Eye of the Cat is a movie where the biggest mystery isn’t who’s trying to kill Aunt Danny — it’s how this fever-dream of a furball thriller ever got greenlit in the first place. Think of it as a murder plot wrapped in a shampoo commercial, tied up in a ball of yarn, and left in a litter box of psychosexual confusion.
Let’s be honest: Nightmare in Wax sounds like a killer title. You picture a haunted Madame Tussauds, maybe Vincent Price creeping around with a hot glue gun, maybe something about wax statues coming to life and turning their creators into candles. What you get instead is a lo-fi slog about a bitter burn victim with a wax museum and a grudge, shot with all the suspense of a DMV instructional video and lit like a Motel 6 hallway.
This 1969 horror dud stars Cameron Mitchell, that patron saint of budget horror and perpetual human scowl, as Vincent Renard — a name that sounds vaguely classy until you see the performance that goes with it. Mitchell spends the film lurching between drunken mumbling and seething monologues, the kind of guy who keeps an extra bottle of gin in the embalming fluid.
The Plot: Soggy Wax and Stiffer Acting
Vincent Renard, a once-lauded film special effects artist, gets his face flambéed at a party when someone throws a drink on him while he’s lighting a cigarette. What is it with 1960s horror villains and their inability to work lighters responsibly?
This disfiguring poolside mishap — which plays like a rejected Three Stooges sketch — sets him on a course of revenge. Naturally, this means leaving Hollywood, growing a beard that screams “middle school theater teacher doing Les Mis,” and opening a wax museum. Not just any wax museum, mind you — one suspiciously filled with lifelike replicas of movie stars who have recently gone missing from Paragon Pictures, the same studio Renard used to work for.
Coincidence? Only if you’ve never seen a movie in your life.
Renard isn’t just a creep with sculpting skills. No, he’s spiked his talents with the pseudoscience of a Dr. Zerkai, whose “Nerving” formula puts people into a state of suspended animation for centuries. That’s right — this isn’t just a murder spree, it’s cryogenic kidnapping with a Bunsen burner and the ethics of a gas station sushi vendor.
As more stars vanish and the police close in, Renard finally nabs Max Black, the cigar-chomping studio exec who wronged him, and prepares to add him to the collection. But Max does what Max does best — he laughs. Like, really laughs. Which triggers Renard so badly he lunges into his own vat of molten wax. Not since Gremlins 2 has a villain died in such weirdly textured goo.
But wait! It’s all a dream! Yes, in a twist that somehow makes the whole thing feel even cheaper, Renard wakes up to a phone call reminding him about the party — the same one where he was supposed to be disfigured. So the movie either resets itself like a deranged Groundhog Day for burn victims or just shrugs and tells us, “Meh, none of it mattered anyway.”
The Cast: Faces of Stone, Dialogue to Match
Cameron Mitchell, bless his raspy little heart, gives this everything he’s got — which, in 1969, was mostly whiskey-fueled rage and the facial elasticity of a sourdough pancake. He’s sweaty, he’s twitchy, and at times it’s hard to tell if he’s method acting or just realizing in real-time how far he’s fallen since How to Marry a Millionaire.
Anne Helm plays Marie Morgan, and her job is mostly to stand in well-lit rooms, gasp at things off-screen, and deliver dialogue like she’s reading IKEA instructions off a cue card. Berry Kroeger as Max Black oozes sleaze, and not in a good way. He’s like if cigar smoke learned how to walk and produce films. Everyone else in the cast feels like they were dragged off a Greyhound bus and handed a SAG card.
Direction, Style, and Other Crimes
Director Bud Townsend brings all the energy of someone begrudgingly filming their nephew’s Halloween haunted house. The pacing is glacial, the editing is arthritic, and every scene feels like it’s waiting for someone to actually do something. The lighting is so flat and the sound so tinny you’d think it was shot inside a Coleman cooler with a flashlight.
And the wax figures? Let’s just say if Madame Tussauds ever saw this film, they’d sue for libel. These things look less like movie stars and more like melted mannequins made by a guy with a head injury and access to too many candles.
Oh, and the suspense? Nonexistent. The police subplot unfolds like a sitcom B-plot, with detectives who appear to be solving crimes between martini breaks. The big reveal of the “suspended animation” formula is delivered with all the gravitas of a guy explaining how to descale a coffee maker.
Highlights (and We’re Using That Term Generously)
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The Burn Scene: Watch Cameron Mitchell become Two-Face after a poorly timed cigarette. It’s Kafka meets Home Alone 2.
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The Wax Figures: Calling them “lifelike” is an insult to potatoes.
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The Dream Ending: Because nothing says artistic vision like “none of this actually happened.”
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The Dialogue: Lines like “He’s not just crazy — he’s got a doctorate in it!” ensure you’ll laugh, cry, or maybe just walk out.
Final Thoughts: Melting Minds, Melting Men
Nightmare in Wax wants to be Phantom of the Opera meets House of Wax, but ends up as The Room if it were filmed in a Halloween aisle. It’s a goopy, stilted mess that serves up horror like a dentist serves lollipops — reluctantly and with poor taste.
If you’re a Cameron Mitchell completist or just love horror so bad it makes Ed Wood look like David Fincher, go ahead and press play. For everyone else, save yourself 90 minutes and just stare at a melting candle while playing a theremin record in the background. You’ll get the same experience — possibly more tension.
Rating: 1.5 out of 5 Waxen Catastrophes
Would recommend only if:
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You’ve ever fantasized about turning your enemies into mannequins.
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You enjoy films where the villain dies in a puddle of his own art supplies.
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You think Cameron Mitchell yelling at statues is peak cinema.
Everyone else? Consider this nightmare… mercifully skippable.
