The film stars Henry Roussel, and was based upon the short story of the same name by André de Lorde.
De Lorde adapted the story from the stage play he wrote with Georges Montignac, which was first performed in 1912[1] at the Grand Guignol in Paris.
[2] Following a discussion of the nature of fear at a raucous cabaret, a man named Pierre claims that the emotion is unknown to him ("sensation m'est inconnue"), and accepts a bet to will stay at a sinister location all night.
[2] Director Maurice Tourneur, scenarist André de Lorde and actor Henry Roussel had worked together previously a year earlier, in the 1913 silent horror film Le système du docteur Goudron et du professeur Plume (The System of Doctor Goudron, released in the US as The Lunatics), which itself was based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1845 short story The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether and, like Figures de cire, was originally staged as a play at the Grand Guignol in Paris in 1903 (where it had starred Henri Gouget).
[1] Though Figures de cire had originally been written as a stageplay by de Lorde (who wrote hundreds of plays for the Grand Guignol[2][5]), the film credits state that it is based on his short story (in French, "nouvelles"), which he adapted from his play and published in an eponymous collection in 1932 (the story was first published in English as "Waxworks" in the 1933 anthology Terrors: A Collection of Uneasy Tales, anonymously edited by Charles Birkin[6]).