3-D Thursday: Comin' At Ya! (1981)

Let's not kid ourselves. Comin' At Ya! is a rotten movie. It has the barest amount of plot it can muster and about as much dialogue. Possibly less. Point in fact, it barely qualifies as a movie. So much so that nobody found a reason to release it on home video in the U.S. until Rhino put out a poor anaglyphic VHS and DVD in 1999, 18 years after it was first released. Its prior home video release was in the mid 80s in the old field sequential format on Japanese VHD. Now its managed a 3D Blu Ray release with the humorous sticker proudly trumpeting the 2D version is included. Please. There's barely a reason to watch it in 3-D, let alone flat.

The bare premise is that after  white slavers kidnap his wife (Victoria Abril) on their wedding day, H.H. Hart (Tony Anthony--God help me, that's his name) gets pissed off and angry and decides to hunt them down. Hart rescues his wife and a bunch of other women, the white slavers recapture them, kill them, and then Hart kills all the white slavers. The End.

If you're thinking that my words are not doing justice to this movie--that surely there must be more to it than that--let me reassure you. No, there really isn't. This is a movie whose plot summary would fit on a postage stamp with room left over.

In an effort to perhaps make the film more interesting, the filmmakers added a gimmick to the gimmick for the reissue. Calling it "Noir 3-D", they went back and made certain shots black and white, or part black and white. It's meant to add a visual flair to the movie, but it's actually an epic fail. It's actually more distracting than interesting.

Like almost every 3-D movie from The Bubble in 1966 to the My Bloody Valentine 3-D in 2009, Comin' At Ya! lost its mind with gimmick shots. Bats, rats, playing cards, guns, knives, spears, flaming arrows, gold coins, coffee beans, and yes a baby's bare ass are flung, tossed, chucked, dropped and otherwise thrust at the audience over the course of 90 minutes. To put it another way, this movie's 3-D is about as subtle as the most garish Hawaiian shirt you can imagine. And while this level of gimmicky goodness does seem to be a lost art today, this particular example is practically a rape of your eyeballs.

It is an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, if you have a 3D TV and are sick of watching 3D movies that have few to no gimmick shots, the 3D Blu Ray of Comin' At Ya! might just be what the doctor ordered. On the other hand, the 3D Film Archive did not work on this release, so there is no correction to the alignment. This means that the film looks fairly brutal. As often happened back then, some of the gimmick shots get way too close to the camera. Virtually every 3D movie of the 70s and 80s did this, causing shots that made you feel like your eyeballs were about to be ripped out of your head.

If you are a completionist of either vintage 3-D or 3-D in general, then absolutely get this disc. If, however, you are subject to headaches from 3-D movies, you may want to skip this disc. I've watched  3-D movies for almost 35 years and even I had difficulty with it. I ended up watching the movie in chunks, partly because of how bad the movie itself is and partly because I need to rest my eyes from the constant assault being inflicted on them.

I am glad to have finally seen the movie in a proper 3-D format. The old Rhino VHS made a pretty brutal to watch movie even more so. I think the restoration could have concentrated less on the black and white and more on correcting the 3-D, but it is what it is. Comin' At Ya! is the first of the 18 3-D movies released between 1981 and 1985, so as a piece of 3-D history, like the equally awful Bwana Devil and The Stewardesses before it, it rates a viewing if you're a 3-D buff. Otherwise, there are better examples of this sort of thing, even from that decade.

3-D Classics on Blu Ray

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HELP THE 3-D FILM ARCHIVE SAVE SEPTEMBER STORM (1960)

I don't normally do this sort of thing. I do not, as a rule, use this blog to promote any Kickstarter campaigns. Not mine and certainly not anyone else's. That said, there is that old saw about rules being made to be broken and this is one of those times. This is special. The campaign at
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3-dspace/september-storm-1960-3-d-digital-feature-film-rest is for a lost 3-D film, something that instantly caught my attention and it should catch yours, too.

The fine folks at The 3-D Film Archive and 3-D Space: The Center for Stereoscopic Photography, Art, Cinema and Education have teamed up to restore the ultra-rare 1960 underwater thriller September Storm. This was the last 3-D film to actually be shot in the 1950s, having been filmed in Spain in 1959. It is also the first 3-D film to have underwater color photography and it is the first ever 3-D film shot in the CinemaScope process. This is a major but sadly forgotten piece of cinematic history that is on the verge of disappearing forever.

The elements are in real bad shape. They have developed Vinegar Syndrome, meaning that the film has started to warp, shrink, and become brittle. If digital scans are not done soon, the movie will be beyond saving. Being a dual strip 3-D feature, both the left and right eye film elements need to be digitally scanned frame by frame. Any alignment issues will need to be corrected for proper 3-D presentation. On top of that, color restoration and matching is also needed and any damage such as scratches and splices will need to be repaired. It sounds like a tall, expensive order but this is The 3-D  Film Archive we're talking about. They did all this fairly recently with Gog so they can do it here, too.

But they can't do it alone. They need funding to save this one due to the dire shape it's in. That's why they've gone to Kickstarter this time. While it's true that the survival rate of vintage 3-D is pretty impressive, there have been casualties over the decades. 1954's Top Banana only exists in 2-D now. The same year's Southwest Passage--which has Joanne Dru, the star of September Storm--only has half of the movie in 3-D. And as recent a movie as 1983's Rock N Roll Hotel is effectively gone, only existing in a recut 2-D pan and scan VHS. The original 3-D version is gone now. Think about that for a minute. A movie a little over 30 years old is lost. Let's not lose September Storm, too.

I suppose some of you may be wondering if this is a good movie. I have no idea. I saw a few seconds of it a couple of decades ago on AMC in 2-D and pan and scan and chose not to continue. That said, I personally want to see this the way it's meant to be seen: in 3-D and Scope. Besides, does it really matter if it's a good movie? After all, if something as minor as Manos, Hands of Fate is worthy of rescue and restoration, why shouldn't this one be, too? Anyhow, I figure it has some merit. Besides starring Dru, it was directed by the director of 1953's War of the Worlds.

As of this writing, the campaign has raised over 10% of its goal. That's a good start but I've seen these things fail before. Let's not let that happen. Too often films have rotted away due to the indifference of rights holders so this is a chance to contribute to film preservation and keep a historically important movie from vanishing into the abyss.

If you care at all about film preservation or 3-D movies, you absolutely need to contribute to this. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/3-dspace/september-storm-1960-3-d-digital-feature-film-rest

Ghost Busters (2016)

I'll be the first to admit that the internet gender war over Ghostbusters isn't particularly interesting to me. Neither the Social Justice Warriors who demand that it is every woman's responsibility to see this movie nor the Anti-Cootie Brigade's demand that it is every man's responsibility to not see it concerns me. After all, at the end of the day the new Ghostbusters is just another in a fairly long line of remakes of movies from the 1980s. Truth to tell, so many remakes of 80s movies have been done in the past 7 or so years that I sometimes feel I am reliving the decade.

Oh, I get that absolutely nothing I write in this review is going to change your mind if you're one of the people who has already decided if this is good or not. The battle lines have been clearly drawn for two years and people who have not even seen it or are even likely to see it already know everything they want to know about it. However, if you're one of those few people in the world with the intelligence to know that you can't really have an informed opinion on a movie without seeing it, please feel free to read on.

The real questions that needs to be asked of this movie--indeed the only ones that should be asked--is "is it good? Is it funny?". If the answer to that is yes, then gender doesn't really matter, now does it?

Point in fact, the answer does happen to be yes. This is a good, funny movie.

Is it as good as the original? Don't be absurd. Of course it isn't. But I would point out that none of the 80s redos have been, either. It helps that its not a beat for beat remake. It does take some ideas and cameos from the original but it is also its own thing.

Dr. Erin Gilbert (Kristen Wiig) is about to make tenure at Columbia University when a ghost from her past comes back. In this case the ghost happens to be a book she wrote years ago with a friend, Abigail Yates (Melissa McCarthy). Yates has republished the book much to Gilbert's dismay. When Gilbert goes to ask Yates to pull the book, she gets dragged along to investigate a haunted mansion by Yates and her new assistant Jillian Holtzman (a wonderfully unhinged Kate McKinnon). When a video of the investigation goes viral--ending with a slimed Gilbert declaring her belief in ghosts--the trio gets fired and decides to set up shop hunting ghosts. They are shortly joined by former MTA worker Patty (Leslie Jones) and dumber than a brick secretary Kevin (Chris Hemsworth). Things get complicated by the usual bureaucrats trying to shut them down while a creepy janitor wants to unleash the Ghostpocalypse on the city.

I won't claim as others have that this is funnier than the 1984 original. Then again, the original is one of the top ten comedies of the 1980s with three top comedians at the top of their game directed by a comedy director at the top of his game. It's an impossible bar to measure up to and even the original cast fell short with Ghostbusters 2 in 1989.

That said, this version also has four top comics at the height of their game directed by a comic director at the top of his game. If this film falls short its not for want of trying. Its just that the original is just that classic. But this movie has nothing to be ashamed of. It has plenty of laughs, especially from Hemsworth, who threatens to steal the show from his four co-stars.

All of the surviving stars make cameos along with a few of the ghosts. After a while the cameos become slightly distracting which is probably the biggest knock on the movie. Some of them sort of work while others just plain fall flat. Dan Akroyd's unfortunately falls into the latter category.

But perhaps the most interesting and fun aspect of this is the 3-D. Unlike many modern 3-D movies, this one actually bothers with gimmick shots! Imagine that! Ghosts and Proton beams go flying out of the screen with fair regularity. It's not quite as insane as an 80s 3-D movie and it would look a bit better if it had been actually shot in 3-D as opposed to being a conversion, but it also doesn't shy away from what makes 3-D fun. It's actually well worth watching in 3-D, something that can't always be said nowadays.

But then again, it's just plain worth watching. While it's not going to make you forget the original, it's also not the disaster the ACB was hoping it would be. It's a good, fun time at the movies during the summer that, since it runs under two hours, wisely doesn't overstay it's welcome.

I hope this movie does well at the box office. NOT to vindicate the SJWs and make the ACB look foolish, but simply because it deserves to. 

3-D Thursday: The Flesh and Blood Show (1972)

The poster for The Flesh and Blood Show, a 1972 part 3-D slasher film directed by Paul Walker, promises "an appalling amalgam of carnage and carnality". If you're a gorehound and you read that sentence and got palpitations of excitement, please calm down. I can guarantee that you will find the movie a shattering disappointment. I'm no gorehound and I found it to be a shattering disappointment.

The Flesh and Blood Show is the old saw Agatha Christie used for And Then There Were None. A group of people are invited to remote location by an unknown person who starts picking them off. In this case it's a group of actors and the location is an abandoned seaside theatre. They're there to rehearse a Grand Guignol style review called The Flesh and Blood Show.  When one of the actresses is murdered, instead of leaving, the cast and director stick around to continue rehearsals and maybe find the killer. Unlike Christie's classic, the cast isn't stranded at the theater. They can leave anytime they want to. Well, no one ever accused characters in a slasher movie of being intelligent.

As much blood as you will see

Conventional stupidity of slasher movie characters to one side--including those that wander off all alone knowing full well that a killer is nearby--there's a larger problem with the movie. If you haven't seen it and, as I say, are a gorehound, you'd probably expect there to be a lot of gory murders. But there aren't. Point in fact, all of the killings are off-screen. The poster shows us a woman being decapitated and while there is such an incident, she's decapitated offscreen and when we she her head, it doesn't look any different from the other wax heads it's next to. There's maybe six murders in this and not a single one of them happens before our eyes or is even remotely bloody. The bloodiest the movie gets is at the beginning when a guy walks into the room of two of the actresses with a knife in his gut. However, that scene is a practical joke and a fake out. For a movie called The Flesh and Blood Show, you'd expect at least some blood and will likely be confused by the lack of same.

On the other hand, the film does deliver a fair amount of Flesh for that part of the title. Virtually every young actress in the film takes off their clothes at one point or another. One even opens her apartment door in the middle of the night stark naked because of course she does. So, if you like movies with lots of beautiful naked women, you'll like this. If you're hoping those naked women get killed off creatively a la Friday the 13th, you're not going to like this movie.

The Flesh and Blood Show was one of those Part-3-D movies released back in the 60s and 70s. The vast majority of the movie is in 2-D, with a ten minute segment towards the end in black and white 3-D. Why black and white, besides the fact that it was a flashback to the 1940s? Because the 3-D segment was originally in anaglyphic 3-D. Even Paul Walker knew that anaglyphic 3-D in color looks rotten, so he shot that segment in black and white. The only problem is, the segment is so dark that the 3-D is practically non-existent. Kino released the movie on 3-D Blu Ray with both the anaglyphic version and the 3-D TV version and they both look pretty poorly. There's maybe three well lit shots in the entire segment. To make matters worse, to watch this sucker in 3-D, you have to watch the 2-D parts up until the flashback begins, go to the menu, select the 3-D way you want to watch it, watch that segment, go back to the menu, and find the end of the film in the chapter selections! It's too much work for a film this poorly done with 3-D this bad.

This, by the way, was Walker's second 3-D film. He had earlier shot a soft-core sexploitation film called The 3-Dimensions of Greta, also using anaglyphic segments. Something Weird Video has that one on DVD, but after this film, I have no desire to seek that one out. It doesn't help that I've seen Something Weird's other anaglyphic 3D DVDs and they all stink.


One amusing piece of trivia for fans of General Hospital. Both this movie and Greta have a very young Tristan Rogers in them, ten years before he played Robert Scorpio. This explains how I came to watch this movie, too. Being one of the very early vintage 3D Blu Ray releases, I bought it just to support vintage 3D releases. I never had any interest in nor any intention to actually watch the dumb thing. However, a friend of mine came over one day and learning of this movie and Mr. Rogers being in it, begged to watch it. The moral of the story is that if you happen to buy this movie just to support 3D Blu Ray and you have a friend who watches General Hospital every day of his life, don't mention it to him or you, too, will be sadly subjected to this.

Cat Ballou (1965)

As far as Western spoofs go, Cat Ballou is neither as goofy as 1953's Red Garters nor is it as raunchy as 1974's Blazing Saddles. In fact, it's surprisingly middle of the road. Which is odd since it's the movie Lee Marvin won an Academy Award for.

In 1894, Catherine Ballou (Jane Fonda) is on the way back to her father's ranch in Wolf City, Wyoming. On the train she meets a drunken phony preacher named Jed (Dwayne Hickman) and his cattle rustler nephew Clay Boone (Michael Callan). She inadvertently aids them in escaping from the Sheriff, thus beginning her slide into becoming notorious outlaw Cat Ballou.

When she gets back to the ranch, she's shocked to find it falling apart. The Wolf City Development Corporation, led by Sir Harry Percival (Reginald Denny), wants the water rights to the ranch and are willing to do anything to obtain them.  Percival is planning to build a slaughterhouse, which will create jobs in town theoretically. The WCDC even goes so far as to hire killer Tim Strawn (Marvin with a silly metal nose and even sillier mustache) to terrorize Cat's father. Cat tries turning to the rustlers for help, but neither one of them are gunmen. Cat then tries to hire notorious gunman Kid Shelleen (Marvin again), only to find that he's a drunk who can't even hit a barn. When Strawn kills her father and the town won't do anything about it, Cat swears vengeance, robbing a train and ultimately killing Sir Harry.

That the movie has a good cast is not in doubt. Certainly Marvin is fun enough in the dual role. Oddly, though, this is neither his best western--that would be The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance--nor his best movie (The Dirty Dozen). He's somewhat amusing but never quite as funny as you think he should be.

That seems to be the problem with the movie in a nutshell. Fonda, in the days before people hated her for her politics, never looked lovelier and  is sincere as Cat, but only afforded a few really funny moments. Those moments are fairly early in the movie and mostly involve her interactions with the two rustlers. Callan and Hickman are probably the two funniest characters and even they aren't as good as they should be. They're best material is in the train at the beginning.

In fact, the movie only really shines when the Greek chorus of Nat King Cole and Stubby Kaye show up to sing about the movie's proceedings. This was Cole's last screen appearance. He was already dying of cancer and passed away a few months before the movie was released. But their lyrics are the most amusing material the movie has to offer.

Part of the real problem is the fact that the movie, unlike Red Garter and Blazing Saddles, never fully embraces the lunacy of the cliches it's spoofing. It almost takes them too matter of fact, missing the obvious joke. Sure, there are way worse Western spoofs out there, but sadly this could and should have been much more than it was, making it a missed opportunity.

Top Gun (1986)

Secret Confessions of a Movie Buff: I loved Top Gun when it came out in 1986, mostly due to having a mad crush on Kelly McGillis. 30 years later and it's still a guilty pleasure of mine.

Tom Cruise, in the role that made him a superstar, is Navy hotshot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. He's one of the best pilots in the Navy, but he's reckless and has no respect for authority. Despite this, when the best on his carrier tosses in his wings, Maverick and RIO Goose (Anthony Edwards) get sent to the elite Naval Flight Academy, nicknamed Top Gun. There Maverick runs afoul of rival Iceman (Val Kilmer) and instructor Jester (Michael Ironside), romances civilian instructor Charlie (McGillis), and learns the truth about his father from chief instructor Viper (Tom Skerritt).

Let's be objectively honest here. Top Gun is a ridiculous piece of Reagan-era Cold War patriotic claptrap. It's really nothing more than pure pop eye candy. For that matter, it's eye candy for whatever your taste is: aerial dogfights, topless men playing volleyball, Kelly McGillis and Meg Ryan, rocking 80s soundtracks, even bad karaoke. It's the very definition of mindless summer blockbuster.

Which is exactly why it works.

Nobody, even in 1986, ever argued this was a good movie. It's not. But it is a fun movie, making it a good summer movie. It's the type of movie that lets you turn your brain off and just soak it all in. Okay, so the dialogue is hilariously awful. Every other line seems to have a homoerotic subtext to it, too, which is doubly hilarious since the movie bends over backwards to prove how macho it is.

Of course, besides the ridiculous dialogue, this is a movie that never met a cliche it didn't like. Sure, the specter of Maverick's dad hangs over things since the old man died in disgrace but was really a hero. Sure, the moment Goose's wife (Ryan) shows up, we know he's doomed and not fifteen minutes later, Goose is gone. Of course Maverick is going to doubt himself after Goose's death and almost drop out only to redeem himself when the Godless Commies attack at the end. Naturally, big rival Iceman and Maverick are going to become good friends at the end. Hell, even McGillis is a cliche: she shows up 20 minutes or so into the movie, walks out an hour later, and comes back right at the end just so the love story can have a Boy meets Girl/Boy loses Girl/Boy gets Girl in the end trajectory!

But ultimately it's the dogfights that make the movie. 30 years later and they're still mad impressive. This was before the age of CGI, so those are real planes (and some models) in the air doing the crazy acrobatics we see. These acrobatics did ultimately cost the life of stuntman of Art Scholl, leading the film to be dedicated to him. Ironically, the reason a sequel wasn't made back then was due to every bit of footage shot for the dogfights ending up on screen. When Paramount learned that, they didn't want to invest in the money to shoot more for the sequel, even though this was the biggest movie of the year.

Top Gun was so successful that for much of  the rest of the 80s, Tom Cruise would keep remaking it, trading out professions and leading ladies. Days of Thunder (racing/Nicole Kidman), Cocktail (bartender/Elisabeth Shue) and both beat for beat redos of Top Gun. Finally, Cruise decided to start actually acting and has since developed the best career out of the rest of the cast. Meg Ryan for a time became America's sweetheart. McGillis went on to do movie after movie where she took off her clothes but only had one more real good movie left in her, 1988's The Accused, which realistically was more Jodie Foster's comeback than anything. Kilmer had a decent career until he became too difficult in the mid-90s. Tom Skerritt and Anthony Edwards went on to have small screen success with Picket Fences and ER, respectively.

It's worth mentioning that Top Gun was converted to 3D and re-issued to theaters and Blu Ray as such in 2013. Director Tony Scott personally supervised the 3D conversion before committing suicide. In that sense, Top Gun was his first big film and, with the reissue, also his last.

Is Top Gun dated? Absolutely. Everything about it screams 1986: the attitude, the fashions, the soundtrack. Despite that, it's still a movie that's pure entertainment. If you're looking for an intelligent, thoughtful movie, forget it. If you're looking for a good time for a couple of hours, though, this is it.