You are in Another DIMENSION

October 26, 2016
by
3 mins read

I have always loved 3D. One of my earliest movie memories is seeing House of Wax (1953) in one of downtown Dallas’s movie palaces and ripping off my glasses, too terrified to look, when Vincent Price (as the hideously scarred strangler) took off his own mask.

According to 3dfilmarchive.com, a fascinating and invaluable resource of information about 3D history, there were exactly 50 domestic features filmed in the three-dimensional process during the Golden Age, roughly 1952-’55. For dedicated fans like me, it is an absolute joy that (slowly but surely) more and more of these films (mostly minor, but some major) are available in the home market. Among the Blu-rays already out are Hitchcock’s Rear Window, the musical Kiss Me, Kate (with Bob Fosse among the dancers), the science-fiction thriller Gog, and Rita Hayworth in Miss Sadie Thompson.

Two new films from the 3D Golden Age have recently joined the ranks, neither with much fanfare. However, interested viewers and fans of the process might want to track down a copy for their library. Of such manias are film freaks like me possessed.

Man in the Dark, a mostly forgotten late film-noir title, bears the historical distinction of being the first 3D feature film released by a major studio (Columbia, in this case), rushed into production to beat Warner Brothers’ House of Wax to the big screen. Filmed in 11 days, Man in the Dark beat the Vincent Price classic to the big screen by 48 hours.

Starring Edmond O’Brien (1955 Best Supporting Actor Oscar winner in The Barefoot Contessa), the film is about cheap hood Steve Rawley who, at the film’s start, undergoes an experimental operation to quell his criminal tendencies. (Better that, he decides, than time in the slammer). The operation is a success, but naturally there’s a fly in the ointment — several of them, in fact, including an ex-girlfriend (’50s bad girl Audrey Totter) and Steve’s former buddies who want to know where he stashed the dough from an earlier robbery.

Steve, however, can’t remember. At first, anyway. As his memories slowly begin to rise to the surface, prompted by a visit to an amusement park, Steve’s girlfriend discovers she likes the new reformed Steve better than the old thug. Trying to find the money, avoiding getting killed by those erstwhile pals and being caught by the cops, Steve has his hands full while the viewer is treated to several in-your-face 3D gimmicks.

The thrilling conclusion, with a chase across a rollercoaster, is the film’s high point and (together with the 3D) the producers’ major marketing ploy. Hitchcock used a similar setting to even better effect in Strangers on a Train, but Lew Landers, the director of Man in the Dark, was no Hitchcock. Still, Man in the Dark is an interesting late entry in the film noir canon, and O’Brien was always a talented performer. And the 3D is excellent!

The 3D/2D Blu-ray has been released by Twilight Time, a subdivision of Screen Archives, and is limited to a print run of 3,000 copies. It’s a bit pricey, like all of Twilight Time’s titles, but the online site occasionally features special sales, bringing the cost down to a more reasonable range of $10-$20. For us 3D nuts, it’s still a bargain.

The second new 3D release from the Golden Age is an even better film available at an absolutely terrific price. Currently an exclusive product from Best Buy, It Came from Outer Space (1953) is one of the best-beloved sci-fi films of the ’50s. With a story by Ray Bradbury and direction from the great Jack Arnold (Tarantula, Creature from the Black Lagoon and The Incredible Shrinking Man), the film is a genuine classic of the genre, 3D or not.

Richard Carlson plays an amateur astronomer who, with his girlfriend Ellen (Barbara Rush), witnesses the crash of a meteor in the Arizona desert. Rushing to the site, the intrepid scientist discovers that the object is actually an alien vessel, but after the crater is covered by a landslide, no one in the nearby community believes him.

Then there are the aliens. Not really hostile, they are still so hideous-looking that they take to replicating human bodies (not unlike the later Invasion of the Body Snatchers) while they try to repair their ship. The film’s tantalizing glimpses of the monsters are among its most memorable effects.

One of the film’s many fans is Steven Spielberg, who has credited It Came from Outer Space as his inspiration for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. That alone is quite a substantial endorsement.

As with Man in the Dark, the 3D is also excellent, making It Came from Outer Space an absolute delight for both fans and collectors.

Folio is your guide to entertainment and culture around and near Jacksonville, Florida. We cover events, concerts, restaurants, theatre, sports, art, happenings, and all things about living and visiting Jax. Folio serves more than two million readers across Jacksonville and Northeast Florida, including St. Augustine, The Beaches, and Fernandina.

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