Wax Museums: Never a Hard Sell : Entertainment: Some patrons wax nostalgic, others come eye to eye with modern-day celebrities. These throwbacks to a simpler, more innocent age are still profitable in a hi-tech world.

Down the long and twisting hallway, Yul Brynner glowers defiantly as the King of Siam, a pistol-waving Roger Moore lunges as Agent 007, and the cast of “Star Trek” goes where no man has gone before.

A trickle of visitors pause at the displays for a few seconds at a time, usually just long enough to admire the gleam in Ed Asner’s glass eyes or the cut of Marilyn Monroe’s gown. Then they move on.

This is the Movieland Wax Museum in Buena Park, one of the few survivors among the dozens of major galleries that once sprouted across the nation. Along with the Hollywood Wax Museum, Movieland has thrived by catering to an insatiable desire among tourists to mingle with celebrities.

“It’s the only opportunity they’re going to get to stare eyeball to eyeball with their favorite star,” said Movieland owner Ronald M. Fong, who characterizes his 250-figure collection as “the granddaddy” of the nation’s wax museums.

Their heyday having melted away, wax museums are anachronisms compared to theme parks crammed with high-tech extravaganzas and looping roller coasters. Yet, the campy Movieland has stayed in business by feeding off the thrill-seeking crowds headed for nearby Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm.

Movieland still attracts nearly half a million tourists per year--people willing to plop down $9.95 for a walk into the past. With low labor and operational costs, the museum continues to be a big moneymaker.

Wax figures “don’t eat and they don’t ask for raises,” said Joseph F. Prevratil, a Long Beach-based tourism consultant who was general manager of Movieland in the 1970s. He said a well-managed wax museum can return 50 cents on every box office dollar.

With the lure of those kinds of profits, the waxworks industry is making a mild comeback.

Movieland owner Fong plans to open a new “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” museum of human and natural oddities across Beach Boulevard from Movieland this summer. It will include about 30 wax figures. Ripley’s is trying to expand into other cities as well.

Movieland founder Allen Parkinson is trying to find backers for a $6-million “Life of Christ Historical Wax Museum” in Anaheim. A new Palace of Wax recently opened outside Dallas. Even the world-acclaimed Madame Tussaud’s museum in London--which Fong concedes is “the grandmother of them all”--is considering plans to expand into New York and the East Coast.

“We would want to make it a fairly long-term investment. That means a fairly heavy level of commitment,” said Michael Herbert, chairman of the Tussaud’s Group, which operates the highly successful wax museums in London and Amsterdam.

In order to succeed, however, modern wax museums may have to innovate in an industry that has remained largely unchanged going back to the times of ancient Greeks and Romans, when wax was carved into the figures of gods and the memory of ancestors was preserved through wax life masks.

Marie Tussaud opened her famous English gallery in 1835, though wax museums did not take hold in the United States until after World War II. The phenomenon was popularized by movies such as the 3-D “House of Wax” in 1953, a remake of “The Mystery of the Wax Museum” in 1933. In the 1953 version, Vincent Price plays a deranged wax sculptor who gets his kicks out of covering people in wax.

Except for the introduction of fiberglass in wax figures and some special effects in the sets, wax museums have not changed much through the years, and their appeal faded. As late as the mid-1970s, the International Assn. of Wax Museums recognized more than 50 galleries across the nation. Today, industry insiders cannot name more than a half-dozen museums that remain--and the association no longer exists.

“There were so many bad ones that they closed up,” said sculptor Peter Carsillo, of the new Palace of Wax in Grand Prairie, Tex. “There were so many hastily built, trailer park-type wax museums out there. It was inevitable that they would close.”

Carsillo, who also has carved figures for Movieland, said realism is achieved through elaborate lighting and expensive sets. He said the extra attention pays off when he sees how viewers react to his scenes depicting the life of Christ.

“We have a real nice Crucifixion here,” Carsillo said. “We have a lot of clergy come through here and just lose it.”

David Robert Cellitti, resident sculptor at Movieland, said audiences “were getting used to seeing some very sophisticated things,” forcing wax museums to add special effects to continue to try to lure audiences.

Movieland and others have tried to keep pace by building environments rather than sets. These include entire rooms that place the viewer in the predicament of the wax characters, complete with sound or lighting effects, realistic props and even temperature changes.

For example, Movieland patrons witness a gunfight between a battle-dressed Chuck Norris and a bunch of bad guys, complete with sound and muzzle flashes. A chill from a supposedly ruptured refrigeration line adds realism to the wrecked engine room of a capsized ocean liner for “The Poseidon Adventure” movie set.

Attention to detail appears to be an ingredient to Movieland’s success, which has ranked 10th in attendance among Southern California amusement attractions despite its low profile and virtually non-existent advertising budget.

When it opened, Movieland was hailed as bringing American wax sculpture out of the musty sideshows of carnivals and setting new standards of realism and set design.

The building and its huge glittery sign became a hit with locals and tourists as attendance climbed to 900,000 a year. The debuts of new sets were publicized with the hoopla of a new ride at any local theme park. Parents took their children to see their favorite television stars. Dating teen-agers went in the evenings as an alternative to drive-in movies and miniature golf.

Movieland founder Parkinson says he was awe-struck by the success. “On weekends, the cars were lined up as far as the eye could see,” he said.

Six Flags bought the wax museum and bulldozed the Palace of Living Art, an adjoining gallery in which famous paintings were re-created in wax. It added a chamber of horrors as part of a $1-million renovation. With an array of large theme parks to worry about, including Magic Mountain in Valencia, Six Flags sold Movieland to Fong five years ago for $5.3 million. The Fong family already was successfully operating the Fisherman’s Wharf Wax Museum and other amusements in San Francisco.

Nowadays, Movieland is marketed almost entirely to tourists, though promotion consists of little more than stocking motel lobbies with pamphlets. The idea is to catch the attention of tourists who spend three or more days visiting Orange County and have already seen Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland.

Besides reaping strong box office revenues, the walking Movieland tour requires that all visitors have their photo taken with George Burns on the way in so hopefully they will buy the photo on the way out. They are also run through two well-stocked gift shops and a photo-on-a-T-shirt emporium.

The Hollywood Wax Museum, which draws tourists who go to ogle the famous footprints at Mann’s Chinese Theatre next door on Hollywood Boulevard, has thrived as well. General Manager Raubi Sundher said attendance remains “quite steady,” although he declined to release attendance figures.

“Wax museums themselves are not the main draw, but (most of) the time, they are near an area that’s a draw. People don’t see stars walking down the street anymore. It’s the second best thing,” he said.

The Hollywood museum budgets more for upkeep than for advertising. But the exhibit reaps free exposure by being a backdrop for the shooting of movies or TV shows, including five last year alone. “We get a lot of publicity being in Hollywood,” Sundher said.

While the names may change, the process has remained virtually the same for hundreds of years.

Besides such maintenance costs as shampooing Shirley Temple’s curls, celebrity-based wax museums must constantly keep adding famous replicas to stay current.

Movieland has built a new Pee-wee Herman fun house area and comedian Eddie Murphy is hot among wax exhibitors. But keeping up is not easy.

“I tell people to pick up a TV Guide from a year ago and try to remember the shows and try to remember who was in them,” sculptor Cellitti said. “It suddenly becomes very difficult because the person touted as the hot new property may not be the hot new property.”

The next obvious innovation would be to animate the figures. After all, Disney has its talking Mr. Lincoln and rollicking Pirates of the Caribbean.

Madame Tussaud’s Herbert said his company already has recognized the potential, introducing a “Rock Circus” of animated figures of rock stars at an exhibit in London’s Piccadilly Circus.

But generally, animation is considered prohibitively expensive because the robotics requires an army of technicians for regular maintenance and breakdowns. And pretty soon, it would be a robot museum rather than a wax museum--and purists want none of that.

“There will always be a nostalgic twinge to going to a wax museum,” Cellitti said. “It represents something from an earlier, more innocent age.”

Tourist Hot Spots in O.C. In millions of visitors: Estimated attendance at selected Southern California tourist attractions in 1989. Disneyland: 13.0 Knott’s Berry Farm: 5.0 Sea World: 3.7 San Diego Zoo: 3.3 Magic Mountain: 3.0 SD Wild Animal Park: 1.2 Movieland Wax Museum: 0.5