Poor Arch Oboler. The man absolutely loved 3D movies and was a pioneer in their production, but just couldn't make a truly great one. He did three over the course of 20 years, each one worse than the one that preceded it. The Bubble, from 1966, is the second of his trio and appropriately falls directly in the middle in terms of quality. Not as goofily entertaining as Bwana Devil, the film that kicked off the short-lived 50s craze, nor as mind-numbingly boring as Domo Arigato, The Bubble tries hard but falls short.
The film starts with a plane trapped in a freak storm. The pilot (crooner Johnny Desmond) is forced to land when the couple he's flying (Michael Cole and Deborah Walley) need to get to a hospital. Seems Walley is expecting and in answer to husband Cole's question, no, she can't "just hold it in". Right away something is off: they land on a road and the cab driver who shows up just keeps saying "Cab mister?". After they get to town and the baby is born, things get noticeably weirder. The town itself looks off: an old west style saloon is down the street from the hospital, the street lights look like they're from the early 20th century, and then there's the Roman columns. To add to the weirdness, everybody keeps doing and saying the same things over and over. When Cole, Walley, and Desmond try to leave, they discover that a malignant alien is keeping the town trapped in a giant plastic bubble.
Reading all of that, some of you are no doubt saying either "huh, sounds like a pretty good movie to me" or "hey, that sounds just like Under the Dome!". I won't comment on the latter, but don't fool yourselves, either. This is not a pretty good movie. It is a movie that has been compared to an overlong Twilight Zone episode and that's one of it's main drawbacks. Had it just been a 30 minute TV episode, it would likely be a fairly intense and disturbing tale. But at 90 minutes--and it used to run 112 minutes until it was cut by Oboler in 1967--it goes on too long. It also doesn't help that Cole (and Oboler) feel the necessity to explain every little thing that goes on. It seems like half of Cole's dialogue starts with "I have a theory about that...". This is the type of movie that works better the less you know and it's unfortunate that Oboler chooses to tell instead of show. A little less theorizing and this would be a pretty creepy movie.
It's not that it's a completely rotten movie. It tries to be a pretty cerebral experience, much like a third season episode of Star Trek. The problem is that like a season three Trek episode, the movie starts with a terrific premise then runs out of ways to explore it fairly quickly. It becomes something along the lines of The Great Escape in it's third act with Cole desperately digging away to escape from the bubble. Certainly the actors try their best. Cole was just starting The Mod Squad, so this was a way to show he could carry a movie. But seriously, all the guy does is throw one theory out after another. Walley probably signed on to show she could do more than look good in a bikini, but after a while all she seems to do is fret and fuss. The only truly amusing one of the trio is Desmond, who hams it up, but also disappears for a good chunk of screen time.
The Bubble is the first of the single-strip 3D movies. Prior to this, unless a movie was released in anaglyphic (red/blue) 3D, it was released in a dual strip format with two projectors running in synchronization (theoretically). However, the 50s films were often plagued with awful projection problems, including running the films out of sync. It was those projection problems that caused the various headaches audiences complained of and the subsequent death of the process. Oboler and Col. Robert Brenier, the inventor of the single strip system used here (Spacevision), believed that their system could fix the mis-projection issues the 50s films had. I can tell you that while the idea was good, single-strip 3D movies could and were just as poorly projected as the dual strip variety. I saw single strip showings of House of Wax, Dial M For Murder, and Silent Madness that were so incorrectly shown, they made me want to cry.
It's also worth noting that when released in 1966, The Bubble really was a harbinger of the 3D films to come. There's a ton of gimmick shots in the movie, some of which are pretty silly. Some even look pretty obviously just tossed in there. In other words, the very thing that people scoff at 3D for pretty well start with this film. Having said that, some of the gimmick shots are outright spectacular. The floating tray of beer is one of the top twenty gimmick shots of all time.
If you're curious to know what this film looks like, Kino has it on 3D Blu Ray courtesy of the geniuses of the 3D Film Archive. The Archive, the same people behind the restoration of Dragonfly Squadron, has done an astonishing job of restoring The Bubble. I've seen it twice before this Blu Ray and I can tell you it never looked this good. Not only are all alignment issues corrected, but the image is cleaned up and color corrected in a way that makes the film look possibly even better than it did in 1966! Seriously, the restoration on The Bubble makes it look like millions of dollars was spent on it. That's not the case, but it sure looks it.
I suppose your mileage may vary when watching this. I've seen the movie three times now. The first time was on VHS (look it up, youngsters) in a horrible anaglyphic version released by Rhino Home Video in 1999. I spent nearly a year looking for the tape and then was bored out of my brain by it when I finally saw it. It played a little better when I saw it next on the big screen during the World 3-D Film Expo II in 2006 at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, but I still wasn't crazy about it. This Blu Ray has nearly made me a true believer. The movie still has storytelling flaws--some of them nearly deadly--but since it looks better and plays so wickedly with 3D gimmick shots, it's a lot more fun to watch. And any vintage 3D movie released on 3D Blu Ray is worth seeking out (he said having not yet gotten up the courage to watch The Flesh and Blood Show). I'd never watch it in 2D myself, but there's not many 3D movies I'd want to watch in 2D anyhow. But if you want to have a 3D party, you could do worse than The Bubble, that's for sure.
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