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.

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.