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.

Why 3-D Isn't As Dead As You Think

Once again, another source, Cheddar News on YouTube, has proclaimed the Final Death of 3-D. Of course, they've done so with a ton of misinformation. What's particularly sad about this is the attempt to educate us about 3-D while knowing nothing about it. So let's go through this once again: 3-D is not as dead as you think or the haters want. Sorry to disappoint the haters.

Let's talk a little about the history for 3-D for a moment. The earliest 3-D experiments date back to at least 1915 with the first feature in 3-D being in 1922. The Cheddar News video does correctly attribute these to being in the anaglyphic (red/cyan) format. There was a mini-boom in the 20s, mostly shorts with a couple of features. Why did it go away in the 20s? I would think mostly because the big experimentation was for sound. Sound and the Great Depression put a kibosh on a number of film experiments at the time, including Widescreen.

During the 1930s, polarized 3-D was being developed. One of the earliest polarized films was shown at the 1939 World's Fair in NY, a stop motion film called In Tune With Tomorrow. It was remade the following year in color as New Dimensions. The shorts were done in dual strip polarized 3-D. According to Cheddar, polarized glasses as yellow and brown as opposed to red and blue. What this proves is that the person doing the video hasn't actually seen any 3-D movies, especially polarized ones. Polarized glasses are clear and made of polarizing filters that are at a 90 degree angle to one another. Yellow and brown indeed.

World War II put a hold on further 3-D experimentation until the 1950s. And frankly, 3-D has pretty much been with us in one way or another ever since. Don't believe me? Let's look at the evidence.

It's generally accepted that Bwana Devil kicked off 3-D in the 1950s, but you can actually take it back a year to the Festival of Britain in 1951. A number of 3-D shorts were shot and shown there and almost all of them ended up in America in early 1953 after the success of Bwana Devil. Bwana Devil and 99% of all the 3D movies of the 50s were done in dual strip polarized 3-D. There were a couple of part 3D Burlesque features in anaglyph, but the mainstream stuff was all polarized. How does dual strip polarized 3-D work? It's shot using two cameras, one for each eye. It's then projected through two projectors. The two projectors have to be in perfect synchronization. The screen has to be an actual silver screen to reflect the light back. And the polarizing filters that the image passes through on the projector have to be changed every few days. They also have to be clean of smudges and fingerprints, as do the glasses. In short, projection of dual strip 3-D was a very precise science and if just one thing went wrong, the whole presentation would blow up.

Naturally, projectionists didn't care to be that precise. If they couldn't get it to sync up right away, they'd just let it go. Even one frame out of sync can lead to headaches and nausea. There reports of film being a full 24 frames--one full second--out of sync. To give you an idea of what that might look like, picture watching House of Wax and your left eye sees a medium shot of Vincent Price and your right eye sees a two shot of Price and Charles Bronson. The theater owners would cheap out as well, painting the screen instead of installing a proper silver screen. The projectionist union demanded two projectionists in a booth for 3-D shows, 3 if the magnetic stereo soundtrack was involved. Theater owners fought that, too. The end result was many shoddy presentations which left patron sick. Audiences began avoiding 3-D movies for this reason.

While all this was going on, 20th Century Fox was developing CinemaScope, a widescreen process that only used a single projector and a special lens. Theater owners, projectionists, and eventually audiences preferred this over the precision of 3-D, so many 3-D movies started getting flat showings only. Universal rolled out one last 3-D movie in 1955, Revenge of the Creature, and that as they say was that.

But not quite. As early as 1957, 3-D movies were being successfully reissued. The first new 3-D movie after Revenge of the Creature was also the first one released in 3-D and CinemaScope: September Storm in 1960. September Storm became the last dual strip 3-D movie. The following year, The Mask became the first of the part 3-D releases, with 3 segments in anaglyphic 3-D. This was followed by a pair of Nudie Cuties also in part 3-D in 1962, The Bellboy and the Playgirls and Paradiso. A third Nudie Cutie, Adam and Six Eves, was shot in 3-D but released flat until it made a 3-D Blu Ray debut last year courtesy of the 3-D Film Archive and Kino. 3-D took another four years off before returning with 1966's The Bubble, the first single strip polarized 3-D film. Single strip 3-D was supposed to solve the problems of projection. Each image was printed on the same strip of film, either side by side or over and under. They were then projected--again on a silver screen--through a special beam splitter. The whole thing should have been idiot-proof. Never underestimate the idiocy of the American projectionist, however. I've seen far too many single strip presentations that were sometimes painfully mis-projected: the wrong type of screen, the wrong type of beam splitter, the beam splitter not put on correctly, as well as the film being cut incorrectly by the projectionists all could and did wreak havoc on unsuspecting audiences for literally decades.

Nonetheless, The Bubble begat a system that was used for decades. It was followed by Paul Naschy's La Marca del Hombre Lobo in 1968, released in the US in 1971 as Frankenstein's Bloody Terror. 1969 gave us the infamous porn The Stewardesses, which set off a decade of similar films. There were some mainstream films in the 70s, including the part 3-D horror film The Flesh and Blood Show,  the 1974 gorefest Andy Warhol's Frankenstein,  the 1976 South Korean Kaiju flick A*P*E, and a couple of Kung Fu movies. While not everything was mainstream, 3-D was still alive and kicking for practically the whole decade.

3-D took a 3 year break before returning with Comin' At Ya! in 1981. That film started a new mini-boom that lasted until 1985 and produced 18 movies in 3-D. Maybe not as much as the 50s boom, but 3-D was very front and center for a few years in the 80s. Why did it die this time? I suspect projectionists had something to do with it as well as the simple fact that all 18 movies are actually terrible movies. The 50s had some bad films, too, but by and large the 50s batch was pretty good. There wasn't a single good movie released in 3-D from 1981 to 1985. I know because I've seen most of them. I can't imagine that the few I haven't seen are much better than the ones I have.

Six years went between 1985's Starchaser: The Legend of Orin and 1991's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, which was another part 3-D anaglyphic affair. But that's not the full story, either since IMAX 3-D was ramping up starting in the mid-1980s and Disney was having a lot of success with Captain EO at their theme parks. In fact, IMAX 3-D (and porn ironically) carried 3-D through the 90s. And it was an IMAX 3-D release, James Cameron's 2003n Titanic documentary Ghosts of the Abyss, coupled with that same year's part 3-D anaglyphic release of Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over that set the current boom in motion. But even before that there were a few more mainstream releases: a terrible 1995 film called Run For Cover with Adam West in it and a 1997 Charles Band horror comedy called The Creeps. Plus there were 3-D made for video horror films in the late 90s like the atrocious Camp Blood. To say nothing of all the theme park attractions in 3-D like T2 3D: Battle Across Time, Shrek 4-D, MuppetVision 3-D, etc.

Ever since Spy Kids 3-D, there hasn't been a year without 3-D movies. Part of the longevity now seems to be the fact that projection is finally Projectionist-proof. Outside of forgetting to turn the 3-D filter for the projector on (I've seen this happen), there's no way the image can be screwed up nowadays. It also helps that there's much better movies being made nowadays as opposed to the batch from the 60s through the 90s. While there's definitely been some stinkers in the past 17 years, there's been plenty of movies like Hugo, Gravity, Life of Pi, the various Marvel and Star Wars movies, etc. that can stand alongside the classics of the 50s. The circular polarized glasses are better, too. More comfortable and you can tilt your head without losing the effect. Of course, Hollywood did itself no favors with some lousy rushed conversions like Clash of the Titans, but now even the conversions look great. Watching The Force Awakens or The Walk, you'd hardly believe they weren't actually shot in 3-D.

Yes, there's not as many 3-D movies as there were 7 or 8 years ago, but there's still some high profile releases. Yes, TV manufacturers stopped making 3-D TVS, but you can still get 3-D projectors for the home. Frankly, bigger is better with 3-D anyhow. There's a huge difference between seeing The Force Awakens in 3-D on a 50 inch TV screen and seeing it on a 100 inch projection screen. And while it is also true that not as many 3-D Blu Rays are being released in America, you can still get many of the big releases from Europe. I've gotten the last half dozen Marvel movies and the last 3 Star Wars movies all from the UK on 3-D Blu Ray, and all region free. On top of that, the 3-D Film Archive is still releasing several titles a year on 3-D Blu Ray. Taza, Son of Cochise will be out from the 3DFA and Kino later this month. And unless Covid-19 kills movie theaters totally forever, there are some high profile releases coming this fall like Black Widow and Wonder Woman 1984.

So no, 3-D is not totally dead. And it really hasn't been totally dead for nearly 70 years. Even when it goes away, it only goes away for a few years before poking back up in some fashion. The longest gap between movies since the 50s has been five, and that was right after Revenge of the Creature. All the other gaps have been an average of 3-4 years. So I have to say it: 3-D, like the Force, will be with us always.

3-D Thursday: 3-D Rarities Vol II

The 3-D Film Archive has done it again. Five years after the incredible 3-D Rarities from the 3D Film Archive and Flicker Alley, we a second installment that's nearly as great as it's predecessor. There may be a little less this time, but what there is, is wonderful.

Vol. II kicks off with A Day in the Country, a 1953 Lippert short. Originally shot in New Jersey in 1941 as Stereo Laffs and intended to beat the Pete Smith short Third Dimensional Murder to the screen, A Day in the Country basically sat on a shelf until Lippert put it out to cash in the 3D craze that was just getting under way. The short was released in anaglyphic format back then, one of the rare anaglyph releases. Narrated by future Stooge Joe Besser, the short is a pleasant if somewhat goofy affair that, like the Smith short, manages to throw everything it can think of out of the screen at you. Incidentally, this is from the only surviving print, a somewhat faded anaglyph. The image might not be the prettiest, but it's the best we'll see on this one.

If you're a little more highbrow than that, the second short should be more up your alley: The Black Swan, a 1951 ballet short shot for the Festival of Britain. It's incredibly well staged in 3D and makes you wonder why more shorts like it weren't done. A couple of other shorts for the Festival of Britain were included on Volume I, so maybe Volume III could complete the collection!*

Hillary Hess narrates the next part, a 20 minute collection of 3-D stills taken from the mid-40s to the late 50s. It's a fascinating look at a time long gone and Hess's narration brings it even more to life. Most fans praise this segment the most and for good reason.

A very odd short done in 1966, Games in Depth, is up next. Shot by the Polaroid company, Apparently intended for Expo '67 but never released until now. It's a mess of different shots set to goofy music, which is pretty bizarre but worth watching at least once.

The prologue to Frankenstein's Bloody Terror follows. I missed my chance to see the film itself in 3-D a few years ago and this two minute prologue really makes me regret that. Following that and rounding out the shorts section is a trailer for the never released clip documentary, The 3-D Movie. It's sad we'll never see this film as it looked like a ton of fun with clips from The Stranger Wore a Gun and Gorilla at Large among other things.

Then comes the centerpiece of the whole thing, the first Mexican 3-D feature, El Corazon y La Espada. Starring Cesar Romero and Katy Jurado, this is a wonderful little swashbuckler about a Spanish nobleman (Romero) out to take back his castle from the Moors. Jurado is the spitfire looking for the formula to turn lead into gold.  Ponce De Leon is also tagging along, looking for the Rose of Youth. There's a lot of sneaking around secret passages, which looks great in 3-D. The sword play won't make it forget Errol Flynn, but the movie is reasonably fun. I've certainly seen worse 3-D movies over the years. The disc allows you to watch it either in Spanish with subtitles or the English dubbed track from the movies 1956 re-release in America as Sword of Granada. A Kickstarter campaign was done to complete the restoration of the film and as it result, it looks spectacular.

The disc finally ends with a selection of 3D stills taken by Harold Lloyd. I've seen at least some of these before since I have a book of Lloyd's stills, but they're even more spectacular here. Harold's granddaughter Suzanne narrates this wonderful look back at a bygone era.

3-D Rarities II is, as I said earlier, nearly as great as the first one. There's less here but it's still great stuff. The only real knock on the disc is that you can't access each short separately like you could the original disc. Nonetheless, this is another must have from the 3-D Film Archive.

3-D Thursday: It Came From Outer Space (1953)

Fueled by the terrors of Godless Communism, Nuclear War, and the mysterious happenings at Roswell, the 1950s were a Golden Age of Science Fiction movies like no other decade before or since. One of the best of the decade, 1953's It Came From Outer Space is making a long awaited 3D Blu Ray debut courtesy of Universal Studios and the 3-D Film Archive.

The film opens memorably with a meteor crashing into a mine in the desert outside a sleepy town in Arizona. Amateur astronomer John Putnam (Richard Carlson) and girlfriend Ellen Fields (Barbara Rush) witness the crash and go to investigate. Putnam gets a good enough look at the meteor to realize it's actually a spaceship with something alive roaming around inside. The problem arises when the ship is covered over by an avalanche. Putnam tries enlisting help digging the ship out, but the town mocks him. Then weird things start happening and certain members of town begin to wonder if there's something to Putnam's story after all.

Incidentally, Carlson isn't the only cult figure in the movie. Playing the part of George is none other than The Professor himself, Russell Johnson. No, he doesn't get billed as "And the rest". But he does get one of the movie's creepiest scenes, staring blankly into the sun without blinking as one of the Xenomorphs. Joe Sawyer is Johnson's partner. Fans of the Marx Brothers will recognize Charles Drake (A Night in Casablanca) as the sheriff. On the feminine side, we have Barbara Rush in the first of her two 3-D movies and 50s starlet Kathleen Hughes as George's girlfriend. Hughes made a big enough impression that she got a larger role in Arnold's next 3-D movie, The Glass Web. She also amusingly gets a title card at the end despite having less than five minutes of screen time!

One of the best things about 50s sci-fi movies is how intelligent they often are. It Came From Outer Space stands alongside The Day the Earth Stood Still (the 1951 version) as being one of the most intelligent of the lot. Part of that comes from Ray Bradbury. A lot of the dialogue in the movie is his and it absolutely sings in that way that only Bradbury could. It touches on themes common to movies of the era--the unending terror of the Red Under The Bed in particular. The fact that the Xenomorphs could look like and therefore be anyone in town was somewhat unsettling. And yet, there is a special irony in the fact that the aliens actually do come in peace. But as the movie itself points out, we tend to destroy that which we fear and don't understand.

It Came From Outer Space was Universal's first 3-D film. It was also the first of four 3-D movies made by Jack Arnold. Originally projected in dual strip polarized 3-D, the movie was converted to a single strip anaglyphic form in 1972 for re-issue. Since then, that's the way most people have seen the film if they've seen it in 3-D. While I won't go so far as to say that the anaglyphic version is purely awful, it's not as good as the original dual strip version. And surprisingly, the original dual strip version isn't as good as this 3-D Blu Ray.

That's largely due to the efforts of the 3-D Film Archive. Universal gave them access to the materials to do a full scale restoration of the movie. While they didn't have to quite jump through the hoops they did on Gog earlier this year, they still pulled off a mini-miracle. All dirt, scratches, and splices have been fixed along with all alignment issues. All reverse 3-D shots have been fixed. In short, the movie looks better now than any other time in it's history. And yet even that is only the tip of the laser. The soundtrack is where the movie really pops to life.

It Came From Outer Space was one of the early stereophonic releases, shown in a 3 track stereo sound in 1953.That soundtrack has not been heard since then. That's right. Not one single prior home video release of the movie--not the anaglyphic VHS released in 1980 nor the 2D version put out by Goodtimes in the late 1980s nor the DVD from 2003--has had the stereo soundtrack. And guess what? That anaglyphic 35mm and 16mm re-issue from 1972 didn't have it either. In short, not only have people been watching the movie in a fairly sub-par manner for the past nearly 45 years, they've been hearing it in a sub-par manner! This soundtrack rocks.The explosions are Loud. It's a soundtrack as 3-Dimensional as the movie is.

As a postscript, it's worth noting that in 1996, the Sci-Fi channel released a "sequel" called It Came From Outer Space II. Don't feel sad if you've never seen it. It wasn't so much a sequel as a really poor remake that replaced the astronomer with a photographer (why?) and made the aliens a little more malevolent, thereby completely missing the point of the original movie. You can, of course, seek it out if you're in a sadomasochistic mood, but I wouldn't recommend it.

If you've never seen It Came From Outer Space in 3-D, then you've never properly seen the movie. Like so many of the 50s 3-D films, the added dimension adds layers to the story the 2-D version never could. This is one of those 3-D movies that takes place in the desert, and boy does that desert go on forever. The vastness of the desert only adds to the menace.

This new Blu Ray is really the only way to see It Came From Outer Space. And considering the price (under $10!), it's a better bargain than most new 3-D movies.  If you're a 3-D fan, consider this one a must-own release.

3-D Classics on Blu Ray

If you're a fan of vintage 3-D 2016 has been a pretty awesome year so far. MVD kicked things off in January with 1981's Comin' At Ya!. Admittedly, that's a terrible movie--all of the 80s 3-D films fail at being good movies--but it has a lot of goofy 3-D gimmick shots so it's kind of fun in that manner.

Kino Lorber in March released Gog courtesy of the 3-D Film Archive. I've mentioned before what a fantastic restoration it is and it bears repeating. Gog hasn't looked this good since its initial release in 1954. This is a restoration to rival restorations from the major studios, that's how well done it is. If you're a fan of 50s science fiction or classic 3-D movies, you really need to get this one.

Going back to 80s 3-D for a moment, last month Universal finally released all 3 Jaws sequels on Blu Ray. Included in this, of course, is Jaws 3-D. While they didn't make as big a deal about it as it can be argued they should have, that Blu includes the 3-D version listed as a special feature. But it's the 3-D Blu Ray edition, unlike Paramount's anaglyphic release of Friday the 13th Part 3. Some of the gimmick shots get way too close to the camera for comfort but the 3-D looks great. I have a warm spot for Jaws 3-D (despite knowing it's a bad movie) since it was my first 3-D movie in the theaters so I'm glad it's finally out the way it was meant to be seen. Besides, why would you want to watch it any other way?

The most recent release is a 1950s title from Twilight Time. Miss Sadie Thompson starring Rita Hayworth and Jose Ferrer shipped just this week. Sony did a beautiful 3-D DCP restoration a few years ago. I saw that DCP at the 2013 World 3-D Film Expo and it looked terrific. That's what Twilight Time is releasing. I'm looking forward to revisiting this soon.

There's more on the way, too. Kino Lorber and the 3-D Film Archive are working on 1976's A*P*E.  A South Korean Kaiju movie made to compete  with the Dino DeLaurentis remake of King Kong, A*P*E has a ridiculous looking 36 foot gorilla rampaging across Korea, kidnapping Joanna Kerns (the mom from Growing Pains), and flipping off the audience! While it wouldn't be my first choice for restoration, I'm confident the 3-D Film Archive will make it look better than it deserves. More exciting is the potential restoration of September Storm from the 3-D Film Archive. There's a Kickstarter campaign to fund the restoration at https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3-dspace/september-storm-1960-3-d-digital-feature-film-rest. If you are a fan of vintage 3-D, you owe it to yourself to contribute to this.

On top of that, Shout Factory has announced 1983's Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn. Charles Band's second of three 3-D movies, Metalstorm stars Kelly Preston in the second worst sci-fi movie she was in (Battlefield Earth remains the champ) and Richard Moll in the part that got him the role of Bull in Night Court. It has just enough goofy 3-D effects to make it worth watching, too. The 3-D Blu Ray will be released on September 13.

Finally, Universal may be working on the 1953 sci-fi classic It Came From Outer Space. Originally, Panamint in the U.K. had announced a release set for this month but cancelled it when Universal said they were planning a release. It the Universal Blu Ray is the same as what Panamint was planning, it will include the short that originally played with the movie, Nat King Cole and Russ Morgan's Orchestra. Universal hasn't confirmed anything yet, however, so vintage 3-D fans wait eagerly for news.

For those of you who wonder why I get so enthusiastic about these old 3-D movies and not so much the newer ones, it's because I generally find the older titles have better 3-D. They take better advantage of the process with greater depth and more gimmick shots. Even the less gimmicky films of the 50s are deeper and, as a rule, have at least some pop outs. There are more recent titles that have     nothing coming out of the screen at all. They also usually don't take as much advantage of the depth as they could. There are exceptions, of course, but they aren't the rule. So until all modern filmmakers bring the fun back to 3-D, I'll continue to jump at any of these older titles.

Serial Saturday: The Invisible Monster (1950)

The Invisible Monster is Olive Films' first Republic serial release on Blu Ray and it looks absolutely spectacular. Unfortunately, it's still The Invisible Monster and that's not really a good thing.


I get why Olive chose to lead off with The Invisible Monster. It's goofy 50s sci-fi with an exploitation title. However, there are plenty of Repulbic serials with exploitation type titles, some of them quite good such as Haunted Harbor. And while it is true that there are worse serials than The Invisible Monster--it never reaches the depressing depths of Man with the Steel Whip or Panther Girl of the Kongo--it's not an especially good serial either.

The serial concerns the machinations of a mad scientist who refers to himself as The Phantom Ruler (not The Invisible Monster, it should be noted). He brings several illegal aliens into the country--a timely theme I suppose--and threatens them with arrest and deportation if they refuse to help him in his criminal enterprises. He's attempting to raise funds for an invisible army with which he plans to conquer the world.

"You clean the office while I raid the hideout, OK?"

Opposing him is Insurance Investigator Lane Carson (Richard Webb, TV's Captain Midnight) and his gal Friday Carol (Aline Towne). Well, Carol is sort of Lane's gal Friday. Despite proving her competency again and again, he tends to tell her in so may words not to come along because it's man's work. I do tend to place movies into the context of their time frame, but the casual sexism exhibited is a bit of a bother since it was just a few years earlier that Republic gave the heroines backbone and skill. Six years prior to The Invisible Monster, Linda Stirling was kicking ass as the titular lead of Zorro's Black Whip and Kay Alrdidge was saving Kane Richmond as often as he saved her in Haunted Harbor. However, by the 1950s, Republic's view of it's leading ladies was as bad as it was in 1936 and that's a shame.


Anyhow, back to the serial.


The Phantom Ruler wears special robes treated with a particular chemical which, when exposed to a particular spotlight, allow him to become invisible. Digest that bit of information for a moment. A spotlight is necessary for the invisibility and he wants to outfit an army to conquer the world like that. Yeah, that's not gonna work. Small wonder he eventually downgrades from conquering the world to conquering the community. God help us, not even the entire city--the community. One tends to get the feeling that had the serial gone much past 12 chapters, he would have downgraded to conquering a broom closet.

Some of you may have read the above paragraph and decided that this thing is too daffy to pass up. While it definitely has it's moments, such as the Phantom growling at one of his henchmen to move the spotlight slowly so he can stay in it or his delusional belieft that he only needs $200,000 (the only sucessful heist he has in all 12 chapters) to fund his worldwide army, it becomes too paint by numbers after a while. Republic serials followed a fairly strict formula and as such they lived and died by their cast. The Invisible Monster is no exception.

The whole community will be wearing them

Webb and Towne are okay as their heroes, but they're both pretty bland. Webb is certainly no Clayton Moore and Towne is no Linda Stirling. There's no particualr spark to their characters except for one amusing scene in chapter one where Webb is attempting to dismiss the idea of receiving help from a woman and Towne is nonchalantly pointing out all the detective work she already did that he didn't get to yet. By this point, Republic was picking their leads based more on their resemblance to stuntman than on acting ability, so we're lucky we got these two. At least Webb sort of tries, unlike later heroes like Myron Healey. The henchman, played by Lane Bradford and John Crawford, fair a little better, but even they aren't up to the standards of mean set by such forties henchmen as George J. Lewis and Anthony Warde. As for the Phantom Ruler himself, well, he's the serial's single biggest liability.


The Phantom Ruler is played by Stanley Price, today best remembered as the frizzy haired henchman to Phil Van Zandt in the 3 Stooges short Dopey Dicks. Stanley Price made for a pretty good henchman, not only in that short but in numerous serials. He was short, frizzy haired, and fairly creepy/bug-eyed. However, like Anthony Warde and George J. Lewis before him*, he mighta been a good henchman but he was a rotten head villain. He has no sense of menace except for when he's threatening the illegal aliens he's brought in. It doesn't help that he looks like a bug-eyed psycho like usual but is trying to play a suave villain. The part really called out for a Charles Middleton or Roy Barcroft, but by 1950 Middleton was dead and Barcroft wasn't doing many serials. Add to that the absurdity of the villain's entire scheme--which in the later chapters even he seems to recognize might not have been as well thought out as he would have liked--and yeah, this comes off as a let down.

 Clayton Moore could drive and shoot at the same time

The action is directed by Fred C. Brannon in his typical fashion. The fights are almost all done from long shot and lack the inventiveness of one of the fights William Witney or Spencer Gordon Bennett directed. It's mostly people punching each other and occasionally breaking a chair or table. I suppose Brannon was efficient enough for the Republic bosses to keep him directing the serials and most of his are at least a little better than the few that followed in the wake of his death but that's like saying Plan Nine From Outer Space is better than The Sinister Urge. Yes, that's true, but what does it really say?


All that said, if you're a serial fan you absolutely should get this Blu Ray, even if only because it's a serial on Blu Ray and that's something in pretty short supply. It looks fantastic and hopefully Olive Films decides to continue to release serials on Blu Ray. And yes, if you like goofy sci-fi from the 50s, you could find worse ways to spend a couple of hours than this. There is a workmanlike professionalism to the enterprise and still some semblance of energy. The chapters are short enough (13 minutes) to be digestable in small doses and get from point A to point B with economy. There's only a couple of times that the stock footage (which is most of the chapter endings) sticks out and that's what happens when you're using stock footage from the 1930s in the 1950s. At the end of the day, The Invisible Monster is a passable if unmemorable serial.


*Anthony Warde took his turn as the head villain of Buck Rogers, Killer Kane. It is universally agreed that he is the biggest knock against that serial. George J. Lewis did it all--hero (The Wolf Dog, Zorro's Black Whip), sidekick (Radar Patrol Vs. Spy King), henchman in too many serials to name, but his two turns as the head bad guy--Federal Operator 99 and Cody of the Pony Express--leave a lot to be desired.

3-D Classics on Blu Ray: 3-D Rarities

Someone give the 3D Film Archive an Oscar. Seriously. Bob Furmanek, Greg Kintz, and Jack Theakston need to be given an Oscar and the right to restore any vintage 3D movie they want. Their work in the restoration and preservation of our 3D heritage is as important as it is astounding. 3-D Rarities, now out from Flicker Alley, is as good an example as any I can think of.


Covering material from 1922-1962, 3-D Rarities literally has something for everyone. The disc is broken into two parts: Dawn of the Stereoscopic Cinema, covering from 1922-mid-1952, and Hollywood Enters the Third Dimension, covering from November 1952 -1955, with bonus material giving us a peek at some 1960s footage. This Blu Ray is the motherlode, a 3D fan's dream come true. Test footage, trailers, cartoons, industrial shorts--it's all here. Every short and clip perfectly aligned and looking better than ever.


Part One starts with the oldest existing 3D footage from 1922. Some of it is test footage while a bulk of it is a fascinating glimpse at Washington, D.C. from that time frame, shot through the trees. Part one chugs along through the 20s with more test footage, mostly fun gimmick shots. Those shots were used in a variety of 3D shorts back then, all of which are lost. Some 1930s test footage, used for the Pete Smith Metroscopix shorts from 1936-1941 (all three of which do exist) updates a few of the gags from the 20s while adding to their own. You could literally stop the disc right there and have seen more 3D gimmick shots than in almost any ten modern 3D films you can name. But then you would miss the real highlights of Part One: Thrills for You and New Dimensions.

These two shorts were done for the 1940s World's Fair. Thrills for You played in San Francisco while New Dimensions played in New York. The former short is a wonderful snapshot at a time gone by: the era of traveling by locomotive. It was produced by the Pennsylvania Rail Road and not only shots the trains being built, but gives a glimpse into what riding on those trains was like. It was a lost short until 2006 when it popped up at the World 3-D Film Expo II. If you are any sort of train enthusiast, this is a must see short.


New Dimensions will appeal to car lovers. It's a color re-do of the previous year's black & white In Tune With Tomorrow, a stop motion animation short of a full size Plymouth being built, set to music. For years, fans of the short could only see the edited version RKO released in 1953 called Motor Rhythm. This disc restores the complete short as seen by audiences in 1940.


If animation is your thing, there's four Canadian 3D shorts from 1951-1952. Two of them were by Norman McLaren. They're interesting examples of 3D animation. An industrial short for the Bolex 3-D camera rounds out part one.


Part Two kicks off, appropriately enough with the short that opened Arch Oboler's Bwana Devil, M.L. Gunzberg Presents Naturalvision 3-Dimension or as it came to be referred to in later sources, Time For Beany since it features Beany and Cecil the Seasick Serpent. Oh, Lloyd Nolan is in it, too, along with Shirley Tegge, Miss 3-D. It's a humorous explanation of the Naturalvision camera system.


Other highlights for Part Two include four trailers, a Casper Cartoon (Boo Moon),a short about Atom Bomb testing (Doom Town), a Burlesque short (I'll Sell My Shirt), the Rocky Marciano-Joe Walcott fight film, and the short that opened for Robot Monster with comedian Slick Slavin (Stardust in Your Eyes). The bonus material includes two minutes from the 3D footage Francis Ford Coppola directed for the 1962 3D nudie film The Playgirls and the Bellboy. Mr. Furmanek has threatened to unleash the rest of that film on us in the near future.

Personally, I most enjoyed the Time For Beany short and another puppet cartoon on the disc called The Adventures of Sam Space. But the truth is, there isn't a bad piece of footage on this disc. The product of five years work, it's a great celebration of all things 3D and a perfect showcase for the diversity the process once had before settling into cartoons and comic book movies. Not only should any 3D fan get this disc, but anyone who wants to make 3D movies should get it, watch it, and learn from it.


So yeah, get the 3D Film Archive an Oscar for this one. This is hands down the Best 3-D Blu Ray you'll ever own.

3-D Classics on Blu Ray: Kiss Me Kate (1953)

Let me say precisely what I mean to say: Kiss Me Kate is one of the greatest 3D movies ever made. Ever. The list of 3D movies as good or better than it is practically non-existent. Maybe you can make an argument for Hugo or Dial M For Murder or House of Wax but that's about it. This is it, baby--The 3D movie of all time.

What makes KMK so great? How about everything. Start off with a terrific score by Cole Porter, toss in two of the best musical stars of the 50s (Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson), mix in incredible dance routines by the likes of Ann Miller, Tommy Rall, and Bob Fosse, add some great comedy by Keenan Wynn and James Whitmore and top it all off with one of the best uses of the process you'll ever see.



Hammy actor Fred Graham (Keel) plans to win back ex-wife Lilli Vanessi (Grayson) by starring opposite her in a musical version of Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. But she's engaged to be married to a cattle baron. Adding to his troubles are free-spirited and flirtatious actress Lois Lane (Miller) whose boyfriend (Rall) forged Graham's signature on an IOU to a gangster. Two of his thugs (Wynn and Whitmore) show up to collect on the "debt of honor". The onstage battles mirror the backstage chaos, all set to one of the best scores in a musical.

Porter's score is quite possibly the best non-songbook score of the decade in terms of movies. Starting with the wonderful So in Love and ending pretty much with the hilarious Brush Up Your Shakespeare, every song is fantastic. Some say KMK was Porter's crowning achievement and that doesn't seem to be an understatement. In fact, if there is a complaint against the movie, its the fact that 50s sensibilities forced so many of the songs to be cleaned up. That said, there are a few raunchy lines that slipped past the censors. I dare you to not take the line "a Dick, a Dick" in Tom, Dick, and Harry dirty.

Then there's From This Moment On. While Hermes Pan choreographed the rest of the numbers, he gave the dancers free reign to do whatever they wanted. The result is pure movie magic with a 66 second steamy routine from Bob Fosse and Carol Haney. It's that routine that made critics take notice of Fosse.

It helps that the cast is one of the best assembled for a 50s musical. Keel and Grayson have great voices for the numbers, even if they weren't dancers. This was their second movie together, after Show Boat (1951). But it's Wynn, Whitmore, and Miller that own this movie. Miller was one of the top female tap dancers and even if she seems a little old for the part of Lane/Bianca, she sells it. Her tap routine during Too Darn Hot is exactly that. As for Wynn and Whitmore, they knew they weren't song and dance men so they didn't even bother to rehearse their big number. As such, they tend to bumble through it in a way that actually works to the movie's advantage. They steal every scene they're in. Oh, and serial fans will get a kick out of Dave O'Brien as Keel's stage manager.

KMK is a great example on how to do a gimmicky 3D movie, too. There's over 20 gimmick shots in it. But, unlike the 80s films that lost their mind with gimmick shots, it's not as obvious. The majority of the gimmick shots are incorporated into the musical numbers (Those Redheads From Seattle does the same trick). This makes them less blatant than the yo-yos and popcorn in Friday the 13th Part 3. There's only one 40 second segment at the beginning of the play within the movie with a bunch of gimmicks there just for the sake of being there and that's only in the 3D version. But even more than the gimmick shots is the other ways the movie uses 3D. There's lots of shots from various parts of the theater that gives the illusion that one is actually watching these antics live. It is hands down the most brilliant use of the process you'll ever see. Especially look for one shot at the end of Where is the Life That Late I Led that means nothing in 2D but is one of the craziest shots in 3D.

Warner Home Video has released Kiss Me Kate in an amazing 3D Blu Ray that is a must own. This is the first time KMK has been released in its original 3D widescreen format with the added bonus of having the original stereo soundtrack. KMK is one of only two 3D movies from the 50s to still have its stereo soundtrack and its a treat to not only see but hear the movie as it was intended. I may have said this before about other movies, but you really do need this 3D Blu Ray. If you only ever see one 3D movie in your life, make it Kiss Me Kate.

3-D Classics on Blu Ray: Inferno (1953)

There is a very odd thing about the existence of Roy Ward Baker's 3D color noir Inferno, and that is the fact that it was made by 20th Century Fox. When 3D movies went big in 1953, most studios eagerly jumped on the bandwagon. Fox, however, was putting their money on CinemaScope, a widescreen process where the image was roughly 2 1/2 times as wide as it was high. Fox did a ton of press for the new process and even snarkily referred to it as "The Modern Miracle You See Without Glasses". And then they turned around and made a movie that is not only one of the top 10 3D movies of the 1950s, it's a top 10 3D movie for all time.

Robert Ryan is Donald Carson III, an arrogant and not particularly likeable businessman. He goes on a trip to the desert with wife Geraldine (Rhonda Fleming) and speculator Joe Duncan (William Lundigan). What he doesn't know is that Geraldine and Duncan are lovers, so when he breaks his leg at the top of a cliff, they take the opportunity to make it look like he got drunk and ran off, effectively abandoning him to die in the desert. Carson realizes that if he's going to get back to civilization, it's going to be on his own.

The performances in this movie are great. Ryan does a lot with just a voice over and his facial expressions. The look of increasing desperation turns him into a more sympathetic character. While he starts the movie as fairly hateful, by halfway through we're completely on his side. In contrast are Fleming and Lundigan. While Lundigan is straight unapologetically evil, Fleming is far more sinister. She seems to be uncomfortable with what they've done, but is totally willing to abandon her lover in the desert the same as her husband. It's equally interesting since this isn't the type of role I'm used to seeing Fleming in. Those three are the majority of the film, but TV fans will get a kick out of seeing Larry Keating (Mr. Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies) as Carson's concerned business manager. Universal monster fans will equally enjoy seeing Henry Hull (Werewolf of London) as the desert old timer who ends up helping save Ryan in the end.

Inferno features one of the most stunning uses of 3D ever. Like several great 3D westerns of the era (Hondo, Gun Fury), the movie makes the most of its desert setting. The screen seems to stretch on forever, letting us know just how isolated Carson really is. There's one absolutely dizzying shot from the top of the cliff looking down that gives us a very good idea of just how precarious Ryan's position is. On top of that, the movie employs a trick that most 3D movies of the era did: concentrating on depth, but having gimmick shots during big movies. In fact, most of the gimmick shots in the movie show up during the climactic fight between Ryan and Lundigan. The only knock on the gimmick shots is when Ryan throws a lantern at the camera towards the end, it comes off a bit as a 3 Stooges style 3D effect.

U.K. company Panamint released Inferno on 3D Blu Ray last year, initially only Region B but later making it Region Free. The Blu Ray comes from a restoration done by the late Dan Symmes in which all the misalignments in the film were corrected. The result is a beautiful looking and practically perfect 3D Blu Ray of one of the all time great 3D movies. Only the credits are in reverse 3D and that's the way they were in the original film. Any true 3D fan needs this movie in their collection.

3D Thursday: Robot Monster (1953)

Back in 1978, Harry and Michael Medved wrote a book called The 50 Worst Movies of All Time. In it, they listed  1953's infamous Robot Monster as the worst movie of all time. They changed their minds two years later when they wrote The Golden Turkey Awards and gave the title of worst movie to Ed Wood's equally infamous Plan Nine From Outer Space. To not put too fine a point to it and yet still try to sound somewhat diplomatic, the Medveds were wrong.

Let me qualify that. The book ultimately is their opinion of what the 50 worst movies are. All movie criticism is ultimately that. However, the movies in the book, while undeniably bad, really don't deserve that title. Truly bad movies are boring and unwatchable. Try watching something like The Phantom of 42nd Street or The Clutching Hand. Both of those were directed by a man named Albert Hermann. Unless you're a serial geek like me, you've probably never heard of Albert Hermann, and for good reason. Albert Hermann was a man who could take a 60 minute B-movie like The Phantom of 42nd Street and make it feel like it ran for 60 hours. Considering the fact that his serial The Clutching Hand runs over 5 hours, you can extrapolate how long that one feels. Albert Hermann made boring, seemingly never-ending dreck and he did it with shocking consistency.

Robot Monster, if nothing else, is not boring. It can probably best be described as crack cocaine for the brain and eyes. It's a dizzying 66 minutes of "wait, what?" that no mere synopsis could ever do justice to. It's a movie you need to see to believe, you won't believe you've seen, and you'll have to see again just to believe that you've seen it. That, my friends, is Robot Monster.

The plot has the earth invaded by an alien named Ro-Man (George Barrows). Ro-Man is basically a guy in a gorilla suit with something vaguely resembling a space helmet on his head. Ro-Man has managed to destroy all but six hu-mans. Actually, there's eight people still left on the planet, but two of them had common sense enough to not actually appear in the movie. The six are a Scientist (John Mylong), his wife (Selena Royale), his oldest daughter Alice (Claudia Barrett), his two young kids Johnny (Gregory Moffett) and Carla (Pamela Paulson), and his assistant Roy (George Nader). Great Guidance Ro-Man (Barrows again) orders his underling to seek out and destroy the pesky hu-mans. Ro-Man does his best, which is usually pretty inept. He does manage to strangle Carla and pummel Roy, but then he falls for "Al-lice" and kidnaps her instead of killing her. This annoys Great Guidance, who kills Ro-Man and unleashes earthquakes and prehistoric reptiles to kill all who remain. In the film's twist ending, ripped right off of the same year's Invaders From Mars, we find out this was all a dream of Johnny's. Then Ro-Man comes out of a cave.

Actually, the only a dream ending is telegraphed five minutes into the movie. You just have to pay even half-attention to know what's happening. Though that does raise a few questions about what type of kid Johnny is. I mean, seeing as to how his dream involved his younger sister being strangled and his older sister being tied up and almost forced to have sex with a gorilla spaceman, well...

Like I said before, Robot Monster is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good movie. You won't confuse it with the likes of Dial M For Murder. However, it's also not the worst movie ever made (neither is Plan Nine for that matter). It's not even the worst 3D movie ever made, even if you take 3D porn out of the equation. It's not even the worst 3D movie of the 1950s. I can make a pretty strong argument that Flight to Tangier and Jivaro go on far too long and are far more boring for the 50s movies. I can make a better argument that Domo Arigato, Run For Cover, and Camp Blood are all far worse 3D movies.

What it is, however, is excessively entertaining. Once Ro-Man shows up, you just sort of hold on tight and go along for the ride. It's lunacy is an undeniable part of it's charm, too. Lines like "I must--yet I cannot. How do you calculate that? At what point do must and cannot meet on the graph. I cannot--yet I must", "you look like a pooped-out pinwheel!" (!) and "you're so bossy you should be milked before you come home at night" abound. That's bad? No, my friend, that's  brilliant.  Do you know why? Because we know those lines and probably a couple dozen more. Anyone who has ever heard them knows them and is likely to quote them. Truly bad movies like Domo Arigato don't have lines like that. Name me one memorable line from a crapper like Hillbilly Monster. You can't, probably because you've mercifully never heard of Hillbilly Monster and even if you had, you'd be hard pressed to come up with a quotable line from it!

Contrary to popular belief, Robot Monster was shot in 12 days (not four like the Medveds claim) for a budget under $20,000. It was shot with a new, never before (or since) used 3D camera rig called Tru Stereo Three Dimension, mostly in Bronson Canyon. Funny enough, a far worse 3D movie in the 80s was also shot in Bronson Canyon (Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared Syn). Despite these conditions, the cast tries there best, even if they do get defeated by the dialogue sometimes. And stunningly enough, the 3D is actually really, really good. In other words, this isn't the incompetent piece of garbled mess you may have heard it is.

Robot Monster has been a fixture on home video for nearly 30 years. The late, lamented Rhino Video even had a (horrible) anaglyphic videotape release in 1991 that had a couple of looped in joke lines. Mystery Science Theater 3000 did the film. This is a film that won't die. Unfortunately, the greatest crime against the film--besides the Medveds' ill-informed books--comes from the so-called rights holder, one Wade Williams. Whether or not he actually owns the rights to Robot Monster, like almost every film he claims to own the rights to, he doesn't care about any sort of restoration of the movie. He's content to let this and it's spiritual sister movie Cat Women of the Moon rot away instead of preserving them and getting them on 3D Blu Ray. That's a shame, since the 3D is so good, the movie deserves to be released on 3D Blu Ray. It's mind-boggling to me that something like The Flesh and Blood Show will get a 3D Blu Ray release, but not this.

If you truly want to appreciate this movie, see it in a theater in 3D with a packed audience. I've done that three times and outside of a couple of cranky old people, the majority of the audience loved it. They laughed with it.They were entertained by it. And isn't that the ultimate purpose of any movie? To entertain it's audience? 

Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

There are movies that become a permanent part of their decade's landscape, movies that one thinks of instantly whenever the topic of movies of that decade get brought up. Winner of multiple Academy Awards including it's famous theme song and nominated for Best Picture and Best Actress, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is one such movie for the 1950s.

Based on the autobiographical novel A Many Splendored Thing by Han Suyin, the movie tells the story of an Eurasian doctor who meets and eventually falls in love with a married war correspondent. The novel was based on Dr. Han's real life affair with Ian Morrison, a war correspondent she met in Hong Kong in 1949. For the novel and movie, Morrison's name was changed to Mark Elliot. The story takes place as the Communists take over China and the beginning of the Korean War.

Jennifer Jones plays Dr. Han, who is doing her residency in Hong Kong in 1949. She is a widow, as her husband was a general killed by the Communists. She has a small room in the hospital itself and devotes her life to medicine. At a party given by one of the directors of the hospital, she meets Mark Elliot (William Holden). He pursues her and she at first rebuffs him. For one thing, he's married. For another, after her husband's death, she turned off her heart. Mark is persistent and she eventually falls for him, causing her to be ostracized by the greater Chinese community. Though they briefly find happiness, his wife refuses to give him the divorce he wants so he can marry Dr. Han and he eventually is shipped off to the Korean War.

This was one of the early CinemaScope films, but curiously fails to take full advantage of the process. Outside of the requisite gimmicky shots at the beginning of the point of view of an ambulance racing through the Hong Kong streets, the film doesn't really do anything with the process. Most early CinemaScope movies fill the image from left to right, especially with the placement of the actors. In this one, the actors mostly get clumped together in one area of the screen. There are some panaromic shots of Hong Kong, where the movie was actually filmed, but I guess after the opening bit, director Henry King thought, "well, there's my nod to CinemaScope. Now on with the picture." Which is odd, since those shots, like similar ones in How To Marry A Millionaire are obviously supposed to duplicate the thrill of Cinerama, something CinemaScope could never do. CinemaScope was always about the left to right image and widening that image, so it's use here is a little disappointing.

The film also fails to take advantage of the undertones of it's story. We're told repeatedly early on that Eurasians are treated badly by the British, but outside of some somewhat racist or at least clueless dialogue by the wife of the hospital's director (Isobel Elsom) at the party, this isn't evident. We're also told that Chinese  people having affairs with foreigners, especially married ones, will lead to ostracization in the Chinese community. Again, outside of two scenes of Kam Tong's Dr. Sen berating Jones for her affair, this doesn't seem to come out much, either. It's almost as if the film is afraid to commit to the difficulties it claims the couple should be having. Which is a shame, because it makes it a little bit harder to be fully invested in them and feel for them. The film only really pulls through in the emotionally charged ending, which would have been even better if it had committed to it's undertones a lot earlier.

I'm not saying that they had to go out of their way to wreck the lives of the two lovers. However, there's an awful lot of talk about things that could come to pass and very few examples of it actually coming to pass. As a result, the tension of the love affair isn't fully there. The most tension comes from whether or not Holden can get a divorce from his wife. Even that isn't fully realized. I wanted this movie to make me feel bad for these two, to really invest in them. After all, doesn't Romeo and Juliet make you feel for it's star crossed lovers by making the tensions between their families palpable? I may have to read the book to see if it expands on any of the themes the movie suggests but doesn't much get into.

What we're left with is Holden, Jones, and some lyrical dialogue. I suppose for a love story that should be enough, but it's not quite for this. Don't get me wrong. Holden and Jones are wonderful in their parts. I've never actually seen a movie Holden was in that I didn't like him. He was a terrific actor consistently and he's extremely effective here. He plays Mark as eager in the early scenes, but not overbearing or obnoxious in his pursuit of Jones.  When he tells her in the canoe "I would never do anything to hurt you", he truly sells it. As for Jones, she does the right thing and doesn't play Dr. Han as a caricature, but as a human being. I completely bought her transformation from the scientific doctor in the beginning not wanting to commit to her heart to the passionate person she becomes. That transformation is part of what makes the movie's last 20 minutes so emotionally charged, in fact. It's a little bit amazing that they seem to have such chemistry together, as by all reports they couldn't stand each other on set. There are reports that Jones ate garlic before the intimate scenes to discourage known womanizer Holden. She also apparently complained about everything on the film, including her makeup which she felt made her look old. I don't agree with her assessment if that was the case.

As far as the dialogue goes, it  really is lyrical. Some love stories have dialogue that makes you say aloud "who in the world actually talks like that?" but not this one. Maybe it's the fact that this was based on a true story, but nothing feels over-baked or sappy. In fact, as far as romantic movies go, this is probably one of the best in that regards.

The supporting cast is just that: a supporting cast. Nonetheless, there are a few amusing bits. Character actor Phillip Ahn plays Jones's Third Uncle and gets the film's most amusing line when he says "let us have tea and talk of absurdities". Keye Luke also has a bit part as a relative of Jones. Richard Loo, who later played Hai Fat in The Man With The Golden Gun and Major Chin in The Sand Pebbles, plays a rare sympathetic part as the husband of Jones's best friend.

Mention must also be made of Alfred Newman's score. It's a fairly lush score that incorporates the theme song throughout. The title theme was written by Sammy Fain and Paul Francis Webster. We get bits of it throughout before getting the full blast sung during the emotional ending. It's one of those songs you either love or it gets on your nerves. I actually like it myself. The recording by The Four Aces became a number one hit for four weeks before Rock and Roll took over the charts.

At the end of the day this is a very good movie that could have been just a little bit more. It's bouyed by it's stars but one can't help feeling it holds too much back both in it's cinematography and exploration of it's themes.But the thing that nails it and makes this movie the classic that it has become is the ending, which is guaranteed to not leave a dry eye in the house.