House of Wax Reboot Writers Look Back at the Film’s Legacy 15 Years Later

The horror genre has a history of repeating itself, as filmmakers will often look to timeless tales of terror to inspire new takes on those concepts, sometimes completely reviving interest in the source material. In some instances, most famously with John Carpenter’s The Thing or David Cronenberg’s The Fly, remakes can sometimes overpower the accomplishments of the original to become the defining vision of the story. Back in the early 2000s, films like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Dawn of the Dead, Carrie, The Ring, and The Grudge landed in theaters, igniting a surge of remakes that would largely define the world of mainstream horror for that decade.

One of these remakes that was largely ignored at the time of its release is House of Wax in 2005, directed by Jaume Collet-Saura and written by Chad and Carey W. Hayes. The film failed to make a major box office impact at the time, likely due to the saturation of horror remakes landing in theaters (a remake of The Amityville Horror hit theaters just weeks earlier), its gruesome R-rating, its deviation from the source material, and the backlash to star Paris Hilton, who was entirely dominating the pop culture cycle.

Despite its initial disappointments, the film has been gaining a cult following over the years, as horror audiences appreciated the ambitious endeavor full of intense effects and clever circumventions of expectations. ComicBook.com recently caught up with the film’s writers to reflect on their approach to the project, initial disappointments, and the growing appreciation of the under-seen gem.

Header photo courtesy of Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images/Warner Bros.

Happy Tourist Trap Accident

ComicBook.com: While fans might have initially been disappointed that your film wasn’t entirely a recreation of the original Vincent Price movie, fans have embraced it for serving more as a remake of 1979’s Tourist Trap. Was that something intentional when you were developing it?

Chad Hayes: To be honest, I think it’s a very happy accident. But the reason we decided not to go the Vincent Price route is, when we went in and we met with Joel Silver, who obviously is the producer, and Susan Downey, they were saying, “Hey, we own the title House of Wax. Does it mean anything to you?” And Carey and I had never, ever done any sort of genre film before. And we love the idea of creating a scary movie, but they had been looking and interviewing writers for two years. And so we just consciously made the effort to not see the original movie, because we felt like maybe part of the reason they hadn’t bought any of them already was because perhaps everyone had been trying to do the same kind of thing. So that was one of our reasons.

And the second reason was, and you’ll understand this, the opening of the film, with that roadkill pit and all that, actually happened to my brother and I on a road trip. That whole opening act of the movie, with the dude pulling up in the truck, keeping his headlights on, everyone getting out of their sleeping bags asking, “Who are you? What do you want?” and then backing down the road. That really happened to us.

When we pitched it out to Joel and Susan, they’re like, “Oh, that’s such an opening for a movie.” And Carey and I just stuck to those guns. I love this idea that the fan base has come up with the Tourist Trap aspect of it. I love that.

Carey W. Hayes: We just really wanted to be different and also just incorporate more of a youth-type vibe into the movie, and create the conflict … it’s like even when you have conflict amongst yourselves, you’ve got to stick together and go against your common enemy. But at the core of that, it’s really the relationship between the brother and the sister, family sticking together in all that peril. But it was such a fun type of thing.

I think, personally, that it wasn’t the big box office smash is Paris Hilton got to do her first movie, but most of her fans were under R-rated age at that time. So you didn’t get a big, huge fan base. And also, her fan base isn’t big, huge horror fans.

Chad: There has become a really interesting awareness of House of Wax. It continues to do incredibly well on pay-per-view, or when people want to download it and stuff like that. And I think it’s one of those just fun movies. When we set out to write these things, we try to write them as a roller coaster ride, so you know when you go to the theater, you’re going to get scared. You don’t know when. It’s like you strap in your seat of the roller coaster, and tick, tick, tick, tick, you’re going up to that first big turn or that big drop. And you try to do that in those kinds of films, and it just makes it really fun. Well, I mean, I should really ask you. You obviously like it. And so, you enjoyed it. Did you feel like that kind of analogy works for you when you go watch those kinds of films?

Abandoned Opening Scene

Well part of what makes the movie so interesting, for me, is just how relentless the more gruesome sequences are, so that roller coaster analogy does ring true in the ups and downs of tension. I worked at a movie theater when it came out and I would note the times of the violent scenes so I could go into the theater to see audience reactions.

Chad: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s so awesome.

And once the movie came out on DVD, any horror friend who was at my house, I’d show them the deleted opening scene, which is one of the most gnarly kills in the movie, featuring a woman being thrown through a windshield. Were there many other scenes or sequences that were cut out of the film?

Chad: I’m trying to remember back now on why it was deleted. I guess Jaume may have made that decision. I can’t quite remember.

Carey: Refresh my memory. Didn’t we slam her, at one point, or go by a faded “Trudy’s House of Wax” sign? Wasn’t that the billboard or something on the road there that the car that was part of the setup there?

It was basically a desolate road, a woman waiting for a tow truck, and when it shows up, it’s the tow truck that terrorizes the group through the rest of the movie. I’m guessing that this established the tow truck as a character so that the audience is scared when it shows up later, but that one camping scene where we see it sort of establishes that immediately, so it could have felt redundant?

Chad: That’s exactly what it was. It felt like a double opening, I believe.

Carey: You’re totally refreshing my memory now. Because we asked the same thing, and it was going from the opening with the high chairs, not starting so gnarly, letting it build on its own, where it’s more focused on our group. And that would be more of the backstory.

Chad: I don’t know if you know this bit of trivia too, it’s kind of interesting. When filming the finale of House of Wax, the entire soundstage actually burnt to the ground down in Australia. And we were filming it down in Brisbane at the studios there. And to get that cast, that were all on television shows, back to Australia to wrap up the movie, it took like nine months to get everyone back together.

Carey: It took so long. Well, they had to rebuild the soundstage.

Chad: Rebuild the soundstage, rebuild the set, redo all that. And the producer, Susan, actually has in her office a piece of camera equipment that is all melted, and it’s encased glass. It’s just sort of a reminder of it. Carey and I, we’re not credited, but we worked on that movie San Andreas, the Dwayne Johnson movie, for a couple of years and actually went down to Australia when they were filming it. And, everyone’s like, “Oh my God, are the Hayes Brothers going to curse us again? Are we going to have something burn down when we’re here?”

Carey: Yeah. Who was that? The president of Village Roadshow was there. He said to us, he goes, “Do you guys realize where you’re standing?” And we’re like, “In a really big soundstage.” And he goes, “No, this is the one that burned down.” We go, “Oh, my God.” It was kind of surreal, but it was fun to play with.

Roller Coaster Ride

Back to the roller coaster ride concept, other horror films at the time might have had two or three particularly gory scenes that the audience knows are coming, but you had fingertips being snipped with scissors and Achilles tendons being cut and lips being superglued shut, it’s this constant barrage of survivable yet grisly scenes. When you write that in a script, you might not know how things will look in the movie, so is there a particular scene that you were most delighted to see brought to life?

Chad: Oh, you just hit all the notes. Carey and I, we love to write when people feel most vulnerable, when you can’t scream for help, when you got to put your hand into a dark spot, and you don’t know what’s on the other side, and all that kind of stuff. But I thought the way Paris died was jarring and unexpected. That was shot really well.

And it was amazing because at the premiere, when we were all there, right when Paris died, someone screamed out in the audience, “That’s so hot.” She used to always say that. And the whole audience completely erupted into massive laughter.

Carey: I think that the opening was probably one of the biggest deleted scenes, but you know, as far as other deleted stuff, I don’t remember. I mean, because Jaume was right, because you’re building toward a climax. Hostel was brutal from beginning to end. And for us, it’s always like picking up the pace, and things get worse and worse and worse as you move through it. But one of my favorites was Jared Padalecki getting waxed and watching that happen, and actually seeing the contraption and how it worked. And then the crazy reveal on the piano, when he’s sitting there and half his face falls off is pretty, pretty nuts. But I think it’s like, what we would do with what we’re most afraid of. Who got the Achilles clipped?

It was Jared.

Chad: Yeah. When he’s trying to crawl out of that window.

Carey: We were afraid that they were going to drop that because that was really gnarly. And the finger snip was pretty gnarly too.

Chad: It’s a big difference, and we kind of take it as a compliment in an interesting way, because Carey and I, we didn’t set out to write a really gory movie. We don’t really have interest in doing super-gore, “gore porn” as they kind of call it. And it’s interesting because, even thinking of our first Conjuring movie, which was amazingly interesting because there’s no blood, there’s none of that gory stuff, none of that really happens. And it still got an R-rating, which just blew the studio away.

The studio said, “And there’s nothing you can do.” Because normally you would go back and edit stuff out that would bring you down to a 17, which is what you want. It’s a bigger movie audience. And they said, “There’s nothing you can do. Every little thing in here is a utterly terrifying.” And we went, “Oh, great. Okay. Well, we’ll take that one.” So I’m really spinning my head because pretty much Jaume shot, other than that opening, Carey’s right, pretty much shot exactly what we wrote. 

Carey: The script did not go through a lot of changes during production at all. And it’s kind of like, you get to that point, but sometimes, I think in the aftermath, what you brought up, is we go, “Oh, we got a really good opening, but does it step on the high chair scene? Is the transition too harsh to go from one to the other? Do you want more of a slow bleed?” So there’s a lot of things you discover in the shooting process that work and don’t work. But at the same time, it’s like, “Oh, that didn’t make it in that movie. We’ll save it for another.” You know? Try it someplace else.

“See Paris Die”

We brought up that Paris Hilton was in this movie and there was a promotional campaign of “See Paris Die.” Before the movie was even out, before you knew anything about her role, people knew if they went to see the movie, they would see her character killed. When she was brought into the project, did the script change at all for her character?

Chad: No, it didn’t. We wrote the character, and then it was Joel Silver’s idea to cast her. They went right to her and offered her the role. He thought she’d be great in it. I think the role is Paige, her name’s Paige.

Carey: I think the whole “See Paris Die” thing was because Paris exploded so big. Right? She was so famous and that was the marketing scheme. It’s like this super-wealthy rich kid that you don’t feel sorry for, watch her die. I don’t know. It’s like the ultimate underdog, revenge thought process, maybe. I don’t even know who came up with that. When we saw that coming out, we’re going, “Oh, that’s gnarly.”

Chad: “God, man, really?”

Carey: Holy sh-t. That’s something else.

And what’s so bizarre is it’s not like a Scream movie where a famous performer always gets killed in the opening. She survives until the end of the second act, beginning of the third act, but the whole time you know the character is going to die so it’s weird to let audiences know that before they even buy a ticket.

Carey: The fun thing is we do get to play with that. You can say that, but you don’t know creatively how she’s going to get it. It’s like when you watch the Freddy Krueger or the Jason Voorhees or the Michael Myers movies, it’s like, “Okay, we know they’re going to die.”

Chad: We know they’re all going to get it.

Carey: And part of the movie is … even like Final Destination movies, is, “How is it going to happen?” You watch movies like this and you go, “Okay, some people will live and some are going to die.” You got the ancillary characters, but that’s where you try to score some points in making it creative. And I agree with Chad, it’s like her death scene with a pole in the forehead and falling forward like a tripod was intense. I mean, it was crazy, but she did a good job in that movie, I thought.

Chad: I was proud of her. She had never done anything before, and I can imagine it must have been terrifying to be around so many other professionals, but she pulled it off. She did a good job, and I’m proud of her.

Underwhelming Reaction

So when the movie came out and didn’t become a blockbuster, was it a disappointment that it had fallen short of expectations or was it just a bump in the road where you understood all the factors that might have prevented it from becoming a breakout hit?

Chad: I’ll be honest with you: the forecast on it through Warner Bros. was that it was going to quickly become a hundred-million-dollar movie and that just never happened.

Carey: If you remember … it was a twofer, and we had a competing horror movie on the same weekend and both parties didn’t want to give up the weekend, but if they’re both horror movies, you’re going to split the fan base. You’re going to split the opening weekend. If you had doubled the numbers we did opening weekend, it would have been called the hit of the weekend. It would have been very successful. But I think because neither studio wanted to budge on the weekend, nothing gained momentum. If you don’t have that first big weekend and your horror audience goes, “Oh, do I want to do the House of Wax? Do I want to see the [the other scary movie]?”

It was like a 13-million opening weekend. But if you double that to 26, even anywhere close to 30 is, at that time, it’s a pretty big opening for a horror movie in those terms. And then now every weekend, you’re competing every single weekend following that. So you’re cutting it in half, cutting it in half, cutting it in half.

Chad: It was interesting, because when we did The Conjuring, it was one of the first genre films to open during the summer, because summers are for those big blockbuster movies. How can a little $20 million horror film stack up against a Marvel comic book character? And we did a test testing for an audience on that movie and it tested so high that the studio went, “Oh, let’s try it. Let’s do it in July.” And everyone was just like, “Oh, my God, this is just sink or swim.” But it proved really genius on the studio’s marketing standpoint, because, as you know, we outdid a lot of those really big movies. So it just goes to show you that people will go see what they want to see.

It’s been so interesting in so many different ways. House of Wax was our very first shot at a genre film, which made it also really fun. And it is what launched us into being genre writers. Although I mentioned, we worked on San Andreas, and then we worked on so many other different kinds of films, but that’s what we’re known for, is films from the Conjuring universe. And we’ve written a bunch of films for other studios, some of which got made, some of which haven’t. But it’s put us in that world, and we have House of Wax to thank for that. That was just awesome. It’s been great.

Returning to the House of Wax

Even though it didn’t do huge numbers when it came out, it did end with a bit of a cliffhanger with the third brother living in the town that could have led towards a sequel. In the 15 years since it came out, has there ever been a conversation about reviving the property or returning to that world?

Chad: Well, we haven’t been approached about it. What we find so interesting is we do a lot of film festivals and do panels at film festivals and sometimes workshops and things. And the fan base that comes up to talk about that movie, in particular, is fantastic. And so, it’s like, “You still want to talk about that movie? That’s awesome.” It’s just so, so great.

Carey: Not a conversation about a sequel. We did float the idea of a prequel, after it [came out], but the studio’s response is it didn’t do any big numbers at the box office. But if we approached it now, it could be a whole different story because of the fan base.

And a prequel means you can bring Paris Hilton back.

Chad: That’s so true. We could bring them all back.

Carey: It’s like, the theater became full of people: how? You know? I mean, it’s a crazy story.

The Conjuring Pride

Since you brought up The Conjuring, and it’s now been a few years since that first film, I was curious what your thoughts were now on that series after all these years.

Chad: The Conjuring is our little baby and has been wonderful to us. When we first made the discovery of Ed and Lorraine and their case studies, the studio purchased, I believe, about 20 of them, to be honest with you, the rights to shoot them. One of them being Annabelle, and then, I believe, [the Ocean-Born Mary House]. I remember reading that story, so somehow it came across our desk, but that would be fun.

Carey: Chad and I’s involvement were in setting everything up in Conjuring one and two, and then, God bless it, we got busy, busy, busy in so many blessed ways, of doing other projects. I love Ed and Lorraine’s characters. They got the best love story, I think, on the planet.

Chad: We never met Ed. Ed had passed away about six years before we actually met Lorraine. But Carey and I spent a tremendous amount of time with her on the phone, as well as on the set. And what a wonderful woman she was, I’ll tell you. Just so great, and so eager, and beautifully naive about the film business. It’s just so great.

Carey: Do you know she does a cameo? She made a cameo in the first movie. When Judy Perrin comes to the college in the first act, meeting Ed and Lorraine and she watches them give a lecture, the camera is on Ed and Lorraine. And then [director] James [Wan] turns the camera, and he starts moving up the people’s faces in the audience towards Lily Taylor and goes right over Lorraine Warren’s face. 

Chad: Just before you see Lily. Lorraine is sitting right in front of Lily.

Carey: It was just an homage to her. And the weird thing is she and Ed had lectured in that same room 40 years prior.

We have a film that’s sort of going to be another franchise, if we’re fortunate enough to draw in the audience. It’s called “The LaLaurie Mansion: Chapter Six,” and it surrounds the most haunted house in all of New Orleans. And it’s based on another true story. Carey and I’ve done a lot of research.

Carey: A house that has 200 years of history and has a lot of crazy family stories, death, despair.

Chad: But we’re planning on doing six films surrounding it, but the movie you’re going to see first is the last one. It’s contemporary, and then we’re going earlier in time, earlier in time, earlier in time when different events happen there. And that’s been really cool.

*****

Stay tuned for details on Chad and Carey W. Hayes’ future projects.