Ivan Igor



Professor Henry Jarrod is the main antagonist in House of Wax (1953). He is a professor of history who is warped into a vengeful serial killer when his greedy business partner burns down his wax museum for the insurance money and horribly disfigures him.

He is portrayed by the late Vincent Price, who also portrayed Dr. Phibes in The Abominable Dr. Phibes and voiced Professor Ratigan in Disney's The Great Mouse Detective.

History
In the early 1900s, Professor Henry Jarrod is a talented wax figure sculptor who is desperately attempting to save his sculptures "whom" he sees as friends from his business partner, Matthew Burke, who wants to burn the museum to colled the insurance money. When Jarrod fights him, Burke splashes kerosene over Jarrod's body and leaves him to die in the fire. Fortunately Jarrod survies and builds his new House of Wax later in his life, called "House of Horrors". However he is left badly burnt with his hands crippled, leaving it up to his new assistants, Igor and Leon Averill to sculpt his work. He reveals himself to be alive to the public and wears a mask he made to appear as his real face.

Scarred both physically and mentally by the experience of nearly being burnt alive and having his "friends" destroyed, Jarrod swears revenge on Burke by killing him in his office via stangulation and makes it look like a suicide. He later takes the body and makes it part of his new exhibit-which is just one of the many bodies Jarrod used of people he killed for the museum. He later kills Burke's fiancé, Cathy Gray, and steals her corpse from the morgue for his St. Joan of Arc exhibit. He also killes Wilbur Patterson, the deputy city attorney, and puts him into a wax figure of John Wilkes Booth. He tries on two attempts to kidnapp Cathyy's friend, Sue Allen, due to her resemblance to Marie Antoinette.

Sue eventually visits the museum and is troubled by Jarrod explaining that Cathy was the model for St. Joan of Arc. Sue returns after being confronted by Jarrod, whose face is revealed to be a wax mask that shatters once she fights him and exposes hideously fire-scarred flesh beneath. He subdues her and but is later confronted by the poilice who engage in a fight with him that results in Jarrod falling to his death in his own vat of molten wax.