Is 3D Dead After All?

 You will not find a more obnoxious defender of 3D movies than me. At the very least, you'd be hard pressed to. I've been a fan since 1982 when my 11 year old mind was blown watching Gorilla At Large on New York's Channel 9. I didn't even realize that I wasn't watching 3D as it was really meant to be seen at the time. It worked to me and I loved it. And for much of the 80s and 90s 3D was this rare and wonderful thing that I didn't get to see very often but devoured every time. Then the current boom started up in 2003 with Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over and within a decade I was the proverbial pig in shit. I had a 3D TV, some darn good 3D movies were coming out in the theater and on 3D Blu Ray. The vintage stuff started coming in 2012 (which is actually what prompted me to buy my 3D TV). There was such a selection of stuff that I could pick and choose what I wanted to watch instead of desperately watching anything that was offered. I'm not joking when I say that had utter crap like Texas Chainsaw 3D been offered twenty years earlier I might have gone to see it. But in 2013, I could pass on films that normally wouldn't interest me and watch the stuff I really wanted to. 

Oh, sure, the haters were out there, screaming at clouds about how they hoped 3D would die a painful, awful death and never return. And the haters were angry about it, too, which confused 3D fans like myself. Nobody was forcing them to watch 3D, so just leave us who enjoy it in peace. But that's the way haters are in general. I don't care for gory horror movies, but I don't go on and on about how I wish they'd go away. I let the people who dig that sort of thing dig it and I go watch what I like. But nowadays if someone is offended by something's existence, they will scream about how it must go away. Cancel culture reigns supreme and sadly frequently wins out.

And the haters slowly got their way. 3D TVs stopped being made in 2016. I didn't worry too much because when I buy an electronic, it's my intention to keep it for as long as possible and my TV at that time was only four years old. The first TV I ever owned was a 13 inch black and white TV and believe me when I tell you I had it for 15 years. Then the 3D Blu Rays became harder to get. Disney, who had backed 3D hard just a few years earlier, was the first to pull the rug out from under fans. I had to start ordering 3D titles from Europe. This even happened with Star Wars and Marvel. The last Star Wars 3D Blu Ray in America was Rogue One and the last Marvel title was Spider-Man: Homecoming. Now, even Europe is abandoning 3D Blu Rays. The last 3 Marvel movies have only gotten a 3D release in Japan at an extremely high price. Venom: Let Be There Carnage is apparently not getting a 3D Blu Ray release. Neither did No Time to Die. It appears Spider-Man: No Way Home is going 2D only also.

Vintage titles are beginning to wind down, too. There's four announced for this year: one from the 80s, 2 from the 50s and one 70s porn. You know things are getting bad when the porns are being trotted out. For the curious, if we're very lucky there will be another 3 or 4 from the 50s and possibly six more from the 80s. But don't necessarily count on it.

The reality is that 3D was botched again. Those of us who have been lifelong fans have seen this before. It's the bane of our existence. I'm old enough to remember the boom from the 80s that came and went before you knew it. At least this time, 3D stuck around for a few years. Not like Hollywood in its infinite wisdom didn't try killing it. So why exactly does this keep happening?

There's any number of reasons but a large part of it is due to the theaters. Up until the digital age, projectionists and theater owners routinely found ways to screw up showings. During the dual projector era of the 50s, it was common for one projector to go out of sync. This (and not the glasses themselves) led to headaches, eye strain, and nausea. Arch Oboler and Col. Robert Brenier thought they figured out how to beat that with single strip 3D systems in the 60s. I can tell you horror stories about how badly misprojected single strip 3D films could be. My first time seeing House of Wax in 3D was a misprojected single strip showing in 1991. The wrong type of beam splitter would be used, or it would be put on wrong, or the type of screen would be wrong, etc. If you consider the fact that the 3D films of the 60s through the 90s were all pretty uniformly awful, the bad projection just made things worse.

Indeed, while the 50s produced some pretty terrific 3D movies like Dial M For Murder and Kiss Me Kate, everything from about 1962 to 1997 was pretty bad. Most of the movies concentrated more on the gimmick than actually telling a story. Sometimes this can be a little fun, but some of them were shot pretty poorly, too, with little respect for the proper way to shoot a 3D movie. As such, you can feel like your eyeballs are being ripped out of your head watching some of these titles. I'm looking at you, Comin' At Ya! and Amityville 3-D.

The modern era finally figured out the projection angle. It's nigh impossible to misproject a digital 3D movie. Unless, of course, the theater does something like not bother turning the 3D filter on in the first place. I saw this as recently as Spider-Man: No Way Home. So why is 3D once again on the downslide?

Well, for one, theaters still hate it for some obscure reason. Besides doing boneheaded things like not turning on the filter on the projector, I've had people working the box office ridicule me for seeing 3D movies or outright try to deny me a ticket to one. I wish I was joking about that, but I'm not. Why someone selling me a ticket would not want to sell me a ticket to a 3D movie is beyond me. I mean, hell, they charge extra for it.

The other problem is Hollywood itself. 3D always had a level of showmanship in the earlier decades. The 50s films weren't as nuts with out of the screen gimmicks as in later decades, but when they had out of the screen effects, they made them memorable. Most vintage 3D movies had a gimmick shot you would remember, even in the gimmick laden 70s and 80s films. The paddle ball in House of Wax, Grace Kelly's hand in Dial M For Murder, the avalanche in It Came From Outer Space, the floating tray of beer in The Bubble, Frankenstein's heart on the end of a spear in Flesh for Frankenstein, the eyeball being popped out of a head in Friday the 13th Part 3 were all moments that stuck with audiences. Quick: name a single memorable 3D effect shot in any of the movies made from Spy Kids 3D on. The most memorable ones are in Oz the Great and Powerful. Otherwise, not much. Sacha Baron Cohen in Hugo might count. But consider the fact that 3D fans waited 30 years for a 3D Godzilla movie that ended up not having much monsters out of the screen action. Had that movie been made in 1983, we would have had atomic breath blown right at us. 2014, not so much.

I'm not saying that the 3D movies of today have to be like the ones in the 80s. Some of those films had some pretty silly effects like the frisbee in Amityville and the yo-yo in Friday the 13th. But if I'm paying an extra couple of bucks to see the movie, give me something. How did we have multiple X-Men movies in 3D and not once did Wolverine's claws come out at us? I may not need a baby's bare ass in my face, but how about a fist or a kick like in the old Kung Fu 3D movies? I'll give Oz the Great and Powerful this: it behaved like a 3D movie. The Hobbit movies could have taken some lessons.

Beyond the gimmick shots, the depth in modern 3D movies isn't all that wild either. Again, there's a few that take advantage of the extra dimension--The Walk is truly dizzying--but a lot of times, no. Even the 80s films took the time to put some space on the screen when they weren't throwing things in our face. If you watch a Marvel 3D movie and then watch something like House of Wax, there's a huge difference. 

So yes, Hollywood botched it again. Old school 3D enthusiasts refer to many of the modern movies as being 2.5D instead of 3D. They're not wrong.

Of course, Hollywood helped kill 3D TVs. For decades a 3D TV meant wearing red and blue glasses and watching something that didn't work. They finally get the technology right and...they blow it. First off, 3D TVs started coming out in 2010 in the wake of Avatar. Beyond the fact that the technology still had some bugs, there wasn't even a universal system. You could get passive 3D TVs or Active 3D TVs. The Active ones arguably gave better 3D but had problems handling some of the imagery. The other problem was one of product. Back then, the only things you could get on 3D Blu Ray were the same lackluster movies that were coming out in the theaters. You know, the poor converted ones. Titles that would have sold 3D TVs and 3D Blu Ray players weren't made available. For instance, you couldn't get Avatar on 3D Blu Ray until 2012. No vintage titles were made available until then, too. Some of the most requested titles either didn't come out at all or came out long after the TVs stopped being made. Two of the most (in)famous 3D movies of all time, both of which would have sold TVs had they been out way back when, have only been put out in the past two years: Friday the 13th Part 3 and Flesh for Frankenstein. It Came From Outer Space and Jaws 3D both came out in 2016, the last year 3D TVs were made. Revenge of the Creature came out a year later. You could only get Amityville 3D or Creature From the Black Lagoon by buying expensive box sets at first. Hondo only got a 2D Blu Ray release, as did such requested titles as Money From Home (Martin and Lewis), Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, The Stranger Wore a Gun, and Starchaser: The Legend of Orin. Had at least some of these titles come out in 2010 or 2011, 3D TVs might have done better and stuck around. Seriously, there are horror fans who would have bought a TV just to see Friday the 13th Part 3 in true 3D. 

So that leaves us where we are, dear reader. 3D is on the way out again. Those of us who are die hard fans are going to be depressed as hell when it goes, too. I think it'll limp along for a couple of more years. But I don't think Avatar 2 will be the savior some want it to be. There'll be a smaller number of movies released to the theaters, few of which will make it to 3D Blu Ray. If they do, they'll probably be mad expensive. I paid almost $100 to get Black Widow in 3D. The vintage titles will limp along too, but I see those coming to an end in a few years as well. Sad thing is, it didn't have to be this way.

Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

 

Let me explain how good a movie Spider-Man: No Way Home is: as soon as it was done, I wanted to watch it again. As I sit here typing this, I am wondering how soon I can see it again. It is, to put it simply, quite possibly the best Spider-Man film ever. 

Strangely enough, it shouldn't be. It shouldn't even work. As a rule, comic book movies with multiple villains almost never work. And even when they do more or less work (The Dark Knight), they still don't work quite as well as the ones that concentrate on a single villain.

Sidebar: For those who take exception to what I just said in relation to The Dark Knight, while it is a very good Batman movie, there are about four or five points in the movie where you think it's over and it's not. And Two Face does seem kinda shoehorned in. The movie would have worked much better with just The Joker as the villain and Two Face getting his own movie.

The Spider-Man series is especially notorious for movies with multiple villains not working. Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 both make the same mistakes even: Peter spending an awful lot of the movie crying and having 3 villains each, with at least one of the villains being completely unnecessary. In the case of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, I'll even argue that two of the villains are completely unnecessary. That entry did not need either The Green Goblin or The Rhino.

So yes, a movie with no less than 5 villains in it should really not work. It should be a dissatisfying mess and a candidate for worst movie of all time. However, this is an MCU movie and one thing that Marvel has taught us over the last 13 years is that they know how to tell a story. As a result, not only is this movie completely satisfying, it's a candidate for being one of the very best comic book movies ever. We're talking Avengers: Endgame or Superman: The Movie levels of greatness. We're talking about two and half hours of pure movie magic. 

The film picks up where Spider-Man: Far From Home left off. Mysterio has revealed to the world that Peter Parker is Spider-Man, an act that turns the hapless teenager's life upside down. Half the world hates him, the paparazzi won't go away, and he and his friends Ned and MJ can't get into college. So Peter goes to Dr. Strange and asks for a spell that will make the world forget he's Spider-Man. The spell goes sideways, which opens a portal to the multiverse and lets in the primary villains from the first five Spider-Man movies: The Green Goblin (the real one IMO), Doctor Octopus, Sandman, The Lizard and Electro. Spidey has to contain them, but when he finds out they're all going to die upon returning to their worlds, he decides to try to help them instead. That's the type of hero Spider-Man is.

If you've stayed away from spoilers as I always try to, you're in for quite a ride. Even if you know or think you know some of what's going to happen, I promise you there's things in this movie you'll never see coming. It's a complete delight, alternately funny and heartbreaking.

The cast is fantastic. I've liked Tom Holland's Spidey since his first appearance in Captain America: Civil War. He really is the comic book Spidey come to life. Marissa Tomei remains the best Aunt May ever. Zendaya and Jacob Batalon give their usual strong performances as MJ and Ned. Ditto Benedict Cumberbatch as Dr. Strange. As far as the villains go, it's a delight to see Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin and Alfred Molina's Doc Ock again. Those two prove again that they are among the best screen villains in history. Not only that, but Jamie Foxx, Rhys Ifans, and Thomas Haden Church get another shot to get their villains right.

Sidebar: The biggest problem with Spider-Man 3 is Venom, who is completely superfluous. Haden Church did a fine job as Sandman and the film should have just been about him. Similarly, Foxx was cheated out of making Electro into a really great villain with the introduction of The (fake) Green Goblin in Amazing Spider-Man 2. In fact, it can be argued that Haden Church, Foxx, and Ifans were all done a disservice by the scripts. For that matter, so was Andrew Garfield, who was a perfectly good Spider-Man stuck with lackluster scripts. I'd argue that he's the Pierce Brosnan or Peter Capaldi (for you Doctor Who fans) of the Spider-Man films.

I've been a Spider-Man film since I was a little kid. Hell, I wanted to be Spider-Man when I was a little kid (I almost kinda still do). This is the Spider-Man movie I've waited for since I was about six years old. A complete geek-out fest of a film and one I personally can't wait to revisit.

An Open Letter to EON Productions

 To Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson:

Can we have a little talk about the future of OO7? I know I'm a cranky old man who technically isn't the target audience for movies anymore, but I've been a Bond fan for most of my life. I've seriously watched the movies for almost 45 years and I'm only 50. I'm not the only old Bond fan out there. You'd probably be surprised at the number of us old heads there are who still go to these movies. I have one friend older than me who only goes to the movies when it's a new Bond film. So, yeah, there's quite a number of us out there.

So you've done your Daniel Craig miniseries of Bond movies. All in all, Craig was plenty good as Bond. A couple of the movies were really terrific, too. Casino Royale was the best, and oddly the one that most felt like old school Bond. Probably because it was actually based on an Ian Fleming book. Anyhow, Craig is done. You brought an end to the story. I wasn't initially happy with the ending, but I'll get over it. I'll give it another chance and end up buying the Blu Ray when it comes out. I buy all the Bonds, even the ones I initially don't like, and give them a second chance. But now that the Craig run is over, you're going to reboot the series again. So let's talk about this for a moment.

First off, don't do like Spider-Man or Batman and have another origin story. Bond doesn't need an origin story. Casino Royale didn't need to be an origin story. Just because it was the first book doesn't mean it was an origin. Bond in the book was already fully formed. Bond in the Dr. No movie is also fully formed. He can just be James Bond without an origin. Actually, no origin makes him more mysterious and interesting. So let him just Be James Bond. He drinks vodka matinis shaken not stirred, he drives fast cars, he has a license to kill, the whole nine yards.

Second, can we please please please drop the "this time it's personal" angle? The character existed for 27 years before doing a personal story. The problem is, every film has been personal since then. Simply have a villain out to take over or destroy the world like OG Blofeld, Goldfinger, Largo, etc. He has a large henchman like Oddjob or Jaws who gives Bond a hard time. Bond is literally the only person in the world who can stop the villain. He meets some women with hilariously inappropriate names like Pussy Galore or Holly Goodhead along the way. Maybe even give him some crazy gadgets. Certainly give him some crazy stunts.

I'm talking about the Goldfinger formula. The formula that Cubby Broccoli followed for years. I know, I know. Some crazy SJW is going to scream that you can't do Goldfinger anymore. Yes, you can. Know why? Because people still love Goldfinger. People will still go see Goldfinger and enjoy it. Revival showings of that movie and Thunderball are always popular. Yes, you're going to have an SJW or two howling on the internet, but they won't keep the real fans away.

You almost had the Goldfinger formula right in Spectre. It had all the elements up until "James, I am your brother". Take that goofy twist out and you've got a classic Bond. And guess what? Spectre is actually a pretty damn good entry in the series. I liked Christoph Waltz. I loved Bautista. I just hated the unnecessary twist.

By the way, you might consider dumping Purvis and Wade: Richard Maibum they aren't. I know that you try to be loyal, but all these guys do is borrow material from the earlier films without doing it justice. It's one thing to follow a formula, it's another thing to just keep recreating scenes like a cosplayer. And get a director who is more respectful of the legacy of the series than Cary Fukunaga. I mean, seriously, you've had American directors like Spielberg, Scorcesse and Taranatino ask you to do a Bond film--guys who genuinely love the series--but you let the first American director be a guy who disses Sean Connery's Bond as a rapist? Do better, guys.

Bond is a legacy. He's gone longer than any other movie character except for Godzilla. And his movies have been a heck of a lot better than Godzilla. Live up to that legacy. You Can do this: I've seen it. Goldeneye is wonderful. Casino Royale is wonderful. Spectre is almost wonderful.

By the way, can we pick up the pace of release again? Cubby got them out basically every other year. Roger Moore did 7 films in 12 years. Craig did 5 in 15. Four to six years between movies is a LONG time. Even if you can't do every two years like Cubby did, at least go for every three. 

One more thing: whatever else you do, don't reboot the series again when the next guy leaves in two-five movies. One thing Cubby did was make it all one guy. All one guy in a floating timeline works. It worked for 40 years. It can work again.

What Happened to OO7? A Look Back at the Craig Era.

Before we get started, I will warn you that there's major spoilers about No Time to Die in this posting. So if you haven't seen it, you might want to come back to this after seeing it. I'll also warn that this is the rant of someone who might just be a cranky old white dude.

I've been a fan of the James Bond series since I was seven. My first film was The Spy Who Loved Me. I had the View Master reels for Moonraker. I owned and read and re-read the comic book for For Your Eyes Only so much, it basically disintegrated. My family wouldn't take me to the movies in the theater but I watched them on TV. When we got our first VCR in 1984, I started renting all the films. Heck, I would do double features on a Saturday night as a teen. My first one in the theaters was A View to a Kill, which I loved. The only one after that I missed in the movies was License to Kill. I've seen all of them on opening day since Goldeneye. And that includes No Time to Die, which I saw last night in 3D. I've waited all these years for a 3D Bond film. I couldn't be more excited for a movie. And yet, after seeing it, I'm kinda pissed off right about now.

Nothing to do with the 3D, by the way, which was serviceable and about what I'd expect from the modern 3D era. Nice depth, a couple of mild pop-outs.

The movie itself is what angers me. As I sit here and look back on the Craig era, I can't help but feel insulted.

Maybe it's because director Cary Joji Fukanaga denigrated the prior films in an infamous interview with the Hollywood Reporter, calling Connery's Bond a rapist. It seems to me that it's in poor taste to promote your movie by tearing down other films.

Maybe it's because in retrospect, the entire Craig era seems like a slap in the face to fans of the series.

Maybe it's the fact that I'm a cranky old white dude.

Maybe it's the fact that they fucking kill James Bond.

Look, I'll cop to the whole cranky old man thing. I AM, in fact, a cranky old man and I know it. But killing James Bond is just stupid. Denigrating the older films to make yourself look woke is stupid. Insulting the fans repeatedly is stupid. And the Craig films have, much like the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, done just that.

Think about the Sequel Trilogy. Forget the whole wokeness argument that gets brought up. I don't mind Rey, Finn, and Poe. I don't mind diversity. I actually kind of like those three characters. But the entire Sequel Trilogy seemed to be set up to kill off the characters I and other Original Trilogy fans grew up on. And so they did, one film at a time. It didn't occur to me watching them in the theaters what the filmmakers were doing, but when I watched all 11 Star Wars films in story order last year, I realized that yeah, the Sequel Trilogy was about killing off beloved characters and in a sense, giving OT fans the middle finger. Needless to say, I am in no rush to rewatch the Sequel Trilogy.

The Craig era kind of seems to have been set up the same way. It's not obvious in his first film, Casino Royale. In fact, that film seems closest to old school Bond out of the five. Yes, there's no gadgets in it. Yes, the idea that this is a reboot but Judi Dench is still M is kind of goofy. Yes, Bond at one point growls about not caring if his Martini is shaken not stirred. But the film in general comes off like one of the older Bond films, specifically the more grounded ones like On Her Majesty's Secret Service or For Your Eyes Only. Possibly because it's a reasonably faithful adaption of the novel. I didn't care for the change in game from Baccarat to Texas Hold 'Em, but I also recognized that it was simply a case of Bond following and adapting to the trends of popularity as he frequently did.

But yes, Casino Royale was a pretty faithful adaption, up to and including the death of Vesper. I remember sitting in the theater in 2006 and being impressed that they did the second half of the novel. The 1954 TV version with Barry Nelson did a reasonable adaptation of the first half, so seeing them cover the whole book in the Craig version impressed me. Unfortunately, killing Vesper then seemed to set the tone for the rest of Craig's run.

Quantum of Solace followed and it's a bottom five Bond, right down there with the likes of Never Say Never Again (I know, I know--it's not an official Bond film) and Die Another Day. A large part of this is the way the thing is shot. It's shot like a Christopher Nolan Batman movie with rapid cuts that make it impossible to know who is doing what to whom. That works for Nolan's Batman. It does not work for Bond. Add in an awful villain plot--stealing the water supply--and the killing of Giancarlo Giannini's Mathis and you have a film that quickly goes south. To add insult to injury, you could tell who all the new Bond fans were by how they kept talking about how innovative and original the movie was while I sat there counting all the scenes stolen from earlier films.

Next up was Skyfall. A lot of people love Skyfall. I like it quite a bit myself. But two things do bother me. First up is Bond having mommy issues involving M. That seemed a little much. Second is the film's direct slap in the face: the new Q making snide comments about exploding pens. There might be people who think the gadgets in the older Bond films are silly, but those gadgets are part of the fun of the older films thank you very much. And by the way, Goldeneye is a better Bond film. Fight me.

Skyfall ended with the promise that old school Bond was finally coming. The last scene where Craig walks in to the new M's office set the next film up to finally take us back to the glory days. Spectre started really delivering on that promise, too. At least it did up until the dumb twist of Blofeld saying "James, I am your brother". No, no, no, no. Ten hundred billion times no. Talk about unnecessary! I wanted to bang my head into a wall when that happened. Seriously, cut that twist out and Spectre fits nicely with the Connery and Moore films. But we had to continue the trend of "this time it's personal" that the Bond series has beaten into the ground since License to Kill.

And now we have No Time to Die. A movie Bond fans have waited patiently for six years for. The last time there was a six year gap was between License to Kill and Goldeneye and we had a switch in Bonds then. Six years waiting for Daniel Craig's last film and the first Bond in 3D.

It starts promisingly. The opening action scene is pretty good and the machine guns in the headlights is a nice nod to the earlier films. There's a wonderful sequence in Cuba with a hilarious performance by Ana De Armas as a CIA agent with three weeks training who ends up totally kicking ass. It's the type of scene you want in a Bond movie and I loved it. I wish she had stuck around for the rest of the movie. Unfortunately, right after she's done, they kill off Felix Leiter (Jeffrey Wright). Why? Just why? I liked Wright's take on Leiter. And hell, outside of David Hedison, he's the only guy to play the character more than once. Killing him off does nothing but ensure that if the character ever does return to the series, it's a different actor again. The film continues to go south from there.

What the movie wants to do is remake OHMSS. What Rami Malek's Safin is up to is not terribly different from Telly Savalas's Blofeld in the earlier movie--a plan to poison the world. And there's plenty of cues to the earlier film since music from it is used repeatedly in this one. Unfortunately, this movie isn't OHMSS. Safin is not Blofeld, not even Savalas's take on the character, which wasn't up to Donald Pleasance's take. Malek might have made for a decent Freddie Mercury, but he's definitely one of the weaker Bond villains, especially after Christoph Waltz's fantastic Blofeld (stupid twist notwithstanding). I like Lea Seydoux's Madeline Swann enough, but she's no Diana Rigg. And one thing can be said for George Lazenby's Bond is that there's at least a sense of humor. Craig is still too dour in the film. In fact, outside of Casino Royale, Craig hasn't really been all that funny as Bond at all.

But the film commits the ultimate sin. Whereas OHMSS killed Bond girl Tracy, this film actually kills James Bond. Like the earlier question about Leiter, the question here is Why? Because Craig is leaving the series? Five other actors left the series before him without being killed off. Bond isn't a doomed noir character, destined to die. He's James Bond, who runs around and saves the world. He's a fantasy character, kind of a superhero. I often wonder if the people who made these last four Bond movies actually bothered to watch any Bond movies.

Here's the problem with what this movie has done: it forces another reboot of the series. We already had one reboot with Casino Royale. So now we have to have another. Does this mean a new M, Q, and Moneypenny? I kind of  liked the current line up, but it would make little sense for them to be in the next film considering the ending of this one. Certainly we're going to need a new Leiter.

And please, none of that stupid fan theory that Bond is a codename. The first 20 films made it very clear he's the same guy. Is it going to be like Spider-Man or Batman where there's a reboot every time the actor changes? The genius of Bond is that didn't happen. It was the same guy for 20 films and 5 actors. The older films make it a point to let it be known that it IS the same guy. Do we really need a full reboot every time there's a new Bond actor now when we didn't?

I admit that when I first saw it, I didn't care much for OHMSS. In my defense, I was 14, I was used to Moore and Connery and didn't know what to make of Lazenby, and I didn't care for the killing of Tracy. But I grew to appreciate it as I got older. Maybe I'll grow to appreciate No Time to Die. In some respects, its better than QOS, but that's a low bar. There's very few Bond movies that aren't better than QOS.  I may look more favorably on it if they get back to the business of James Bond saves the world and not reboot every few years. I Want to like this film. I want to like all the Craig films. But right now I feel like writers, producers, and especially the directors have given me and fans like me who grew up loving Connery and Moore the middle finger.

I don't like that. I don't like it one bit.

Silent Madness (1984)

 

Silent Madness was one of those movies that just had a bad sense of timing all around. It came out too late in the 80s slasher craze to make an impression. By the time it was released in 1984, there had already been 3 sequels to Friday the 13th, two to Halloween, and innumerable knock-offs with such titles as My Bloody Valentine, Prom Night, Terror Train, Happy Birthday to Me, and so on. It also came out the year after 3D's big year so nobody was showing 3D movies at that time. It also came out right at the same time as Nightmare on Elm Street, which just totally bumped it out of theatres. As such, very few people saw it as it was originally intended. It didn't help the movie any that it doesn't really do anything that any other film in the genre does. In a bizarre way, it's a mash up between Halloween and the first Friday the 13th. 

The movie starts at Cresthaven Mental Hospital, somewhere in Manhattan. Cresthaven is overcrowded and understaffed, so a couple of incompetent doctors decide to release people back into society that they figure aren't a danger. Due to an absurd clerical error, one Howard Johns, a dangerous psychotic, is released instead of a simpleton named John Howard. Fearless Dr. Joan Gilmore (Belinda Montgomery) tumbles to this and tries to warn the upper management. They brush her off and claim that Johns is actually dead. Meanwhile, Johns somehow manages to get back to his old stomping grounds, Barrington School For Girls. See, Johns was the janitor there 20 years ago when he snapped and killed a bunch of sorority girls with a nail gun. How exactly Johns gets back to the college is never explained especially when we're told the school is over three hours away from the hospital. No matter. He's back and killing a new batch of sorority girls, some of whom don't even get names. Gilmore takes a weekend off and goes back to the school to track Johns down. The hospital decides to cover up and sends two demented orderlies after both Gilmore and Johns. 

Did you follow all of that? No. Doesn't matter. With a film like this you just tend to go along for the ride and enjoy the kills. Even when they're done with a hilarious cartoon ax.

The most creative thing the movie seems to have done is had then 34 year old Montgomery playing the film's Final Girl and not one of the teenagers. Montgomery does what she can with this, but while she seems to be trying to give a performance, Viveca Lindfors as the House Mom and Sidney Lassick as the Sheriff decide to say "to heck with it" and go wildly over the top. As do the insane orderlies. In fact, Montgomery seems to be the only one in the film not overacting!

At the end of the day this is your standard issue stalk and slash. The victims barely have names let alone personalities and the killer is the usual mute madman. Gore hounds will be a little disappointed that a lot of the admittedly inventive kills cut away before getting too gory and there's very little nudity for this type of thing. Is it better than it's kissing cousin Friday the 13th Part 3 in 3D? Maybe. The characters act a little less stupid. Well, most of them. The orderlies aren't particularly bright and neither is Lassick's sheriff. Some of the actors are a little better than in the 1982 slasher but that's a pretty low bar to be honest. Bizarrely, there's not one night scene anywhere in the movie. The only other slasher film that I can think of anything like that is the miserable 1997 3D cheapie Camp Blood, a movie so bad it makes this one look like Citizen Kane.

All things considered, I kinda like this movie. No, it's not very good. As I've pointed out before, none of the 80s 3D movies are any good, but this one is one of the slightly better ones. It's not something I'd watch every month or even every year, but I can see myself returning to it from time to time if only to get a laugh. 

Silent Madness came and went in October of 1984, overshadowed by Nightmare on Elm Street. It had a VHS release and a poor bootleg 3D version that wasn't even in the full widescreen. It's long been neglected and mostly forgotten except for by die hard slasher fans and 3D fans. Vinegar Syndrome and the 3D Film Archive decided somewhere along the way that Silent Madness was worth saving and now there's a beautiful 3D Blu Ray of it available. The Blu Ray includes 3 versions of the film: a 3D Blu Ray version requiring the proper TV and Blu Ray player, a 2D version (of course) and an anaglyphic (red/cyan) version that is probably the best anaglyphic video presentation I've ever seen. There's also a mess of extras on it including a fairly interesting documentary on the making of the movie and the original sizzle reel done for the movie.

If you're a 3D completist, you obviously need this disc. The 3D Film Archive worked their usual magic on it and as such it looks a lot better than most of the other 80s 3D films that have gotten a 3D Blu Ray release--Friday the 13th Part 3 included. The inclusion of the anaglyph version allows a wider audience to watch the movie in 3D. As I said, it's a much better anaglyph version than anything I've seen over the last 40 years of watching these things. Supposedly the 3D Film Archive will be doing this more and more on future releases.

I met Belinda Montgomery a few years ago at a Chiller Theatre convention and admitted to her that I liked her in a movie that I knew was a stupid movie. When she asked which one, I mentioned this one. She rolled her eyes and said "That is a stupid movie!"

Yes, Ms. Montgomery, it really is. But I kinda get a kick out of it.

Friday the 13th Part 3 3D (1982)

Friday the 13th Part 3 was the first major 3D movie of the 1980s. I, of course, am using the term major in a rather loose sense. But it was bigger budgeted than the two that preceded it--1981's Comin' At Ya! and the 1982 Demi Moore sci-fi horror flick Parasite--and it was the first one to be released by a major studio. It was also the first major hit in 3D in the 1980s. So in a way, it shares those things with 1953's House of Wax. However, that's where the similarities end.

The first of the Part 3 in 3D movies of the era, Friday the 13th Part 3 is generally considered the best of the 3D movies of the 80s. It's also the film that gave Jason his iconic hockey mask (he had a flour sack over his head in the previous film). Having finally watched it in 3D, I will say that the 3D is quite spectacular. The movie, on the other hand, is quite craptacular. I mean, this is the movie Scream referenced with the joke about running up the stairs instead of out the front door. It literally happens in the movie.

I see dead people

The opening five minutes (in 2D) are the end of the previous film. After burying a machete in Jason's arm, that film's final girl leaves. Jason, of course, is not dead, and he promptly gets up and walks off the wound. He heads over to a general store owned by an annoying couple named Harold and Edna, steals some clothes from them and murders them after a set up that feels like it takes forever.

Meantime, another bunch of dumb teens are getting together to go have a quiet weekend in the woods. They are Chris (Dana Kimmel), who is suffering PTSD from an encounter with Jason two years earlier, stoners Chuck and Chili, pregnant Debbie and her show-off boyfriend Andy, annoying prankster Shelly, and his reluctant date Vera. At the cabin they meet up with Chris's horny boyfriend Rick, who can't understand that she doesn't want to have sex due to what happened to her previously. None of these characters except for Final Girl Chris have any personality. They exist merely to be killed off by Jason. Shelly and Vera run afoul of a trio of bikers in a convenience store, who also have no personality but are there to also add to the body count. Death by meat clever, knitting needle, pitchfork, machete, fire poker, electrocution, spear gun, knife, and having one's eyeball popped out of their head ensues. 

The Lucky One

I get that you shouldn't expect too much from a film like this, but it would be nice if there was something to recommend it beyond the 3D. It's my understanding that this is one of the better entries in this series and all I can say about that is that I can't begin to imagine what the lesser entries are like. Most of the acting is non-existent, the characters are just tropes, and frankly, the movie isn't even scary. There's no real suspense to it. The big slaughter happens an hour into the film and is done with in about 10 minutes of screen time. I also understand that the gore effects were tamed to avoid trouble with the MPAA and there's very little nudity in it, too, which I always heard was a big part of these movies.

Instead director Steve Miner put all his eggs in the 3D basket with this one. Like most of the 80s crop of 3D movies, Friday the 13th Part 3 is more interested in what it can throw out of the screen than it is in telling a story. All manner of objects fly towards the audience, and not just implements of death from our hockey masked madman. Wallets, weed joints, popcorn, juggling fruit, and a yoyo coming flying our way along with the fire poker, spear gun, pitchfork, knives, and eyeballs. Some of the effects are pretty impressive while others are just plain stupid. For almost 40 years I heard about the legendary eyeball effect when Rick's head is crushed. Imagine my disappointment at how silly it looked when I finally saw it.

Come on, give me a ride, babe!

Despite the visual assault on the audience, the 3D is surprisingly well shot for this era. I don't know if Shout Factory made alignment corrections or it always looked like this, but the movie doesn't hurt one's eyeballs in quite the same way some of it's contemporaries like Comin' At Ya! do. 3D movies of the 80s had a bad habit of getting their gimmick shots too close to the camera, which made them physically uncomfortable to watch. Though there are some gimmick shots that come way out of the screen in this one, they don't reach the point of ripping your eyeballs out of your head watching them. 

As I've said before, none of the 80s 3D movies are what anyone would call good movies. In 3D they are sometimes fun and that goes for this film, too. I'd never watch it in 2D, though. I suppose if you're going to pick just one 3D movie from the 80s to watch, this is probably the one (though I'm partial to Jaws 3-D myself). Just don't expect anything as good as House of Wax.

3-D Thursday: Revenge of the Creature (1955)

There's several notable things about 1955's Revenge of the Creature: it was the last 3-D movie of the 1950s, the first 3-D sequel to a 3-D movie, the first 3-D movie shown in 3-D on non-cable broadcast, and personally speaking, the first 3-D movie I ever saw.  It was in May of 1982 and it was an anaglyphic broadcast, the first in the Philadelphia region. Though it really didn't work at all, my 11 year old brain was convinced it did. Mercifully, Universal and the 3D Film Archive restored the film and have released it on 3D Blu Ray which works beautifully.

Revenge picks up a year after the original Creature From the Black Lagoon. The Gill Man is still hanging out in the Amazon. Ocean Harbor Oceanarium sends George Johnson (Robert B Williams) and Joe Hayes (John Bromfield) to capture the Gill Man for scientific study. They enlist Lucas (Nestor Paiva), the boat captain from the first film, to take them to the Lagoon. After a near fatal encounter with the Creature, they manage to capture him and take him back to Florida. Once there, he's studied by Animal Psychologist Clete Ferguson (John Agar) and Ichthyology student Helen Dobson (Lori Nelson). He falls for Helen but gets sick of being hit with bull prods so he eventually escapes, wrecking havoc and killing Joe.  His downfall comes when he kidnaps Helen from a seafood house.

Revenge is not quite as good as it's original. The first half has too many comedy bits in it. First there's Lucas, but he's not too much and anyway, I always liked his character. Then we get some humor with a chimp followed by Clint Eastwood in his first role as a dumb lab tech with a rat in his pocket. It's neat to see Eastwood when he was so young, but the scene is disposable. Then we get Flippy the educated Porpoise who serves no purpose to the film outside of filler. Revenge was shot at Marineland in Florida and much like Jaws 3-D acts as a bit of an infomercial for Sea World, so does Revenge for Marineland. Mercifully the second half does away with Flippy and gives us some good Creature chaos with the Gill Man flipping over cars and tossing around college students like they're frisbees. There's also a few callbacks to the original in the second half. If the first half had been as strong as the second, this would have been fully as great as the original Creature. Unfortunately, the filler makes it a lesser entry.

The cast is good, though not quite up to the casting for the first film. John Agar did a bunch of these things back in the 1950s. This might be his best film. Lori Nelson is attractive enough and you can argue if her or Julia Adams is sexier. The scene in the motel room where she gets ready for a shower is surprisingly sexy for the 50s and predates Janet Leigh's ill-fated shower in Psycho by five years. But the triangle between Agar and Bromfield for her affections doesn't quite have the tension that existed between Richard Carlson and Richard Denning in the original. Paiva and Creature actor Rico Browning are the only two major actors to return from the original. Paiva is great as usual and gets the one genuinely funny line in the film when he says "I hope you're not going to blow up my boat, Mr. Johnson. Like my wife, she's not much but she's all I got". Browning, by the way, is the only actor to appear in all three films. He later assistant directed the underwater sequences in Thunderball. This was also the fourth and final 3-D film directed by Jack Arnold. Arnold held the record for directing the most theatrical 3-D films until Robert Rodriguez did five in the current era.

For decades, most people who got to see this in 3D only got to see it in anaglyphic format, whether it was anaglyphic on TV or 16mm. The 16mm print looked better than the TV print, of course, but seeing it as it was originally intended is an eye opener. The 3D Film Archive did a gorgeous job on this. The 3D is absolutely perfect here. Shots that were in reverse 3D for decades have been corrected and the alignment has been corrected shot by shot. It actually looks better on 3D Blu than the original film. The 3D version is included in the Creature Legacy Collection Blu Ray Set. There was some controversy as Universal accidentally released the 3D version in a Side By Side format as opposed to 3D Blu Ray format, but that's been corrected and the new version looks great. The depth is outstanding and the pop-outs memorable, especially when Agar hits the audience with the bull prod, the one effect that worked in the anaglyphic TV version.

One of the complaints about the film is that taking the Creature out of the Amazon removes much of the terror and mystery of the first film. This isn't totally incorrect though I still think the filler in the first half is what really drags the film down. When it's trying to be suspenseful and scary, it works wonderfully. The opening in the Amazon and the Creature's rampage when he escapes from his captivity are marvelous. The motel room scene is pretty creepy, too. All in all, it's at least half a worthy sequel that just slightly misses the mark. But thankfully we can see it the way it was meant to be seen, since this works much better in it's 3-D format than 2-D.