Ambrose, Louisiana
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Ambrose set in Louisiana, USA is a small fictional town featured in the 2005 horror film remake House of Wax. The town has been deserted for the past ten years, which is said to be attributed to the sugar mill business closing down.
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[edit] The town
The town is designed in an 1930s art-deco style and features a range of shops and attractions. Places shown in the movie include, a grocery store, a pet store, an electronics store named Vision Electricals, an outdoor wear clothing and accessories store named Guns and Ammo, a cinema showing at the time of abandonment What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?, and the main attraction, Trudy's House of Wax. The attraction sits on top of a hill, above the rest of the town and next to the House of Wax is the Sinclair House, where Vincent and Bo resided till their parent's deaths. A church stands at the top of the street and there is a car garage also, where regular gas is priced at $1.19 a gallon. Down the road, across the brook, is the sugar mill, where today the passing victim's clothes, cars and mobile phones etc. are kept after they are stripped from their person. Also at the time of abandonment, the town was running a beauty pageant to crown someone "Miss Ambrose," and the winner is seen immortalised in wax at the cinema. The town isn't recognised on GPS, and there are no working phone lines, but the town has a clear cellphone and radio signal, although only one station is available.
The town is revealed to be totally rigged with wax covered characters to fool passing travelers:-
- Sitting in the church are church goers at a funeral scene, made realistic by a tape recording of organ music and sobbing in the background.
- Wax people sit in the cinema, including a ticket man and usher.
- An animatronic puppy litter wag their tails at the pet store.
- And an old woman controlled by an animatronic arm pulls back the curtain and spies from a nearby house.
[edit] Trudy's House of Wax
The House of Wax is a derelict tourist attraction, which was owned by Vincent's and Bo's parents, then by Vincent himself, who made (and slayed) all the creations within the building. On the billboard seen early in the film, Children enter free of charge. The building is made of real wax. Inside is the main hall that features characters placed in certain positions. There are people sitting down by the bookcase, a couple leaning over each other on a sofa and a couple dancing, among others. There is also a mock-up of a dining room with a dining table and piano. Characters sit to diner, as well as the inclusion of the movie character Wade, sitting at the piano after his horrifying wax conversion. There are also two high chairs present, belonging to Vincent and Bo as kids. Leading off the dining room is a mock kitchen scene. Upstairs is a bedroom scene, where two conjoined twins sit in a cot. In the basement is where Vincent kills and covers his victims in wax.
At the end of the movie, after Nick and Carly get into a fight with Vincent and Bo, the entire House of Wax starts to melt and buckle, after Nick pours a cauldron of boiling wax over the floor of the "Wax Chamber". Slowly it begins to burn everything up, causing the wax floors to melt and the various wax people to fall to pieces. In the end the whole building collapses and burns to the ground.
[edit] The Production
The town was constructed for the movie within 10 weeks. Designs for the art-deco buildings were sampled from many archived photos of the time. The main influence was from the Italian sculpted city of, Asmara, Eritrea. The town was made up of just the store fronts and was built on the backlot of Warner Roadshow Studios, Oxenford, Queensland, Australia. The House of Wax indoor set was constructed at Movieworld, Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia, which subsequently burnt down during filming.
[edit] Lawsuit
In January 2006 it was announced by Warner Roadshow studio owners Village Theme Park Management and Warner World Australia that they were suing special effects expert David Fletcher and Wax Productions because of a fire on the set during production.
The $7 million lawsuit alleges that the Mr Fletcher and Wax Productions were grossly negligent over the fire which destroyed part of the studios where the House of Wax interior set was filmed. The alleged grounds of negligence included not having firefighters on stand-by and using timber props near a naked flame. [1]
