3-D Thursday: Gog (1954)

To appreciate a film restoration, it helps to have seen what the movie looked like pre-restoration. Most restorations have a demo showing the movie in poor condition and then showing it looking nice and shiny and almost new. I have always had a hard time connecting with these demos, however, since I have no recollection of seeing the movies in question looking so bad. The Looney Tunes cartoons, for instance, I only ever saw look horrible in bad PD releases. In that sense, if the restoration demo was of Daffy the Commando and not one of the duck season/rabbit season cartoons, I'd have been impressed since I had only seen Daffy the Commando look like garbage.

I mention all of this because one movie I have seen in lesser form that has been restored is 1954's Gog. For decades, the 3-D version of Gog was considered lost to the ages. As Bob Furmanek of the 3-D Film Archive tells it, the color version was gone, too. It would play in 2-D, black and white, and full frame. A color 2-D version surfaced in the 1980s.When the 3D version finally surfaced in 2003, the left eye print was red as a beet while the right eye had color, though not too vibrant. That's the way I saw it in 3D in 2006 at The World 3-D Film Expo II and while not ideal, it was better than not getting to see it in 3D at all.

So imagine my reaction to the new Kino 3D Blu Ray of Gog. I have just three letters to describe this: O.M.G.

You know how great the Warner 3D Blu Rays of House of Wax and Kiss Me Kate look? Yeah, this looks that good. Not only has the color been restored to the red left eye but the color in general is more vibrant. Anyone who has scene this either in it's poorer 3D version or even the TV version that's shown up can tell you that the color was okay but not particularly vibrant. But if you want a good example of improvement, watch the scene where Richard Egan and Herbert Marshall first meet. The chair Egan sits in is practically Technicolor red!

The restoration, of course, is courtesy of the 3-D Film Archive. And for those of you who are gonna groan "here he goes talking about those guys again!", yeah! I am! I thought the 3-D Rarities disc was their crowning achievement. But this---THIS---is nothing short of a miracle. Watching Gog here was like watching it for the first time ever. This is undoubtedly what the movie looked like upon original release. Maybe even better.

Gog is the third--and by all accounts best--of the Ivan Tors Office of Scientific Investigation trilogy. It starts when two scientists--serial fans will recognize them as Aline Towne and Micheal Fox--are murdered in a freeze chamber in an underground base dedicated to the space race. O.S.I investigator David Sheppard (Richard Egan) is called in to investigate by base leader Dr. Van Ness (Herbert Marshall), Van Ness suspects that there's a saboteur on base but can't find him. Sheppard is assisted by Joanna Merritt (Constance Dowling), another OSI agent undercover on the base already. The suspects are many: the slightly perverted Dr. Elzevir (Philip Van Zandt) and his jealous wife (Valerie Vernon; arrogant scientist Dr. Zeitman (John Wengraf), who theoretically controls super computer NOVAC and deadly robots Gog and Magog; Dr. Burden (David Alpert), who is in charge of the computer pile; and Dr. Engle (William Schallert), Dr. Zeitman's assistant all top the list. The real enemies turn out to be the Godless Commies, who built a powerful radio transmitter and receiver into NOVAC during construction and are now using it and the robots to kill various scientists on base, with the ultimate goal of setting off a nuclear reaction that will destroy it.

Gog is an interesting piece of Cold War paranoia, a peek back at a time when the Red Under the Bed was a threat both real and imagined. Zeitman, for instance, so obviously seems to be the saboteur because he's an arrogant foreigner. The movie knows we'll think this and plays it to the hilt.

Surprisingly, the movie's science isn't as dodgy about space travel as many of it's ilk. Indeed, some of what goes on in the movie is even in use today. For instance, there's a sense involving a centrifuge. Okay, so there's a little goofiness--one character suffers from radiation poison, then is later told she's going to be just fine--but overall this is a pretty smart movie with more science fact than fiction.

Gog was the last movie shot with the Natural Vision 3-Dimension camera system by Lothrop Worth.This was the system used on House of Wax. Like that earlier film, the 3-D is spectacular. There's a great sense of depth throughout despite the limits of the sets. There's also some occassionally fun pop-out effects as there always seemed to be in these things.

According to Greg Kintz of the 3-D Film Archive, every single shot needed no less than 7 levels of correction. As I said, the left eye was red and the right eye was faded and damaged. But you wouldn't know it to see the final Blu Ray. It looks every bit as spectacular as other 50s sci-fi films released to Blu Ray like Forbidden Planet. If you want a good idea of what the film looked like before and after, there's a dandy restoration demo on the Blu. There's an even better demo on http://www.3dfilmarchive.com/gog.

If you're a fan of 50s sci-fi, this is a must buy. Even if you've seen it before and casually dismissed it, you should check it out. As any movie buff will tell you, a large part of enjoyment comes from presentation. And the presentation here is nothing shy of spectacular. Gog may be the 3D Film Archive's finest hour yet.

IMAGES COURTESY OF THE 3-D FILM ARCHIVE