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.

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.

"And I Was Thankful To Have It!" or The Back-In-My-Day Post

It seems odd to me that, though I'm only 43, I'm actually writing a blog post called Back In My Day. Back In My Day is the sort of thing you usually hear cranky old men say, usually describing how horrible and tough things were and how people have no appreciation for how easy they have it today and how society has gone to hell because of it. It's also usually also tinged with nostalgia for a simpler time. I was born in the 1970s and a teenager in the 1980s. I freely admit to still enjoying music and certain movies from that time period, but I have no real desire to relive it and am actually not particularly nostalgic for it, either. Nonetheless, this is a Back In My Day post and it's being written for a reason.


Back in my day, if you wanted to see an old movie, you had to wait for it to be shown on TV. If it was a widescreen movie, it was being shown pan and scan, which meant you could be missing up to 2/3 of the picture. It was also edited for commercials, and there were commercials every five to ten minutes. And the TV screens weren't wide 16X9, they were square 4X3 screens.


Back in my day, we didn't have 110" screens with surround sound. The biggest TV we had was 25" and mono. My personal TV was 13", mono, and black and white. I watched many a late show on that TV. For those of you under the age of 20, the late show used to show movies on independent stations.


Back in my day, we didn't have Blu Ray or DVD. If you were lucky, you had a Super 8 projector with a 3 foot screen and could watch 10 to 20 minute digests of feature length movies. They were still putting these out in the 1980s, in fact. I have a 20 minute digest of The Empire Strikes Back still. If you had some money, you could get a VHS player. If you had some more money and the inclination, you could get a LaserDisc player, which gave a better image and had its movies in widescreen format. Of course, only 30 to 60 minutes of the movie would fit on a single side of a LaserDisc, so that meant either flipping the disc or changing it over. A simple two hour movie could be on two double sided discs. My family got the VHS player.


Back in my day, 3D TV was an occasional special shown on an independent station. You had to buy cardboard red and blue glasses from a local fast food or convenience store, turn out the lights, sit six to eight feet back, fiddle with the tint on the TV, and get next to no effect.


Back in my day, being a movie buff--especially a young one--really kinda sucked. The Three Stooges shorts and Looney Tunes cartoons were always cut up, Charlie Chan came on at 11 pm, and renting a movie meant going to a video store. And if the movie you wanted was out of stock...too bad so sad. Only a few video stores had a selection good enough to satisfy a classic fan. There was no On Demand or Netflix Streaming (which also sucks, but that's a different rant for a different day).


Why am I bringing all this up? Because it occurs to me that all too many movie buffs today--and not even the young ones per se--remember back in my day. And they should, because back in My day was--unless they're under the age of 25--back in their day, too.


We live in a high definition world now. We have Blu Ray with it's incredible image and sound quality. We have Surround Sound, to help put you in the middle of the action. We have widescreen TVs which allow 1:85 movies to be shown without black bars and Scope movies to be shown with minor black bars.  Our screen sizes are bigger, too. I have a 42" 3D TV. It's the largest TV I've ever had. Every so often, I think it's too small, but that's just a fleeting thought. This thing is a monster compared to what I grew up on.


When I was a teenager--or back in my day, if you prefer--the thought of seeing the 3D movies from the 1950s the way they were originally shown seemed like it would never happen. I watched most of those movies flat on TV, complete with commercial interruptions and no doubt editing. Except for the titles I saw on American Movie Classics, which were complete but also flat. Now I own four 50s titles on 3D Blu Ray, with at least one more promised to come out and have, in the past 14 years, managed to see nearly every one that still exists in 3D in the movies. I consider myself outrageously lucky in that regard. After all, 30 years ago, seeing Creature From the Black Lagoon in 3D meant tracking down the lousy anaglyphic VHS Universal released in 1980 or, if I was super lucky, seeing the anaglyphic 16mm print somewhere. Now, I not only own a 3D Blu Ray of it, which is gorgeous, I've managed to see it in the movies in full polarized 3D, exactly the way it was shown in 1954.  30 years ago, seeing Kiss Me Kate meant seeing it flat on VHS. There isn't a 3D Blu Ray of it (yet), but I have seen it on the big screen in proper 3D at least 4 times. Needless to say, I'm happy about both.


Point in fact, I have seen, either on TV or in the movies, 42 of the 43 movies that still exist in 3D prints from the 1950s. I may never get to see the 43rd in 3D, but I really can't complain about the rest of them.


I bring all this up because I have seen on the web and in person an awful lot of complaining about the so-called imperfect presentations of classic movies. The most recent bout has concerned the new Criterion Blu Ray of It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, which has caused all manner of insane complaints, from the fact that the reconstructed footage doesn't look as good as the rest of the movie to the two or three scenes that have light Japanese subtitles to the complaints about the spaces between the radio calls during the intermission.


Good grief as Charlie Brown would say. Of course the reconstructed footage doesn't look as good. The trims were in bad shape to begin with. There's only so much that can be done. And as for the Japanese subtitles--try watching a whole movie like that. I've done it. I so wanted 3D copies of House of Wax and Dial M For Murder that for 10 years I had DVD-Rs of faded copies of the Japanese VHD disc in the field sequential format. And yes, I was thankful to have them.


When I first saw It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, guess what? It was the short version. On TV. In Pan and Scan. Mono. Edited for commercials. With the ending lobbed off, too! I didn't even know there was an intermission until someone taped the LD version off of TCM for me about ten years ago. Maybe I'm the easiest person in the world to please--I'm sure someone could accuse me of that--but I'm pretty happy getting to see this new extended version. Is it perfect? No, but I kinda knew that going in. Is it better than what I first saw 30 years ago? Oh, God, yes. I am in no way outraged by this Blu Ray. I am, however, a little outraged and disgusted by the people who are screaming that the Blu Ray is a rip off since it's not exactly what they want. Seriously? Seriously? Anyone who thinks that seriously needs to get a grip. This Blu Ray is far from a rip off.


Similarly, I went to the World 3D Film Expo III back in September in Hollywood. I'm surprised that this is my first mention of it on this blog as it was a really wonderful experience, but then again it may be like my friend Bob Bloom once said: when people enjoy something, they don't talk about it. They only talk if they hate it.


Well, I didn't hate the 3D Film Expo. I loved it. 10 days, 35 movies, 31 of which were from the 1950s. Some extremely rare material, including the 1947 Russian version of Robinson Crusoe. I was in my element for those 10 days, you can believe it. I am also willing to bet that that was my last time getting to see most of those movies in 3D. I think if I'm ever going to get to see them again, it'll be in boring old 2D. Some of them might hit 3D Blu Ray, some of them might get shown again in NYC. But I think I won't get to see quite a few of them in 3D ever again. Some of them, the last time I saw them in 3D was in 2006 at the second World 3D Film Expo. So yeah, it was pretty special for me.


Which is one of the reasons why certain people at the Expo drove me bonkers. They would sit in their seats and throw near full on temper tantrums about the presentation of some of the titles. One guy was literally slamming his fists on his chair because--are you ready for this?---Phantom of the Rue Morgue was being shown in 1:85 and not 1:33 like he wanted it to be. Really? Beyond the fact that 1:85 was the proper aspect ratio for the movie, really? How childish does one get? I could see getting up in arms if the movie was being shown out of sync, but it wasn't. Hell, I would have complained if it was out of sync, since that's a perfect way to get a 3D headache. But complaining that it's not in the aspect ratio you want it to be? Again, a grip needs to be gotten.


Part of the problem, I think, is that movie buffs--or at least certain ones--are so hung up on the presentation that they can't really sit back and enjoy the movie itself. All too often, I see complaints of one absurd nature or another--one guy complained about seventeen seconds of Digital Noise Reduction being used during opening credits (though nowhere else in the movie he admitted)--but nobody actually talking about the movie. Yes, we do have a right to expect certain movies to look perfect on Blu Ray--there's really no excuse for a new movie looking anything less than perfect and there are quite a few classics like The Wizard of Oz or Casablanca that should look perfect. But there are films that are rare and that rarity should be kept in mind far more than any perceived imperfections. Being able to see that rarity should also be cause for joy, not childish anger because it's not precisely what you want. You don't always get precisely what you want--and sometimes you don't deserve it either. I am of the opinion that more movie buffs should stop and consider the marvel of what they're seeing and be glad to see it once in a while. Because you never know. Something like it may never come around again.


Besides, back in my day, everything had imperfections. But we watched them and were thankful to have it!

More 3D Classics Come To Blu Ray (UPDATED)

Last year(!) I blogged about the 3D Blu Ray releases of Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M For Murder and the horror classic Creature From The Black Lagoon. Jump forward a year, and we finally have two more classic 3D movies released on 3D Blu Ray. Some may take exception at my listing one of these as classic, but I'll explain my logic when I get to it.

First, and most importantly, is the movie that, for many people is The 3D Movie of all time. Before Avatar, before The Avengers, there was 1953's classic chiller House of Wax starring Vincent Price. If your only familiarity with this particular title is the so-called "remake" that is best remembered for the death of Paris Hilton, then you need to see some better movies. I can't even call this the original since a)it's actually a remake of a 1933 movie called Mystery of the Wax Museum and b)the 2005 debacle has nothing at all to do with this movie. But, this is one of the films that made Vincent Price a superstar (which realistically didn't happen until he started doing the Poe films in 1960) and is one of the most famous 3D movies of all time. With good reason.

Price plays Professor Henry Jarrod, a brilliant but not terribly successful sculptor of wax statues. Price prefers creating beauty and history over violence and mayhem. His partner (Roy Roberts) wants out and decides that the fastest way to do so is to burn down the museum. Jarrod is scarred in the ensuing fire but apparently escapes.

Not long after that, a ghoulish figure starts murdering people, starting with the ex-partner, who he hangs in an elevator shaft (a fairly gruesome murder for a 1953 film, btw). The partner's girlfriend Cathy Gale (a wonderfully ditzy Carolyn Jones) is next. When Jones's roommate (Phyllis Kirk) walks in on the killer, a foot chase through the fog shrouded streets of New York ensues. Kirk just barely escapes the ghoul.

Not long after this, Price reappears, set to open a new wax museum. Kirk's boyfriend (Paul Picerni of TV's The Untouchables) gets a job there and that's when Kirk notices that Joan of Arc looks an awful lot like Cathy. That's okay, since Price decides that Kirk looks an awful lot like Marie Antoinette. The cops and Picerni dismiss Kirk's ideas about the museum as crazy, but she decides to carry on and prove she's right, hopefully not becoming a wax statue in the process.

As I say, for many people, House of Wax is the greatest 3D movie of all time. While I prefer Kiss Me Kate a bit more myself, I get where they're coming from. The 3D in the movie is amazing, and I don't just mean the gimmick shots. This is an insanely deep looking 3D movie with the shots composed for maximum depth. Totally unlike most of the 3D movies made today. And this from a director who famously only had one eye and couldn't see 3D but, as legend has it, mathematically worked out every single shot. Incidentally, Andre De Toth wasn't the only one eyed 3D director of the 50s. Raoul Walsh also had monocular vision and also knocked one out of the ballpark with Gun Fury. But that's for another blog.

There isn't a ton of gimmick shots, either, but what ones there are, are amazing. There's a reason the paddle ball sequence is so famous. It's one of the all-time great gimmick shots and a perfect way to bring the audience back into the film after the intermission. For years, people just looked at it as a stupid gimmick shot and that's because the intermission card was gone. Once you realize there was an intermission and the scene's placement in the movie, it makes a little more sense. Plus, Price gets in a jab at it by commenting "once we're established, we won't need that sort of thing".

Mention also needs to be made of the supporting players. Frank Lovejoy and Dabs Greer are the cops trying to figure the case out. Lovejoy was a radio actor who was trying to make it into movies. He gets a decent part in another Warner Brothers 3D film, Charge at Feather River, where he famously spits at the audience (Lee Marvin does the same thing in The Stranger Wore a Gun and the gimmick is done again in the next film in this blog's entry). Sadly, he died a few years later without ever becoming a major star. As for Dabs Greer, try finding something he wasn't in. He's Shaky in the 1950s Dick Tracy show. He's one of the cops that harasses Richard Kimble in the pilot episode of The Fugitive. And modern audiences will recognize him as old Tom Hanks in The Green Mile. The guy got around.

But the most notable supporting player is a fairly young actor named Charles Buchinsky. He plays Price's creepy deaf mute assistant Igor and gets the films most notable 3D effect shot. He kept that name for another 1953 3D movie, the Rita Hayworth starrer Miss Sadie Thompson before changing it to the name we all knew him as. Fellow did some real good movies after that like The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape and even when he started doing mindless crap in the 1980s, he still pulled off a couple of good movies like the TV movie version of Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus. I refer, of course, to Charles Bronson, who does a good, creepy job in this.

My friend Bob Furmanek of the 3D Film Archive stated that for all the times and ways he's seen House of Wax, this blu ray restoration is the best the film has looked. I've seen this a few different ways and times myself and I wholeheartedly agree. Warners did scans from the original YCMs---that's six different scans, three for each eye. This is one gorgeous blu and a showcase 3D blu. Writer R.M. Hayes in his infamous book on 3D movies wrote that if you were going to see only one 3D movie in your life, it should be Treasure of the Four Crowns. R.M. Hayes was a moron. If you see only one 3D movie, House of Wax is the one. And if you haven't seen it in 3D, you haven't seen it.

The second "classic" isn't quite in the same ballpark as House of Wax. Oh, hell. It's not even in the same universe. Nonetheless, as the first of the 1980s films to get a proper 3D Blu Ray release, Amityville 3-D deserves a little love, too. The third of the Amityville Horror films, this one comes to us in a box set with the first two from Scream Factory. I have no particular interest in the first two, though I may end up watching them. I did read the book and found it to be, by and large, a load of crap. Okay, let me clarify that. The book by Jay Anson, like Oliver Stone's JFK is a decent work of fiction. It is, at times, even moderately scary. But anyone who believes that it even remotely happened...well, I got a bridge to sell you as they say.

The third film advertised itself as "not a sequel" which basically translates to it being a movie designed to cash in on the success of the earlier films but having nothing to do with the characters in those films. At the very least, it's the first film to outright admit it's a fiction, so I give it points for that. The movie's tagline was also "In this film, you are the victim", so I also give it points for truth in advertising. I tend to remember Siskel and Ebert listing this on their worst of 1983 list (along with Jaws 3D). I'm not certain I would go quite that far. I tend to remember Deal of the Century and The Man Who Wasn't There being quite a bit worse from that year. Just saying.

Anyhow, the plot has a journalist (Tony Roberts) who makes it his career to debunk paranormal claims deciding to buy the infamous house on 112 Ocean Avenue. Problem is, the damn house actually is haunted. He ignores that fact, even when people start dropping dead left and right around him, starting with the realtor who sells him the house and has an encounter with the flies in the attic. Then his partner (Candy Clark) meets a particularly gruesome end in a burning car. Then his daughter (Lori Laughlin from TV's Full House) drowns. It's only when his daughter's ghost is spotted that he starts thinking there might be something to the stories and calls in his physic investigator friend, who ends up meeting the most ridiculous looking demon you ever saw.

Reading the above description and then going back a few paragraphs and reading about House of Wax, you may be wondering why in the world I'm including this movie in this particular post. It's not that Amityville 3-D is a good movie. None of the 1980s 3D movies are, realistically. This is one of the better ones, along with Jaws 3D and Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone. But that doesn't say much, now does it? I mean, Plan Nine From Outer Space and Bride of the Monster are Ed Wood's best movies, and they still stink.

Still, this is a worthy enough purchase, if only for the fact that it's a pre-2003 3D movie released on 3D Blu Ray. Somebody is gonna cite Friday the 13th Part 3 being on Blu Ray in 3D, but that's in the anaglyph format, which frankly sucks compared to 3D Blu Ray technology. I know since I released two shorts in anaglyph and ran tests for an over under version compatible on 3D TVs and it's night and day.  If supporting films like this means we could potentially get more, then good.  And regardless of what you may think of the movie, the 3D is actually pretty good. There's some decent depth. And one of the fun things about the 80s 3D movies is the fact that they weren't ashamed to jab the audience in the eye. Again, mostly the antithesis of what we see today. Oh, sure, a number of the gimmick shots in Amityville are corny as all get out--Meg Ryan blows a straw at the audience and someone tosses a Frisbee out of the screen among other things.

But let's be fair, here. Gimmick shots, corny and otherwise, are part of what has made 3D fun over the years. Even the 50s films, which rarely went overboard with the gimmick shots, knew that and would stick them in, sometimes organically and sometimes just out of left field. Again I cite the paddleball sequence in House of Wax, which is arguably as goofy a gimmick as the ones in Amityville 3-D or Friday the 13th Part 3 which had it's infamous eyeballs, but also had weed joints, wallets, yo-yos, and popcorn tossed at the audience. Most modern 3D films are terrified of gimmick shots, so it's kinda fun once in a while to toss something like Amityville 3-D on and grin like a little kid at the stuff flying out of the screen. In recent years, Spy Kids 3-D, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Hugo, and Oz the Great and Powerful are most noteworthy for gimmick shots and are probably the films least terrified to actually be in 3D.

In other words, don't watch Amityville 3-D for great cinema. Watch it for being a goofily fun 3D movie.

By the way, you did not misread. A very young (and cute) Meg Ryan plays Loughlin's friend. She gets the obligatory scene where she describes in detail the real life DeFeo murders from 1974. Her future ex-husband Dennis Quaid, of course, was in Jaws 3D. I understand they argued frequently over who made the worse 3D movie. (For those who don't get my humor, I'm kidding).

So we now have four pre-modern era 3D movies on 3D Blu. Thank goodness for that much. 2014 promises at least four more, including the recently announced Man In The Dark coming out in January from Twilight Time. It is also to be hoped that Warners makes good on releasing Kiss Me Kate next year and hopefully Universal will get off their butts and get It Came From Outer Space, Jaws 3D, and Revenge of the Creature out, too.

At any rate, now is a pretty good time to be a 3D fan indeed.