightmare On Elm Street, which is commonly considered one of the worst. While not exactly an undiscovered gem, one guilty please from this era was House Of Wax. The first version of this story went back to 1933 thriller Mystery Of The Wax Museum, which was based on the short story “The Wax Works” by Charles S. Belden. It was remade with 1953’s House Of Wax, a 3D horror film starring Vincent Price and Charles Bronson.

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The 2005 House Of Wax came from Dark Castle Entertainment, a production label featuring producer Joel Silver and director Robert Zemeckis. Dark Castle was behind other high-profile remakes like 1999’s House On Haunted Hill and Thirteen Ghosts. House Of Wax has the most stock of horror movie set-ups, where a group of attractive 20-somethings – including brother and sister duo Chad Michael Murray and Elisha Cuthbert – breaking down in the middle of nowhere. They wander into a ghost town filled with eeriely lifelike wax figures and come to realize they’re being stalked by a deranged killer with an unusual hobby.

House Of Wax also featured a supporting role for Paris Hilton, and the film was partly sold on the premise of “See Paris Die!” Hilton’s character suffers a gory fate when a pipe is lodged in her skull, but the one death anyone who saw House Of Wax remembers is that of Wade, played by Supernatural’s Jared Padelecki. Wade is the boyfriend of Cuthbert’s Carly and wanders off on his own in the ghost town, only to get attacked by the killer Vincent – a nod to Vincent Price. Vincent sneaks up on Wade, severing his Achilles tendon before knocking him out.

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Vincent then drags Wade to his wax museum, where he paralyzes him with an injection. Wade is still conscious and aware as Vincent cuts off his clothes, waxes all the hair off his body and sews up his wounds. Wade is then placed in a chair and – while still conscious – is covered head to toe in scalding wax. House Of Wax later catches up with Wade on display in the museum, where his friend Dalton realizes the figure is Wade – who is still conscious but unable to move or speak. Dalton touches Wade’s face, which partially peels off before Vincent arrives and slashes at Dalton, who dodges while the slash hacks off part of Wade’s face.

Wade’s fate beyond this isn’t really addressed, but with the House Of Wax finale featuring the titular location burning down, his death is certain. The trauma of the stab wound probably killed him before this, but it’s a specularly bleak fate for a character who did little to deserve it.

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Padraig Cotter
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It’s pronounced Paw-rick, not Pad-raig. Now that’s out of the way, a brief introduction. Padraig has been writing about film online since 2012, when a friend asked if he’d like to contribute the occasional review or feature to their site.

A part-time hobby soon blossomed into a career when he discovered he really loved writing about movies, TV and video games – he even (arguably) had a little bit of talent for it. He has written words for Den of Geek, Collider, The Irish Times and Screen Rant over the years, and can discuss anything from the MCU – where Hawkeye is clearly the best character – to the most obscure cult b-movie gem, and his hot takes often require heat resistant gloves to handle.

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He’s super modern too, so his favorite movies include Jaws, Die Hard, The Thing, Ghostbusters and Batman. He can be found as i_Padds on Twitter making bad puns.

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