We all know that most of the people going to see House of Wax will be there to watch Paris Hilton melt. Sadly, this and almost all other meager hopes for the film will go unfulfilled. Sure, Paris gets whacked, a cinematic moment so appealing that it's drawing cheers at previews of the film here and across the country. But she doesn't liquefy. And once her highly anticipated offing is accomplished, "Wax" wanes from merely bad to horrendous.

Not that there was much promise to begin with. Because this is no remake of the 1953 Vincent Price 3-D classic about a debonair artist attempting to showcase his sculptures. In this "Wax," there's not even a guy poinging a paddleball out of the screen.

Instead, what we have here is your basic Texas Chainsaw Massacre/ House of 1000 Corpses slasher film we should expect from Joe Silver and Robert Zemeckis, producers of such ruinous remakes as Thir13en Ghosts and House on Haunted Hill. Except these guys make "Corpses" look good.

In "Wax," we're once again on the back roads of America with a randy crop of young folks. They're headed for the big college game, which suggests that they have had some contact with higher education.