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.

Jaws: The Revenge (1987)

True confessions of a movie junkie: back when I was a teenager, I had an internship at a neighborhood newspaper. I was given a pass to go review Jaws: The Revenge and I was so excited about the prospect, I gave the movie a good review. Looking back, I am likely the only person in the world to have done so. Consider this post me righting a grievous wrong.

Most people who review Jaws The Revenge on their blogs nowadays seem to do so to prove they are intellectually superior to it. The problem is that proving you're intellectually superior to a movie this dumb is like proving you were born with a torso. Even someone with a zero IQ is intellectually superior to Jaws: The Revenge.

The movie starts with yet another Great White Shark invading the waters of Amity Island. It's Christmas time, so there's no swimmers which makes me wonder why the shark would even bother. Oh, that's right: because the Brody family still lives on Amity Island and youngest son Sean is a deputy. Deputy Sean is sent out on the water to move some driftwood and Mr. Whitey pops out of the water to say "Hello, my name is Sharkey Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!" He then eats Sean, an ignoble end to a character who was always kinda treated shoddily in this series and yet who somehow went from being 5 years old in 1975 to 30 just 12 years later.

Oldest son Michael (Lance Guest) convinces mom Ellen (Lorraine Gary, reprising her role from the first two films) to come and stay in Bermuda with him, his wife and his daughter. The weather's better and there's no sharks. She agrees, so Mr. Whitey decides to follow her to Bermuda because he has more Brody family members to kill, you see. Yes, the shark is actually exacting revenge on the family for the death of the first shark in the original movie. I promise you I did not make that up and I am quite sober. In the novelization, the shark is an instrument of vengeance for a voodoo witch doctor who is pissed at Michael. That almost makes sense, unlike what we actually get.

Ellen meets roguish pilot Hoagie--Michael Caine proving he was willing to do anything for money--and is having a good time unaware that Mr. Whitey has arrived. Michael and his partner Jake (Mario Van Peebles) are aware of Mr. Whitey since he's already tried taking a bite out of Michael. Rather than worry Mom, they decide to try to track the shark. Eventually Mr. Whitey tries taking a bite out of Mike's precocious daughter (Judith Barsi), so Ellen steals Michael's boat and goes out on the ocean to do something, but I'm not sure exactly what. I don't think the writers knew what she was supposed to do either. Certainly she didn't know what she was supposed to do. Michael, Hoagie, and Jake go to the rescue. Hoagie swims but stays dry, Jake falls into the shark's mouth and survives, and the shark eventually roars before exploding once it's impaled. How a shark roars then explodes upon being impaled, I don't know.

If I've made the movie sound more entertaining than it actually is, I apologize. It's a bad habit of mine and I really should break it.

The problems with this movie would likely fill a book. For one, it decides to ignore Jaws 3-D (1983). As bad as Jaws 3-D is--and I fully recognize it's a terrible movie even though I love it--Jaws 3-D almost makes some sort of sense. This film is pure nonsense. On top of that, the acting is bad, the dialogue worse, and the shark looks ridiculous. There isn't even a good kill count in the film as only three people get attacked and one of them survives for reasons that make no sense. There's also an awful lot of time spent on the romance between Ellen and Hoagie. That's not necessarily a bad thing since it's actually a portrayal of an older couple falling in love, something surprising for a movie of this genre. However, there's also a lot of time spent on Michael being jealous and suspicious of Hoagie that drags the thing down.  In short, the main plot is stupid and the subplots are boring. Sure, there's some unintentional laughs in the thing but there's an equally large number of cringe-inducing scenes.

Exactly why I liked this film at 16 is something I'll never know. Especially when I had the common sense to hate equally bad movies. Maybe just because it was a Jaws movie and the original is one of my all time favorite movies. At any rate, if you read my review in 1987, I apologize. And for those of you thinking this thing can't possibly be as bad as I'm now saying...it is.

The 3-D Nudie Cuties Collection

In between the Burlesque shorts of the 1950s and the Hardcore porn of the 1970s there was a brief period of time where Nudie Cuties titillated our imaginations. Nudie Cuties followed through on the promise of the Burlesque short by actually showing us naked women, but didn't go as far having anyone have sex like what would follow in their wake. They for all practical purposes were almost innocent in their content and the way they dealt with their subject matter. Perhaps too innocent, which is why they only lasted a few short years before giving way to porn as we know it today. But in that time, a few notable people shot them, including Russ Meyer, H.G. Lewis, and Francis Ford Coppola. Naturally, 3 Nudie Cuties were shot in 3-D in between 1960 and 1962,  The good folks at the 3D Film Archive and Kino Lorber have revived two of them for modern audience perusal.

First up is The Bellboy and the Playgirls, one of two such Nudie Cuties directed by Coppola.* The producers of the film took a 1958 black and white German sex comedy called Sin Began With Eve and told Coppola to shoot some color footage to insert into the film. It was decided to do the finale in 3D, making this one of those part 3D affairs from the 60s and 70s. Most reports say that the 3D footage runs about 20 minutes. It doesn't. It's 14 minutes from beginning to end. Which means we have to endure nearly 80 minutes of some unfunny 2D material.

The film starts off promisingly with a great opening theme. Unfortunately, it's downhill from there. The plot, such as it is, is two-fold. The German footage concerns the trials and tribulations of a theatrical troupe. The director is trying to convince his prudish leading lady (future Bond girl Karin Dor) to do a sex scene on stage by telling her tales of sex through the ages. How exactly that was supposed to convince her, I'm not sure. The color footage concerns George (Don Kenney), the titular bellboy of the Happy Holiday Hotel, who wants to be the House Detective and be popular with women. George is determined to find out what goes on in Room 229 of the hotel, where there are a bunch of naked women, one of them named Madame Wimpepoole  (Playboy bunny June Wilkinson, here credited as June Wilkenson). George assumes she's that type of Madame and all the other girls are Ladies of Ill Refute as Archie Bunker would say. Naturally, the ladies are all lingerie sales models, but George is too stupid to know that. The two plots hang together by way of George, who sneaks over to the theater to observe the director and learn about women then run back to the hotel and screw up.

The problems with this movie are many. It has been accused of being a bait and switch, and not incorrectly. Much of the footage is taken up by George, a character so annoying he makes Jar Jar Binks look like Jonathan Winters. Don Kenney sorta kinda tries as George but his material is hopelessly unfunny. I'm not even convinced it was funny in 1962. Since so much is sucked up by George, there's not a lot of time devoted to exactly why an audience would be watching something like this: the naked women. To make matters worse, the two most high profile women in the thing--Dor and Wilkinson--never even take off their clothes. Dor I can almost forgive given the nature of her character but Coppola blowing getting Wilkinson naked makes me want to smack the man. Wilkinson is frankly the best looking woman in the film. She's also just about the main reason to watch. When the 3D finally shows up, the depth is fairly good and the movie almost lives up to it's potential with a 3 minute segment of just the topless women. Then they bring George back onscreen. Bleh. It doesn't help that some of the 3D footage looks out of focus, no doubt due to either the fact that it was shot on 16mm or it really was out of focus (or both). Watching this, it's hard to believe that a decade later Coppola would go on to direct The Godfather.

Fortunately, there's a second feature to be watched and is it ever a hoot. I won't go so far as to call Adam and Six Eves a good movie, but for this type of movie it's a bona-fide classic. Shot in 1960 using the old NaturalVision rig--previously used on such classics as House of Wax, Bwana Devil, Gog, and Charge at Feather River--Adam and Six Eves was only released flat in 1962. The 3D Nudie Cuties Collection Blu Ray is it's 3D debut. Watching it, I can definitively say 1960s audiences missed out big time.

The movie concerns a fat guy in a Hawaiian shirt prospecting for gold with his wisecracking mule in the desert. He comes across an oasis of beautiful naked women, who do everything under the sun to distract him from his search. He's clueless however, just looking at them with a dopey grin and wondering why they have no clothes on before continuing his search. The donkey comments on everything (no, you didn't misread that). That's literally the plot of the whole thing. But it doesn't matter. If Bellboy and the Playgirls was a bait and switch, this was a bang for the buck if ever there was one. The director wisely focuses his camera on the women, knowing that's what his audience is here for. And my God are the women in this one gorgeous. There's literally someone here for anyone's taste. The prospector's cluelessness is nowhere near as annoying as George and the donkey, while not exactly Triumph the Insult Dog, is actually funny from time to time. Best of all, the movie only runs an hour, so it doesn't overstay it's welcome. To top things off, the 3D in this is spectacular. I mean, it should be considering the camera that was used. But it really looks great. Nice levels of depth and some fun pop outs.

A pair of shorts are also included on the disc, a 1953 Burlesque short called Love For Sale and a study of 3-D Kodachrome nudes from 1951. Both are impressive. It should be noted that Love For Sale was previously available in a cut down anaglyphic version from Something Weird. Seeing it here is a real revelation.

As usual, the 3D Film Archive did a bang up job. The restoration on Adam and Six Eves is perfect. The movie looks like it was made yesterday. Bellboy and the Playgirls doesn't look as good, but they worked with what they had and some of it was never going to look perfect. As a curio and a peek into a time that no longer exists, this is a disc worth getting. Indeed, Adam and Six Eves is worth the price of admission alone. I wish I could say better things about Bellboy and the Playgirls, but that's not the Archive's fault. This disc is literally a case of taking the good with the bad. Fortunately, the good outweighs the bad.

*Coppola's other Nudie Cutie was the 2D release Tonight For Sure. As that film also has Don Kenney in it, this particular reviewer has absolutely no curiosity about watching it. One Don Kenney movie is one too many.

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.

The Last Chapter: Reflections on 30 Years of Watching Cliffhanger Serials

The serial that started it all for me

Back in December of 1988, I walked into a Movies Unlimited store, went over to the section marked serials and decided to rent one out called Nyoka and the Tigermen. I had heard about serials during the decade as a fan of the Indiana Jones movies, which I was told were modeled on the old cliffhangers. But I had never watched one. This particular serial was a jungle adventure, which was something I dug back in the day, so I figured why not? Over the course of the next 3 days, I watched all 15 chapters. It was, I had decided, a pleasant diversion and I finally got to see where the idea for my favorite movie series came from.

A month or so later I was in Movies Unlimited again and decided to check out another serial. I picked one called Mysterious Doctor Satan. Besides having a great title, it had a guy in a goofy mask on it's cover and an even goofier looking robot so I thought it might be fun. Oh, it was. When I picked a third serial a couple of months after that it was because it was considered one of the best of all time. That serial, Daredevils of the Red Circle, was the serial that hooked me on the format for good. By the summer of 1989 I was trying to write my own serial. That script, a 12 chapter affair called The Dark Avenger, has yet to be made by me. Next summer is 30 years since the commencement of that script, so maybe.

A little history lesson for the uninitiated.

The cliffhanger serial began as a format with a long lost serial called What Happened to Mary? in 1912.Some of the early silent serials, including arguably the most famous one of all The Perils of Pauline, didn't have cliffhangers but instead each episode was complete. But audiences enjoyed the peril part and producers quickly learned that the best way to bring them back was to leave your hero or heroine facing certain death. By the time the serials started to talk, there were over 400 silent serials made. Sadly, only a small handful survive to this day.

The first part talking serial was released in 1929 from Mascot Pictures. King of the Kongo starred Boris Karloff as it's villain and had two sound sequences per chapter. Recorded on a special disc that played in synchronization with the film, most of the sound discs are gone now, though you can find two scenes on YouTube with the sound intact. Universal was the only other hold over from the silent era to continue to make serials and they in fact released their first all talking serial in 1930, a not very good western called The Indians Are Coming. There were some fairly bad independent serials released in the early 1930s as well. Then Mascot became part of a merger to form Republic Pictures in 1936 and serial history was changed.

While the first four Republics are pretty rough around the edges--as a matter of fact I happen to hate their second serial Undersea Kingdom--they picked up the pace with their fifth serial, 1937's Dick Tracy. Director William Witney started later that year with The Painted Stallion and began to turn the serial into a true art form. Witney's style of filming fight scenes where one move was a single camera shot influenced many other directors over the years. You can even see the Witney style in the fight between OO7 and Red Grant in From Russia, With Love.

Columbia entered serial production in 1937 with Jungle Menace starring famous wild animal trainer Frank Buck. Why not? Republic's first serial was also a jungle serial with Buck's rival Clyde Beatty. Serials got better as the 30s wore on until some incredible stuff came along during the war years. All three major serial producing serials were at the top of their game in the early 1940s, even if some of the wartime serials may make the PC crowd cringe today with their depictions of Japanese agents. But that's a discussion for another time.

Still considered the greatest serial ever

The end of the Second World War saw budgets being slashed. Universal jumped ship in 1947. Republic and Columbia toughed it out into the 1950s but by then most of the really good serial actors had either retired, gotten too old, or died. Instead audiences were treated to stock footage laden chapters with actors who were hired more for their resemblance to a stuntman than any actual acting ability. TV had caught fire around this time, too, with youngsters able to watch shows like The Lone Ranger every week for free. And so between TV, the non-existent budgets, and a general refusal to evolve--no serials were ever made in color at a time that movies were moving more into color--the serial died a sad and depressing death. The last couple of years, it was as if nobody even tried anymore. Republic called it quits in 1955 with lousy mystery serial that forgot to have any suspects called King of the Carnival. Columbia, the last one in, was the last one out with an equally forgettable western called Blazing the Overland Trail. You can tell how bad this one is by the fact that even the villain sounds bored with it.

There were a few jabs after that. The most famous is a four chapter silent spoof known as Captain Celluloid Vs. the Film Pirates. The Return of the Copperhead was a 12 chapter serial allegedly shot in the 1970s but never released or edited, though a pretty unimpressive trailer exists. I entered the fray with a 12 chapter serial in 2001 that I called King of the Park Rangers. I wrote it over a few days in 1999, initially as a joke. Since there were quite a few Republics with the title King of the... where the lead male was named King, I said I was going to do the same, but make King a woman! 17 months of filming later, King of the Park Rangers was released. It still sells a few copies here and there all these years later, too! 2006 saw another spoof serial made, Monarch of the Moon. A second serial from the same company was announced but never made. I gave serials a second shot in 2008 with a mystery serial that I called The Dangers of Deborah. There was another low budget four chapter serial being made called Thirty Second Doom, but to the best of my knowledge, it was never completed.

Flash Gordon

When I started watching serials 30 years back, I had no idea what type of influence they would have on me. I certainly never planned to watch them all. But for a few silent serials, I have watched them all. Or at least all that exist. The good, the bad, and the what the hell did I just watch? I had read about them before watching them and foolishly allowed the opinions of others to influence my thoughts on the format early on. Indeed, to hear some writers and fans talk, there's only 66 good serials, those being the 66 that Republic released. Stuff and nonsense says I. Republic had plenty of stinkers and the other studios had plenty of good ones. Flash Gordon wasn't made by Republic. It was an Universal serial and remains one of the best serials ever made. Batman was made by Columbia in 1943 and it's one of the Caped Crusader's better screen efforts actually.

If I'm being honest, I think the company who made the best adaptations from other sources was probably Universal. The majority of their adaptions are pretty faithful to the source material, Buck Rogers notwithstanding. Then again, had they actually adapted the Buck Rogers strip as it was written, that serial would be banned right about now.

He's no Captain America, but she's better than Bucky!

Republic had a habit of taking the title and then making up whatever they wanted. For instance, their Captain America serial has absolutely nothing to do with Captain America. They changed the character from Army sad sack Steve Rogers and kid sidekick Bucky Barnes to fighting D.A. Grant Gardner and his secretary Gail Richards. Okay, Lorna Gray as Gail was an improvement over Bucky but it still has nothing to do with the strip. As for their Dick Tracy adaptions, well...I'm not convinced Chester Gould actually watched any of them since they tend to be Dick Tracy in name only. Serial fans often moan about Columbia's Superman serials, but at least in those serials, Superman is still Clark Kent and Lois Lane still works for the Daily Planet. Had Republic actually made their Superman serial in 1940, it's anyone's guess what we would have got. Yeah, it might have been good, but it probably wouldn't have really been Superman. Anyway, I like the two Columbia Superman serials even if the flying cartoon Superman is pretty silly. They're fun and that's all that should be required of any serial.

Ironically, the last of the sound serials I had to watch was one of the Republic Dick Tracy serials. The third in the series, Dick Tracy's G-Men, was an entertaining way to go out. Ralph Byrd was playing Tracy for the third time (you could tell when he was playing the character in the 1950s TV show he was sick of it) and he was always a good serial hero. There were a few of the serial regulars popping up in it and Jennifer Jones, at the start of her career, played the thankless role of Tracy's secretary Gwen. There was the usual amount of action and thrilling cliffhangers and William Witney and John English were directing at the top of their game. It seemed appropriate to go out on a Witney serial since he had directed Nyoka.

In between Nyoka and Dick Tracy's G-Men, there were many, many chapter viewings. For a time there was a message board called The Serial Squadron that I would go to and serial fans would gather on to discuss serials until the site owner decided he was more interested in selling serials than allowing discussion of them. There was even a yearly festival called SerialFest where fans would gather to watch serials on the big screen, discuss them, drink, and share a camaraderie. But SerialFest is dead and the Squadron is pretty much non-existent. Then again, a number of fans--some of whom I got to call friend--have died over the years. My best friend, who acted in both my serials, passed away in 2011 when we only had about 10 left to watch. It took me seven years, but I kept my promise to finish them.

And so, 30 years of watching serials has culminated in seeing the last of them. There's a little something bittersweet about the whole experience. 30 years, 219 serials, 2,913 chapters, and more hours than I want to consider. A lot of it was a good time. While it is true that some of it wasn't, I can't say that I regret watching them all. Perhaps one day the missing sound serials will resurface or someone who isn't me will make another serial. Should that day come, I'll be happy to watch. But until then, it was a fun ride while it lasted.

The Problem With Piracy

When I was a teenager several decades ago I had a friend who know a kid who was a compulsive shoplifter. This kid whom I never met apparently didn't believe in paying for anything. My friend's attitude was that so long as the kid was stealing from places like 7-11, it was cool. But if the kid chose to steal from a Mom and Pop shop, then he was a jerk. What my friend failed to get about this kid is that the kid, like most thieves, didn't care who he stole from. This kid wasn't Robin Hood.

Hollywood has done a very clumsy job with explaining why piracy of films, music, etc is wrong. I hope this article does a better job.

Full disclosure before we begin: I am no angel. I have bought and traded for plenty of bootleg DVDs in my time. The bootlegs I have obtained have been movies that were otherwise unavailable, however. That means a lot of serials and some vintage 3-D titles like Jaws 3-D and House of Wax. However, as those same titles became available on legit sources, I was happy to throw the bootlegs out and get the legit version. I had a bootleg field sequential version of House of Wax for ten years. I had it for the very reason that Warner Home Video refused to release it that way. When they finally did in 2013, the bootleg went in the garbage and the 3D Blu Ray was purchased. It would be my delight to continue to do so as these things continue to come out.

I suspect, however, that I'm a bit of an extraordinary case. I sadly know people, in particular in the serial community, who are like "meh" when it comes to getting a legit version of something they've had in a bootleg for years. I personally find that attitude odd since the legit version will clearly look better than the bootleg. Going back to House of Wax, I'd much rather watch a restored 3D Blu Ray of that movie than a faded DVD-R with Japanese subtitles.

Of course, Piracy among classic movie fans usually is driven by the desire to see something that Hollywood just won't release on video. You can't get too uptight with serial fans, I suppose, if they throw their hands in the air and decide that the only way to see a serial like The Spider's Web is to buy a bootleg off some jerk on the internet.

But the issue of Piracy goes way beyond classic movie fans buying Song of the South bootlegs because Disney won't release it in this country. Piracy is all over the place. I don't need to tell you that, since probably there's a decent number among you reading this engaging in it. I myself know a shocking number of people who brag about downloading torrents and who own jailbroken Firesticks or similar boxes so that they don't have to pay for cable. The rational varies from "sticking it to the man" or "movies/cable are too much money". "Besides," they go, "what does it matter if I download Star Wars before it comes out? That movie's going to make money hand over fist anyhow."

Yes, movies and cable are a lot of money. If you're a family of five and want to go to a 3-D showing of Star Wars on a Saturday night, yes, it can run you upwards of $100 depending on where you live. Then again, if you're downloading Star Wars, you're not watching it in 3-D anyhow. So why not just go to a 2-D matinee where it's cheaper? AMC has movies before noon at $6 or something like that. Want to know when I try to go the movies? That's right, AMC before noon. Especially for a 3-D movie. Back in the day, AMC would have $3 five o'clock shows. That was literally the only time I would go to the movies.

I don't have cable. I have an antenna, Netflix, and Hulu. A whole lot cheaper than cable.  "Yeah, but you gotta watch commercials!" they'll say. Yeah. And??? I've watched commercials my whole life. And Netflix doesn't have commercials, nor does my Hulu subscription. Your argument is fail.

As I've said in this blog before, it's not 1985 anymore people. We have options that don't involve stealing.  If you can't afford/don't want to see Star Wars or Justice League in the movies, it's not like you have to wait years for them to come to video or show up on TV. They'll both be on DVD by next Spring, probably for $20 or less. If you have cable, you can rent them for a few bucks on On Demand. You can get them from Redbox for $1. You can watch them on Netflix as part of an $8 a month subscription service. Yes, in the 1980s we would have to sometimes wait years for a VHS release of a movie. Yes, those VHS releases were $90 at first. But it's the 21st Century, not the 1980s.

The problem is it's not just a matter of downloading Star Wars or some old serial Sony refuses to release on DVD. Go back to the story of the shoplifter. That kid didn't care who he stole from: Mom and Pop Shops were the same to him as the Big Chain Store. And it's literally the same with people who commit and/or support piracy. They don't care who exactly they're stealing from so long as they get it for free.

I know small independent filmmakers who have to troll the internet to make sure bootlegs of their movies aren't available. Because people will bootleg those movies and make them available for download. And people will download those movies rather than pay $15-$20 to the guy who made the movie. I've made independent films and it's happened to me, so I know what I'm talking about. Small independent filmmakers have to make movies often with their own money or the money of investors. They have to pay for props, locations, sometimes actors--everything the big Hollywood guys have to pay out. So when you dear downloader decide you're not going to pay money for their movie, you're going to download it instead because "what if it's no good?" otherwise known as you're just a cheapskate, you are taking away money from those filmmakers. You are making it harder for them to make their investment back.

God forbid I actually defend the porn industry, but those guys know the effects of piracy as well as the small independent filmmaker. They spend hundreds to thousands of their own dollars to shoot content, offer it for sale, one person buys it then distributes it for free on sites like Pornhub. You probably think every person who works in porn makes billions of dollars and lives in a McMansion. I know a couple of people in the industry who are walking away because they are losing their shirts due to the piracy epidemic.

What the downloaders and bootleggers don't seem to get is that ultimately they will be on a self-destructive path. If content producers, be they big Hollywood studios, small independent filmmakers (like me for instance) or pornographers can't make money at something, they won't/can't continue to do it. Paramount, for instance, has openly stated that they won't release the Republic serials on DVD and Blu Ray because of the rampant piracy. They've finally released a few, but if serial fans want more it behooves them to actually buy the releases and not download the bootleg.

Go back to the porn industry for a moment. Let's say you have a favorite porn star. That porn star either makes their own clips or works for other people. If, instead of buying those clips you go watch them or download them on a torrent site, the porn star doesn't make money or the person they work for doesn't make money. They can't continue to make clips if they aren't making money and so they leave the industry. The self-righteous among you may say "Great!" but then trade out the porn star for the Mom and Pop Deli down the street. The one who makes those sandwiches you love to eat at lunch? If people rip off that Deli all the time, what happens? They go out of business and you can't get those sandwiches you love anymore from them. If you like the movie the small independent filmmaker makes but you download it for free instead of buying it, he can't afford to make another movie you might like. It's all the same principle.

Am I suggesting that piracy is the same as shoplifting? Yes, yes I am. You might not have considered it shoplifting, but that's exactly what it is. Downloading a movie---I don't care if it's Star Wars or The Gangbang Girl Part 967--is exactly the same as walking into a store and sticking a candy bar in your pocket and walking out without paying for it because $1.25 is too much for a Snickers bar. To not put too fine a point on it, you're not "sticking it to the Man". You're being an asshole. You are stealing money from someone. Just because they're in the Entertainment industry doesn't mean they're rich.

Let's break this down by numbers for a moment. I make a film for $6,000 say. If I self distribute the movie, I have to buy all the materials to make the copies--the DVD-Rs, the cases, the covers. Incidentals like electricity and mailing supplies come into this, too. If I sell the disc for $20, It's going to cost me roughly $10 to self distribute the disc. That means I need to sell roughly 600 copies just to sort-of break even. Over 600 to make a profit. If one person buys the disc and puts it up for torrent on the internet, and 599 people decide that rather than buy the movie, they'll just download, guess what? I just lost $5,990. If I sell it on Amazon, I get roughly $6 a copy, which means I have to sell 1,000 copies to break even.

Let's go back to the porn model for a moment. Porn producer hires porn star for content. The producer spends $500 for that shoot. He sells it on something like Clips4Sale for $10 a clip. I asked a friend who does this what he makes off those clips. He says Clips4Sale takes 40%. So the producer then makes $6 per clip. Theoretically, to make a profit the producer only has to sell 84 copies of the clip. 84 copies might not sound like a lot, but if one person buys it and posts it to Pornhub and nobody else buys it, that producer just lost money.

Trade the porn producer out for a low low budget horror filmmaker. He makes a film for $500, only has to sell 50-80 copies to make a profit but loses money because the film instantly pops up on Pirate Bay. Maybe that $500 horror movie is as awful as you think it will be but the horror filmmaker still has a right to make a living the same as the Deli down the street. If you don't think that, then the problem is with you and not the filmmaker.

I'm talking about films, but the same goes for musicians. They pay money out to a studio to record a song. If you download that song off whatever free music downloading service there is and not to the musician, then you are killing that musician's livelihood the same as killing the Deli's livelihood.

Let's put it this way: if you owned the business, would you want people stealing from you because they were too cheap to buy your product? Would you want someone breaking into your home and taking your money? If the answer is no, then think before you hit that download button.

Millennials May Actually Care About Classic Movies After All

The New York Post on August 16, 2017 did an article called Millennials don't really care about classic movies. It was based off a so-called poll conducted by FYE.com of 1,000 millennials and 1,000 people over the age of 50. Besides being fairly sloppily written, it asserted that millennials don't watch old movies and find black and white movies boring. Much has been written about this article in the past two weeks, with people offering up vigorous defenses of young people and/or offering up lists of movies that young people should see. That's all well and good but it doesn't address the basic problems with the article. The first of which is simply the fact that the definition of classic movie has evolved over the years whether we are aware of it or not.

Go back to the 1970s when the nostalgia rage kicked into high gear. In 1977, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was 40 years old, Miracle on 34th Street was 30, and Jailhouse Rock with Elvis was 20. It's 2017 now. At this point in time, Star Wars is 40, The Princess Bride is 30, and Titanic is 20. Show me a millennial who hasn't seen Star Wars and I'll show you a weird millennial. The goalposts have moved. Movies that we may or may not necessarily consider "old" are in fact just that. In a couple of years, the first Harry Potter movie will be 20. How many people really look at Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and think "man, that's an old movie!"? But it really kinda is at this point in time. I'm pretty sure there's millennials watching Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings. Those are movies heading into the classic definition pretty rapidly, too.

Yes, if your definition of "classic movie" is only movies stops on December 31, 1959, you may or may not have a point about millennials. However, if you expand the definition of classic movie to anything 20 years old or older--which seems to me to be a good enough starting point--then yes, millennials are watching classic movies. Just not necessarily the type of classic movie you may be thinking of.

"Ah-ha!" Some old internet troll who hates millennials is probably thinking right now. "You've just proven the point of the Post article! The Post is right! Blasted young people are disemboweling classic movies!"

I don't know about that. And even if they are, I'm not convinced I want to totally throw them under the bus for it, either. But the other issue the Post article fails to take into account is a key one: availability.

40 years ago, you had independent TV stations. These stations would have an eight o'clock movie, a Late Movie, Saturday afternoon horror double features of Universal and Hammer horror movies followed by a Tarzan movie, Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto late night Saturday night, and comedies with the likes of Abbott and Costello, Blondie, The Bowery Boys, The Marx Brothers, Martin and Lewis and Laurel and Hardy. The Eight O'Clock movie and the Late movie were made up frequently of movies from the 30s through to the 60s. You would have an Alfred Hitchcock week or a Humphrey Bogart week or an Universal Monsters week on these stations. None of which happens anymore. There are few if any independent stations left. Those that are left are showing none of the above.

"Yeah," the same cranky old fart troll is saying, "but all that stuff is on DVD!"

Okay. So tell me where you can rent the DVDs of all this stuff. Oh, wait, that's right. You can't. Not really. Once upon  a time there were video rental stores that you could walk into and find this stuff on the shelf. 30 years ago, I could walk into Movies Unlimited and browse the shelves and find a Republic serial or a Hitchcock movie. Those type of stores don't exist anymore. Netflix is pushing streaming over disc and their streaming service mostly consists of their own product. You can't stream Burt Reynolds let alone The Bowery Boys on Netflix. Yeah, you can buy DVDs, but most of the time not in stores. Take a run over to your local Best Buy if you don't believe me. If the movie is more than a couple years old and not a mega blockbuster, you won't find it on the shelf. Seriously. You can't buy Mamma Mia--a movie less than 10 years old--in the store at Best Buy. So how is a young person going to find Charlie Chan? So that leaves ordering the discs through something like Amazon, which means you have to know exactly what you're looking for.

You can't really fault millennials for not watching what they aren't exposed to. The same thing holds up for TV and radio. 30 years ago, stations would show M*A*S*H and All in the Family at 7:00. Nowadays they show 2 Broke Girls or Seinfeld or The King of Queens. There used to be an AM station in Philadelphia that played Big Band music and OTR shows. That station is a Talk Radio station now. In 1987, the oldies station played Billy Haley and the Comets and Lesley Gore. Now they play Huey Lewis and the News and Belinda Carlisle. You can't shake your fist at some 20 year old for not listening to Shake, Rattle, and Roll when the stations won't play it anymore. You can't yell at a 20 something for not listening to Guy Lombardo when the station that played Guy Lombardo replaced him with Rush Limbaugh. And you can't look down on that same 20 year old for not watching Rear Window when Rear Window isn't as accessible as it used to be.

"Yeah, but there's things like the TCM Fathom events! I bet you millennials don't go to that!"

Okay, tell me this. Look at this year's list of TCM Fathom events and tell me how many movies of the 1930s and 40s are on it? Let me answer that for you: one. Casablanca. That's it. Everything else is 1950 on, with quite a few from the 70s and 80s.

This isn't the fault of millennials. If it's anyone's fault, it's the fault of the people doing the programming and running the stores. That's an older folks problem, not a 20 year old's problem. Which, by extension, means that it's not just millennials turning their nose up at older movies. It's people in their 30s, 40s, and 50s. I was in Best Buy when Sony released the 1943 Batman serial on DVD about 10 years ago. A guy in his 40s walked up, picked up the box, saw the year of the serial, made a disgusted remark about said year, and put the box back down. And that's Batman we're talking about. Imagine if Sony had released a serial like The Secret Code instead.

Of course, you also have the older folk who feel the need to apologize for old movies. Leonard Maltin did an introduction on the DVD of The High and The Mighty that was absurd in the extreme. He felt the need to explain that it wasn't like a modern movie and moved at a slower pace. Umm, Leonard: the people who are going to watch The High and The Mighty are already aware of that. You don't need to explain it as if you're apologizing for the movie not being like The Fast and The Furious.

So yes, if you want to blame the "slow death of movies from the golden age"--assuming there is such a thing going on--on anyone, blame it on the older folks. If you don't expose the young folks to that stuff, then yes, they aren't going to see it. Truth to tell, my parents didn't necessarily expose me to the old movies I watched. They happened to be on TV, so that's what I saw. If I was 10 now instead of 1980, I probably wouldn't have seen all those old movies because they wouldn't be on.

On the flip side, think of it this way. If the trend continues, in 40 years there will be 20 year olds who haven't watched Star Wars and cranky old people writing articles wondering what was wrong with them. Now that's something to think about.