House of Wax star Elisha Cuthbert reveals she had her lips glued for real while filming the horror remake as they struggled to shoot the scene. The 2005 film served as the third adaptation of Charles S. Belden's short story "The Wax Works" and was a loose remake of both 1933's Mystery of the Wax Museum and the Vincent Price-led House of Wax. The story for the remake revolves around a group of college students who find themselves trapped in a small town with a wax museum run by a pair of murderous conjoined twin brothers who turn their victims into the latest displays.
Cuthbert led the cast of the House of Wax remake alongside Chad Michael Murray, Brian Van Holt in a dual role, Paris Hilton, Jared Padalecki, Jon Abrahams and Robert Ri'chard. Directed by Black Adam's Jaume Collet-Serra on a script from future The Conjuring scribes Chad and Carey Hayes, the film was poorly received by critics upon its release, with criticism directed at its formulaic plot and uninteresting characters while expressing some positives regarding its performances and atmosphere. Despite the negative reviews, House of Wax was a modest box office success, grossing over $70 million against its $40 million budget and developing a minor cult following in the years since its release.
In a recent interview with Bloody Disgusting, Elisha Cuthbert looked back on her time making the House of Wax horror remake. The actress revealed she had her lips glued for real in one sequence as she and the filmmakers struggled to find a way to make it work without looking "ridiculous" and that she suggested going completely practical for the moment. See what Cuthbert shared below:
“Man, some intense days. Some really intense days. And we couldn’t figure out how to do the lip gluing without making it look ridiculous. I had to be strained and fighting for my life, but I had to somehow find a way to keep my mouth pried closed. So it just wasn’t working and I finally said to the prop guys, ‘Just get the glue. Just get the real glue.’ So we ended up really gluing my lips – not with crazy glue, but with something very similar. So I could not pry them apart. There was no real other way to do it, without it looking silly. So we went for it.”
The House of Wax scene in question saw Cuthbert's Carly captured by one of the brothers and kept in the basement of the town's gas station, with the brother gluing her lips sealed in the hopes of keeping her quiet as her brother comes looking for her. Cuthbert's willingness to glue her lips sealed for real, albeit with one not as rigid as superglue, shows a strong devotion from the actress to help make the scene look and feel as realistic as possible and help make the audience squirm. House of Wax wasn't Cuthbert's first or last time in the horror genre, having first rose to fame on Nickelodeon's original Are You Afraid of the Dark? series and later appearing in the controversial torture porn film Captivity.
At the time of its release, House of Wax made numerous headlines with its marketing campaign centering itself around Paris Hilton's death in the film, with one memorable slogan even explicitly stating "See Paris Die!". Though the film may not have been a critical darling upon its release, the marketing campaign ultimately worked in its favor at the box office and the remake has since gone on to garner some retrospective positive reviews from the horror community for its brutal kills and effective atmosphere. Audiences can revisit the House of Max remake as it is available to stream on Kanopy.
Source: Bloody Disgusting