(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
When he was growing up, Johnny Depp always had a taste for the macabre. Then, when he formed a creative relationship with his directorial muse Tim Burton, he was delighted to find out they were both die-hard ghouls, not to mention superfans of the same 1950s horror icon Vincent Price. As two oddball guys growing up with weird, gothic tastes, Price spoke to both men’s cinematic predilections, and the shared fandom helped bond them.
When Depp was cast in Edward Scissorhands, it didn’t take long for him to realise he’d met a kindred spirit in Burton. They would strike up one of modern Hollywood’s most enduring relationships, collaborating on six more movies over the next three decades, defining a particular brand of gothic fairytale in the process.
After signing on to that first movie, Depp must have been astonished when he heard who Burton had cast to play The Inventor, the ‘father’ of the straggly-haired, leather-bodysuit-clad Edward, an uncommonly gentle scissor-handed gardener and sculptor. Suddenly, he found himself acting opposite Price, the star of so many of his favourite horror films from that classic period in the 1950s and ’60s, such as The Fly, The Pit and the Pendulum, and House on Haunted Hill.
“I adored him,” Depp told Fangoria about his idol, who was 78 years old when Edward Scissorhands was shot. “As did Tim, a long time before me. So we spent time together, hung out. I was totally enamoured.”
For Depp, the pinnacle of Price perfection was always the 1953 effort House of Wax, a grisly mystery in which Price played a deformed sculptor who murders people and displays their wax-covered corpses in a perverse recreation of his wax museum that previously burned down. So, when asked in 1994 which Price role he’d love to take a crack at in a remake, Depp immediately said, “House of Wax, now that would be cool.”
Over the years, Depp’s dream remake never came to pass, although Burton also floated a similar idea at one point. Controversially, it didn’t include Depp, as the Batman director pondered mounting a musical adaptation starring the – admittedly waxlike – Michael Jackson. “They said ‘no,’” Burton giggled about being turned down by a major studio. “Can you believe that?!”
Then, to rub salt in the wounds, House of Wax was eventually remade in 2005. Instead of starring Depp, it was retrofitted as a teen horror movie starring the – admittedly waxlike – Paris Hilton. The film received scathing reviews then, but over the years, it has developed a cult following that thinks it didn’t get the credit it deserved. While this cult status is very much up for debate, it’s tempting to wonder what someone like Depp would have done with House of Wax, if given the opportunity before the vapid hotel heiress swooped in and decided she wanted to conquer Hollywood.
It’s probably unlikely that Depp’s House of Wax would have been an out-and-out horror movie, and it certainly wouldn’t have been any teen slasher. Instead, it’s not hard to imagine Depp making something in the vein of Sleepy Hollow or Sweeney Todd (without the singing). His vision would have been gothic and gruesome, but in a fun, operatic way, and he undoubtedly would have reached into his extensive bag of quirks to give the murderous sculptor a memorably bizarre persona.
Hell, maybe House of Wax is the great Depp role audiences never got to see – and his fiery chamber of horrors would surely have been more entertaining to visit than the one Hilton was a part of.
Related Topics
Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter