Films in 3-D: Part 1 (1922-1981) | Episode 8

3-D Pt. 1

Adam: All right. Well, welcome back to another episode of perf damage. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Thanks for joining us again. This one's gonna be exciting. Yeah. It's one of Adam's favorite little topic. It's not really a little topic. All right. Favorite big topic. 

Adam: favorite topic? One of many. Yeah. So we're gonna talk about 3d this 

Charlotte: week.

Charlotte: Yeah. We're going to the third dimension. 

Adam: and why are we talking about 3d Charlotte? 

Charlotte: I was working on a 3d film from 1983 and we just sort of got on a 3d kick, just watching a bunch of 3d films.

Charlotte: And like we do, we go down those little rabbit holes and we start looking into all things 3d. I mean, we already loved 3d anyways. 

Adam: I've a sucker for 3d my 

Charlotte: entire life. So we thought it would make a fun topic. Gave us an excuse to watch some more that we hadn't seen in a while. And research 

Adam: our 

Charlotte: favorite thing. Yeah, we do love doing research. We like to try to one up each other with little facts. 

Charlotte: Do you remember your first 3d film that you ever saw?

Charlotte: Adam? 

Adam: I think my first 3d experience, wasn't a wonderful one. I think what's creature from the black lagoon broadcast on television in an cliff. Right. It was very exciting because it was 3d and it was being B. And you had to go pick up the glasses for a dollar at seven 11, right?

Adam: Seven 11. Yep. So that was very exciting. It was like something you had to go get somewhere else in order to be able to watch it on TV. For black and white Annaly forks. Okay. Broadcast. Isn't the best way to see Annaly though either. 

Charlotte: No Annaly really works best when there's only select scenes in 3d, because you can take 'em off, you can put 'em on.

Adam: Yeah. It ruins anything color

Charlotte: right. Which is why it's best just for select scenes. Yeah. So you don't have, or for 

Adam: black and white. Yeah. But you know, it was, it was pretty cool. The effect was okay. It's not like going to see it in a theater or something on the polarized 

Charlotte: version.

Charlotte: I think my first 3d experience was probably at a theme park. I'm gonna say, I don't think it was a television thing or an in theater thing. Maybe captain EO. It might have been captain 

Adam: EO was really cool. As far as it might 

Charlotte: have been, that was at Walt Disney, right? Yep. 

Charlotte: And that was what George Lucas. Francis Ford COA. 

Adam: Yeah. George Lucas wrote captain EO. Yeah. And Francis Ford COA 

Charlotte: directed it. That's crazy. No wonder it was good. I mean, I was a little, I mean it wasn't 

Adam: that good. Honestly, if I, you know, it's good when you were little, it was cool when you were little for sure.

Adam: And the 3d was pretty awesome. Look 

Charlotte: good and cool. Or the same thing to a little kid. True. 

Adam: I think in a theater, my very first one was jaws 3d. Yeah. Because I was really excited for that one and my parents took me to see 

Charlotte: it. Yeah. That was part of all those three cools that came out as 3d.

Adam: Yeah. Amityville, 3d, 

Charlotte: Friday the 13th 3d. 3d. 

Adam: Yeah. I think that's it honestly, that's it? Yeah. Three of them. All three of them. That's all you need. Three, three cools. 

Charlotte: Mm-hmm

Charlotte: what's like a, the fourth film in a series. Is that a fourth? Cool. 

Adam: Quad qu, 

Charlotte: I don't know. Anyways, we're gonna talk about 3d. We're gonna do a little dive into the history, start at the beginning and see what all we find. Stay tuned.

Charlotte: So 3d, we always think of it as starting in the fifties, but it's not really true. 

Adam: No, it started way before that it did. Actually 3d has been around as long as film has. 

Charlotte: Yeah. 

Adam: Longer. Well, correct. Yes. Stereoscopic was around that's that is still images in three dimensions. Mm-hmm yeah.

Adam: That is highly collectible right now, too. people collect those big time. Yeah. 

Charlotte: I know. Brian May is a big fan of. From 

Adam: queen. Yes. Yeah. But I know that almost the same time that the patent for motion picture was filed, there was a patent for a three-dimensional motion picture,

Charlotte: yeah. Was that pat by Thomas Edison? I don't know. Which is, you know, I'm reading a book that kind of, yeah, I know. No, you know, it adds a little question, mark. Can't wait to Astrid to hear how that comes out. You know, I need to get on that.

Charlotte: I'm not done with it. 

Adam: So the patent for 3d is most pictures been around since the 1890s. Yeah. 

Charlotte: So hand in hand in a way, not quite like censorship hand in hand, but you know, it's always been . The little stepchild that keeps rear in its head and getting in trouble.

Charlotte: So 

Adam: the patent existed in 1890s, but the first movie wasn't made until 

Charlotte: well, 1922 was the first feature. 1922. Yes. That's the first feature film. There were shorts and stuff like that prior to prior, what's the first feature called the power of love. 

Adam: Power of love. Mm-hmm 

Charlotte: I just think hug Lewis. 

Adam: I know it's a serious thing. 

Charlotte: Did he base that song on the first 3d film ever made? 

Adam: I'd like to think he did actually. Cuz it's a serious thing. Yeah.

Charlotte: Make one man. Weep make another man. One man, sing man. Sing. Some people like 3d, some people don't like 3d. It really makes a lot of sense. When you think about it. Well done Huey. 

Adam: Why would someone not like 3d 

Charlotte: though? Well, some people can't see 

Adam: 3d. Why is that ? Why can some people see it?

Adam: And others don't? Well, 

Charlotte: this is something that I didn't know about until recently I was talking to a colleague at work who cannot see 3d and 

Charlotte: She can't see 3d because when she was younger, she had a lazy eye and had to wear an eye patch for a while. And you do that so that your eye muscles will get stronger. 

Adam: My sister had to do it because one eye was much weaker than the other one. Yeah. So it helps. And they were trying to bring that eye up to the same ability as the other one. 

Charlotte: Right? So by covering the good eye, it forces the weak eye to work harder, to work harder and to get those muscles.

Charlotte: Yep. And you can do that by an eye patch or you can do it by surgery. And most of the time, when you're a little kid, they don't do surgery. They don't wanna do surgery right away. Unfortunately, what's also happening in your brain at the same time is you're developing binocular vision. 

Charlotte: So your brain is getting used to seeing two images overlapping and figuring out the distance between that's when you're gaining your depth perception. This only happens when you're a child for a very short window of time. And unfortunately that's when a lot of kids have to wear eye patches.

Charlotte: If your brain isn't able to develop this binocular vision within this short window of time, it will never develop it. 

Adam: Yeah. And that has to do with the connections that your brain is making, right? So 

Charlotte: yeah, the neurons in your visual cortex, if they're not developed, they will never develop.

Charlotte: So if someone doesn't develop this, they can't have surgery or have anything done to develop this. If you don't develop it, you are never going to develop it. So you're sort of locked into a right. Your 

Adam: brain kind of does a work around, right. Mm-hmm if you don't have both eyes and that information, your brain kind of creates a 

Charlotte: different pathway.

Charlotte: So you can still have depth perception. Your brain doesn't process, overlapping images in the same way, right. To allow you to see 3d. See, 

Adam: that's fascinating. I had no clue that it was actually the way your brain is wired that yeah. 

Charlotte: I knew it had something to do a depth perception and we'd had quite a few friends that had said, oh, I can't see 3d.

Charlotte: And a lot of 'em would say, oh, I had an issue with my eye when I was younger, but I never really understood mm-hmm why that was or what happened until my coworker was talking about that. And she hates that she can't see 3d because she would totally be all into 3d. Yeah. I 

Adam: mean, growing up, my sister had that same issue where she had to wear a patch for a while.

Adam: And I, and she doesn't like 3d. Right. She can't see it. Yeah. Right. I always knew that I was crazy for 3d and when we would go, she'd be like, eh, you know? Yeah. I didn't see it. And I was like, oh wow. 

Adam: So the first movie was 19 22, 

Charlotte: 19 22. And it was around in the twenties and the thirties, there were little shorts, things like that. It was always around, but it was never. very 

Adam: popular. The thing that you discovered in our research is that 3d never actually goes away.

Charlotte: It really doesn't when you look at all the films that are actually filmed or released in 3d, they're always around. 

Adam: Yeah. There are crazies. There are times 

Charlotte: when the majors get involved and right. 

Adam: Where there's a lot of films being produced. Yeah. For short periods of time.

Adam: And we're gonna actually focus on all three of those major periods, 

Charlotte: which were the 

Adam: fifties. The fifties was the first one And then the eighties was the second and then 

Adam: The 2010s. That was another kind of boom period. Yeah. 

Charlotte: All very 

Adam: distincts and all driven by technology, right? Like big advances in technology, in 3d technology. Yeah. 3d technology. Yeah. So let's talk about the first one. Let's talk about the fifties.

Adam: Yeah. What, what happened in the fifties that made 3d become such an exciting new 

Charlotte: process? Well, we can't really start talking about this without mentioning that yes. Television came. Everybody was looking for a way to get people back to the theaters, but also at the same time in the 1950s, you had people moving from cities to suburbs.

Charlotte: That's when suburbs really took off post-war everybody was buying a home with a lawn and a picket fence. 

Adam: Yeah, the, the American dream. Yeah. They were selling that. 

Charlotte: Yeah. So everybody wanted to figure out ways to get people back into theaters, not at home in the suburbs with their TV.

Charlotte: So if you look at a lot of stuff in the fifties, it's all advertised with whatever thing that it has. So it's either Cinemascope it's Invis division. It's in three dimension, 

Adam: right? By 1955, over 75% of all households had a television.

Charlotte: Before that it had been movie let's movies brought to the movies at 

night. 

Adam: Yeah. It was always movies. Yeah. So the movies actually had real fear that people would just stop coming mm-hmm so then they had to adapt and create ways the 

Charlotte: fifties were all about the gimmicks 

Adam: And what is the ultimate gimmick? 3d, 

Charlotte: 3d, 3d 3d. It is. And I think sometimes that's where 3d fails when it's treated like it's not a gimmick. 

Adam: I would agree. Yeah. If you're a little high minded mm-hmm that composition in depth. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Like Hitchcock. Yes. Dial in for murder, dial in for murder.

Charlotte: It's all about the layers. 

Adam: A prime example of. 

Adam: He likes to work in the three planes. There's one shot with the hand falling out. I, I Find my brain kind of flattens that out. If there's not something that stimulates you coming at you in some way, coming at you, coming at you which we will talk about 

Charlotte: later.

Charlotte: Yeah. That is the name of a 3d film. Yeah. 

Adam: My brain tends to flatten 

Charlotte: that out. Yeah. I think that mine does 

Adam: too. About 20 to 30 minutes into the film. Then it kind of just looks like a 2d film to me. Mm-hmm 

Charlotte: well, it can be kind of exhausting to watch 3d sometimes 

Adam: I agree, but I think that a lot of the bad stigma attached to 3d, like the, the headaches and things like that is associated with bad projection.

Charlotte: Not the glasses themselves, unless they're those glasses from the 2010s, the it expands. Yes. Those were super heavy. So heavy. They're massively uncomfortable. It would hurt your nose. Yeah. And if you wear glasses, forget about it. Oh, glasses over glasses is never fun. Anyway, those were the worst too. All right.

Adam: So we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves. We are let's, let's go back 

Charlotte: to the fifties. So the very first wave in the fifties was with natural vision. 

Adam: So natural vision was a new technology that was created, in order to shoot 3d. Right? Correct. 

Charlotte: So in the fifties, everything was done separately on two different strips of film. And that's, what's really distinct about the 1950s 3d period. And this was both in filming it and projecting it. 

Adam: Right? So , this natural vision mimic the way that the human eye works. 

Charlotte: Right. Right.

Charlotte: And that's why it did the two. Right? 

Adam: Those two mirrors, you were able to adjust what they called the point of convergence which is what creates the sense of depth. Right. And then you could also flatten that depth in a scene by adjusting those mirrors.

Adam: Right. Kind of like your eye adjusts 

Charlotte: naturally, right? Yeah. Like if you put your finger in front of your face and you close one eye and you close the other eye, your finger moves back and forth. Right. Well, that's the same with like the mirror, the more you move, the mirror, the farther away that disparity is gonna get.

Charlotte: So the more depth it's gonna appear to have, 

Adam: and you can really Jack that up. You can, as we have seen in those eighties movies sometimes too much, sometimes it hurts. It does. But you know, eighties where. That time, where more is not enough we need more, more. Yeah. So back 

Charlotte: to the fifties, Beana devil that came out in 1952 was often credited as the very first 3d feature. Although we know that it wasn't, but it was the first one of the fifties wave. And it was the first one in natural vision.

Charlotte: Right. So it does have that 

Adam: and it kind of kicked off that whole first 3d wave. Right. Mm-hmm Guana devil became a sensation and it was made by allied artists, which wasn't considered a major at the time. Right. It was an independent film that came outta nowhere. And made a ton of money because of this cool new 

Charlotte: innovation 

Charlotte: yeah. And then the very first big studio produced 3d film was, 

Adam: do you know?

Adam: Yes, I do know the first big studio produced film was house wax. Yep. 1953, but. Technically not the first major studio film to be released. That was man in the dark. They heard that house of wax was in production. So they rushed man in the dark into production. They shot it in 11 days and got it out before you're hitting me wax.

Adam: No joke. I have no clue, no joke. Just so they could be first to market. 

Charlotte: What studio did that was that Sony? 

Adam: That was Columbia. Columbia. Yeah. Columbia. So Sony currently, but not back then. Columbia was their own thing. Yeah. But yeah. That's crazy that that even happened back then.

Adam: Yeah. 

Charlotte: So man in the dark is a noir film. It's a 

Adam: pretty good film too. We watched this one just the other day

Adam: Man in the dark has a lot of really fun gimmicky stuff. 

Charlotte: So Maine in the dark, you have a synopsis for that. I do. How about a, how about a TRT 

Adam: TRT on a man in the dark is one hour, 10 minutes. Oh, perfect. Solid, right. 70 minutes, quick minutes. Alright. And here is the synopsis, many interested parties are after the loot from a factory payroll heist, but the mobster who hit it has amnesia after undergoing experimental brain surgery in the prison hospital

Adam: could happen. Right? Sure. Why 

Charlotte: not? Why not? I forgot. I had this surgery. . This one's fun because it's not really the kind of genre that you think of when you think of 3d. No, 

Adam: when you think of 3d, you think of horror movies or sci-fi movies. But this is a film noir. 

Charlotte: It is. And there's some fun, 3d moments.

Charlotte: There's a car chase and some people lean out a window with a gun and the gun's right 

Adam: in your face. Yeah. Shoots right in your face. I also really like the surgery scene when it has that overhead shot. Oh, my, of all the doctors putting scalpels 

Charlotte: in your face. Yeah. You are in the patient's POV and they're performing surgery.

Charlotte: In your face. It's awesome. Yeah. That's really scalpels. There's little tweezer. Well, there's really big tweezers. That's a really 

Adam: fun movie though. Cuz Audrey to her is in it. She's the gangsters mall. Yeah, of course like a character she's played millions of times, tons of times and Columbia movies, but she's fantastic.

Adam: And Edmund O'Brien's great. He plays this really nice guy, who then finds out that he was this really hardened criminal. 

Charlotte: I love the amnesia plot of many film noirs. Oh yeah. 

Adam: Some of your, your favorites, like somewhere in the dark. Isn't that? Yeah. That's one of 

Charlotte: your, 

Adam: somewhere in the night, somewhere in the night.

Adam: Yes. That one is like one of your favorites. 

Charlotte: Larry KVE yes. Larry kret yes, somewhere in the night. That's another film noir. Amnesia, tale. Not 3d though. It's not 3d, but it's still good. You know, you could do somewhere in the night in the man in the dark double feature. 

Adam: Oh, that would be a stellar, double feature

Adam: yeah, this has a lot of really cool set pieces too. There's a scene on what is it? A peer in a carnival mm-hmm and he goes on this tilt a world , and it spins around in all the people are shooting at, at him.

Adam: It's a dream sequence. And it's all in 3d and so they're all spinning around and shooting into the camera, it's really awesome.

Charlotte: So, you know, the surgery that he's getting is a lobotomy, what it's not explicitly referred to in the film, but according to the script, also, this film did not use the natural vision 3d system. They used two cameras with no mirrors, so they just had two cameras right next to each other. And they said it was simple.

Charlotte: It was portable. And that was the reason why they were able to shoot it so quickly. Oh, wow. 

Adam: That's cool. I didn't know that. So I guess you would, adjust your point of convergence by moving the cameras further apart. .As opposed to the mirrors in the middle. Yeah.

Adam: Sort 

Charlotte: of like they did in the eighties. 

Adam: Yeah, absolutely. Cool. I didn't know that that's, that's really. 

Charlotte: You got some facts. I got some facts. Like I said, we're gonna try to one up each other with these 

Adam: facts. Yeah. The 3d in this movie is really good too. Yeah. And it's you know, for shooting this in 11 days, it does not feel like a cheapie.

Charlotte: No,

Charlotte: Lou Landers is the director. He directed sing dance. Plenty hot. That's that movie with? Billy Gilbert, the I'm. Hmm. Yes. That one that's sing dance. Plenty hot. Oh, I didn't know that. 

Adam: I know this guy. Yeah. That title meant nothing to me. And I was like, Ooh, should I know this? I don't 

Charlotte: know what that is.

Charlotte: Yeah. I know all the weird random stuff. Okay. So house of wax, 

Adam: first one in product. Yes. It went into production before this one, they rushed this into production to beat it out to market. Yeah. So, 

Charlotte: yeah. So let's talk House of wax, 3d, starring Vincent Price. 

Adam: Your favorite? One of them. Yeah. Vincent Price is like your. I've always liked Vincent Price, but I would definitely say he's your guy. Yeah, 

Charlotte: I have his cookbook. It's great. It's true. He had actually, he had a lot of cookbooks, but treasury of great recipes.

Charlotte: Cool. 

Adam: Not good recipes. Great. Not fine recipes. But great recipes. 

Charlotte: I remember the day I bought that book, I found it at a thrift store. I could have bought it online, but I had to find it in person. 

Adam: In the wild, as they say in the 

Charlotte: wild, it was on December 31st. 

Adam: There's something about finding something in the wild and buying it.

Adam: That is way more satisfying than just ordering it online. Mm-hmm 

Charlotte: so how's the 

Adam: wax. What do we wanna say? 

How's 

Charlotte: the wax? 

Adam: Early Charles Bronson appearance. That's pretty cool. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Should we read the synopsis? Yeah, sure. Terribly disfigured in a fire set by a greedy business partner, Jared schemes to rebuild the museum as a Maco chamber of horrors filled with lurid figures that eerily resemble those of murder victims stolen from the local morgue.

Charlotte: One of my favorite little facts about this film was directed by Andre de Toth who only has one eye. So he 

Adam: never saw the 3d. He was. So he can't 

Charlotte: actually see 3d. Yeah. And he directed a killer 3d film.

Charlotte: He. 

Adam: Some would say the 3d film of the 

Charlotte: fifties. Yeah, absolutely. I think most people would say that. 

Adam: Yeah. And he never forgot that you should put those fun little bits in there. Yeah. Like that moment where the Barker is out there and he's trying to get people to come in and he's got the paddle ball.

Adam: Yeah. That's right. Mission. Yeah. It's, it's amazing. Yeah. Like that is one of my favorite 3d scenes to this day. It's so good. And he talks directly into the camera as if he's talking to you. Mm-hmm 

Charlotte: it's kind of outta place in the film. 

Adam: Well, there are a few moments like that. Yeah. There's a spear Charles Bronson throws mm-hmm later in the film and it goes right at the camera.

Adam: He composes it beautifully. He uses color wonderfully, cuz this is a technic color film. Mm-hmm for that time period , it's a pretty expensive film. I think they gave him a little over a million dollars and he delivered the film for 860,000. So he had something to prove and you can see it on the screen. He was a B level director that this was kind of his shot at an, a level title. And he was going to impress and he did that movie made so much money for Warner brothers at the time.

Adam: So this is also a remake. I don't think we mentioned that before. No, we didn't. It is of mystery of the wax museum, 1933.

Adam: Yeah. 

Charlotte: 33, right before the official production code. Yeah. So 

Adam: pre-code, it was pre-code film. Yeah. That one had a lot of nasty stuff in it, like heroin use and necrophilia, 

Charlotte: yeah. did we say it was filmed in natural vision? 

Adam: Yeah. I think most of the fifties movie cycle was made with natural vision and then its subsequent upgrades. 

Charlotte: So the natural vision supervisor of this film, Milton Goberg, he was also the supervisor on the film, the charge at feather river, which is where the will helm scream was heard.

Charlotte: Yes. Where, where it got its name, name? Yes. Not where it first appeared 

Adam: Wilhelm gets shot with that arrow in the leg and lets out that legendary. 

Charlotte: Squeal.

Charlotte: Poor will hem poor will helm. He gets shot with that arrow, . That screen was heard in 3d. 

Adam: We need charge of feather river in 3d. Is it out? No, it needs to be released. All right. We need to get 3d archive on that. Bob Furmanek and the work that they do at 3d 

Charlotte: film archive is yeah. Shout out to them because they do, we wouldn't have 

Adam: half the stuff that we have without them. 

Adam: So, yeah. But he's still really trucking away and getting these things released through keynote lo, which is really awesome. Mm-hmm Ken Lober will license these films from a major studio 

Charlotte: and then work 

Adam: with the 3d and archive with 3d film archive on restoring them in 3d and then release the disc for people to actually buy mm-hmm 

Charlotte: that's where so many of yours came from.

Adam: almost all of them. Yeah. 

Adam: So after they used natural vision to capture it, two cameras shooting at each other with the adjustable mirrors, the left and right eye were captured separately. Right. And would then process separately. Mm-hmm so then how do you project something in 3d from that point?

Charlotte: So in order to project 3d in the fifties, you had two project.

Charlotte: one left eye one right eye. And they were projecting a polarized image. When we see photos from the fifties, we often see people with the red and blue, a Cliffe glasses mm-hmm , but most of the films were all polarized. So very similar to the kind of glasses that you'll get today, they look like sunglasses.

Charlotte: the problem with that is that both projectors had to be perfectly in sync. If they were one frame off, things just didn't look right. 

Adam: So as you're projecting, they would do this thing called interlocking between the two mm-hmm . Yeah. So that they would be in sync, right.

Adam: Two projectors interlock together. Yep. Projecting the same image, just offset a little bit left eye in one projector, right. Eye in another projector on the same. Silver screen that was the other thing because of brightness, right? Mm-hmm the reflectivity. And then, so you're saying if one of them were to break down or say the film snaps which happens 

Adam: and then someone cuts a frame out. Now you would have to adjust that other eye. You'd have to out cut that same frame out. Yep. In the other eye, in order to keep them in sync. Right. 

Charlotte: Yeah. There's tales of all kinds of movies being shown with projector issues and them having to stop and try to fix it . The other thing about 3d at the time, since you were having to use both projectors on the same screen, they would have to build in intermissions an hour in because the carbon arc lamp projectors could only run for an hour.

Charlotte: Usually you would have one reel on one projector. And then when that reel you'd switch over to another projector. Yeah. 15 to, to 20 minutes or whatever, you'd switch to the other one. And then when you needed to, you could change the carbon rod. Yes. Cuz it would be down because the other one would be showing.

Charlotte: But when you're showing a 3d film and you're using both of them, you can't really stop one without stopping the other one, so right. They would stop them and then they would run an intermission. 

Charlotte: So if you're watching a 3d film from the fifties and you see an intermission, that's why it's there. 

Adam: And the movie's 70 minutes long. And you're wondering why there's an intermission in it. Right? Exactly. That's why They said that the more out of sync that they got, the more it would affect your head when you watched it.

Adam: Oh yeah. I was giving people three to five frames out. That's where the whole concept of 3d being headache, inducing. Yeah. 

Charlotte: A lot of people blame the glasses and it has nothing to do with the glasses and almost everything to do with the projecting. 

Adam: Yeah. So it was the presentation.

Adam: Yeah. That was doing that. Not the actual film. Right.

Adam: So it quickly got a bad name, the whole 3d craze actually only lasted about 18 months 

Charlotte: in the fifties. Yes. Yeah. 1953 and 54. Right. Were the big years. And 

Adam: then those movies later in 54 being released were often offered in, flat 2d versions. 

Charlotte: Yeah. What's interesting too, is that at the same time the wide screen wars going on.

Charlotte: So some films were wide screen and also 3d. So they were having to learn multiple technologies at the same time. It 

Adam: asks a lot of the theaters. Doesn't it? It does because you would have to not only have bigger screen, silver screens are, were very expensive too. So if you wanted to show 3d, you had to have a silver screen.

Adam: That's where the concept of the silver screen. I think even Nicole Kidman says, dazzling images on a silver screen. Mm-hmm and the AMC 

Charlotte: In the promo that plays at AMC. Yeah. Right now, before every film. 

Adam: Yeah. Well technically almost no theaters have silver screens. Unless you rent one for a special exhibition of an older movie.

Adam: So exhibition in the rise of wide screen is kind of what killed the whole fifties. 

Charlotte: I don't know if wide screen had anything to do with it, honestly, because 

Adam: well, when the Rob came out, right? Oh the Cinemascope yeah, the very first Cinemascope film didn't they say that movie made more money, then all of the 3d movies put together that came out that year.

Charlotte: Right? That was 1953. 

Adam: Right. So. Basically, Cinemascope kind of killed 3d at that point. Like why would you spend all this time and money to do 3d when you can do just a wider screen film in Cinemascope and release it make just as much money? 

Charlotte: Well, it was expensive to rent Cinemascope lenses and the equipment, and they were very limited.

Charlotte: So if you couldn't get a hold of that, you could do a 3d film, cuz again, you needed some kind of a gimmick, some kind of a label to put on your film. It was also all kinds of fun stuff that happened with sound too in the fifties, the stereophonic sound. 

Adam: Yeah, that was one of the things with house of wax. Yeah. House of wax was released in Warner sound, which was quadraphonic sound for the first time. It's four channel four channel Warner sound though. 

Charlotte: Yeah. I love all the special sound formats for Vista vision. They have perspec. 

Adam: So, okay. We talked about house wax. We talked about 1953, so 1954, tons of 3d movies are coming out. Mm-hmm you had Vincent Price's follow up to house of wax, the mad magician come out. Mm-hmm that was a fun one. Yeah. And this is an interesting little fact about that. That was the very first movie broadcast on television in 3d, in AIFF. Oh, interesting.

Adam: Yeah. So they figured out ] that they could do that.

Adam: And then Gog came out in 1954. Yeah. One of the first, sci-fi movies to mention the word robot mm-hmm 

Charlotte: in it. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Go is like the original chopping mall. 

Adam: It kind of is. I mean, they kind of actually even look like that with the big treads and stuff. Yeah. 

Charlotte: Yeah. The funny thing about Gog is. It's not really fast. All these people are trying to run away and it's just slowly sort of going towards 'em with this weird little claw hand that somehow always gets 

Adam: around their neck.

Adam: Well, I, I don't understand either, those arms are really spindly. They are like, I feel like you could pull one off if, if it ever came to that,

Charlotte: but feel like we should read this synopsis for Gog since we're talking about it. Sure. Yeah. Oh, go 85 minutes. Nice. It's so good shot in 1 66 too, which I think is a pretty perfect aspect ratio. So go in a remote underground research laboratory to scientists engaged in space. Travel research are frozen to death in a cold chamber.

Charlotte: When their instruments come under the control of an unknown power, a security agent Dr. David Shepherd. Arrives at the secret space research base home of two experimental robots to investigate the possible sabotage early in his investigation, shepherd finds that the underground laboratory under the control of the supercomputer Novac and experimental robots, Gog and mugo.

Adam: So Gog and Magog have taken over the facility basically. Yeah. Like in chopping mall. Yeah. So I have a couple little facts about this one too. It was filmed in three. But only ever exhibited in 2d, due to the flagging popularity of 3d movies at the time.

Adam: So it was released towards the latter end of 1954. Also Gog has one of the first instances of product placement. Coca-Cola paid them $5,000 to display a vending machine prominently in the feature. What? Yeah. I love that was pretty funny, cuz I don't even remember the Coca-Cola machine in there.

Charlotte: Yeah, I don't either. The thing about the fifties 3d is that all genres were coming out with 3d. It wasn't really pigeonholed in the way that it would sort of become in the eighties where it's mostly horror, horror movies or sci movies. SCIS. Yeah. Yeah. It was everything. So adventure films, musicals, musicals?

Adam: Three redheads from Seattle. Yeah, that's a 

Charlotte: musical. Yeah. There were Western. Coming 

Adam: out also noir films. Mm-hmm like, we already mentioned one, but Inferno is another film noir that came 

Charlotte: out. Yeah. They were trying everything.

Adam: Yeah. I think they thought that people would wanna see everything, every sort of genre depicted in 3d. Yeah. Why not? They thought it might be the new regular way to see things. I mean, Hitchcock even threw in there, so let's talk about creature from black lagoon because, you know, we keep saying that this only lasted into 1954, the big wave, but the most popular film aside from house of wax during this period was creeped from black gun.

Adam: Probably the one that has the most lasting influence also. 

Charlotte: Yeah, I'd agree with that statement 

Adam: came out in 1954, black and white, so universal didn't have a whole lot of confidence in it. Well, it was 

Charlotte: also shot underwater, a lot of sequences, which is very difficult with 3d because of the reflections on the 

Adam: water.

Adam: Right. Jack Arnold directed. Yeah. And a lot of ways I think that was what they touted in the trailers for. It was that it was first movie ever shot underwater in 3d . It was like a selling point. 

Charlotte: Again, everybody needed a gimmick that was their advertising.

Adam: That was their advertising gimmick. Yeah. 

Charlotte: What do you have to say about this one that hasn't been said a million 

Adam: times? Well, see, that's the thing, 

Charlotte: mm-hmm yeah, this was a big film in my house whenever I was growing up, because they shot a lot of the stuff right.

Charlotte: Near where my mom loves. That's very cool. Yeah. And every year they would have a little creature Fest where they would show creature from the black lagoon. And a lot of times they have the stars from the film come and introduce it or talk and do a little Q and. So Julie Adams was there. Ben Chapman was there.

Adam: Also the, the sequel revenge of the creature. This was so popular. They pushed that into into production right away. It came out 1955, just one year later. It was the only sequel at that time to have ever been filmed in 3d as well.

Adam: So they weren't sure if it was the creature or the 3d or what the success was. So they just wanted to mimic everything about the other one. Did they release it in 

Charlotte: 3d? So 

Adam: 1955. Yeah. So 1955 that movie came out in 3d was one of the few movies that released that year in 3d from a major studio. Also that movie marks Clint Eastwood one of his first roles.

Adam: He plays a lab tech in the second one in the revenge of the creature. Right. It's pretty funny to see him. I think he has like two lines 

Charlotte: and isn't Bronson in house 

Adam: of wax. Yeah. Charles Bronson is in house of wax. So two future icons appear in the fifties 3d wave in the third dimension .

Adam: It's a star builder.

Adam: it's a sure. I mean, Vincent Price said that house of wax was the movie that really made him a star. Yeah. Prior to that, he was like a second or third build actor. 

Charlotte: Well, he'd been in a lot of film, noirs. Yeah. Lots 

Adam: of film, noirs, lots of 

Charlotte: dramas, if you, weren't around when of his movies were coming out and you discover him, you always start with the house of waxes and the Dr.

Charlotte: Fives. those kind of films, and then you go back and see what he started in. It's so weird seeing him just as a regular dude. 

Adam: Oh, I like him as the bad guy in Laura. 

Charlotte: Oh yeah. He's great. He's 

Adam: good in pretty much everything he does. Yeah. He always brings 100% 

Charlotte: when he, but I think it can be surprising that yeah, he did all this kind of stuff where he is the regular guy.

Charlotte: Cuz you see him and you think, oh here's the bad guy, but then he is not the bad guy. Yeah. 

Adam: I think he was searching for a persona. And house of wax gave him that persona. Yeah. And it made him a star, like a star for the rest of his life.

Charlotte: Yeah. So 50 3d two strip. 

Adam: Yeah. That was the kind of brutal way to do it. 

Charlotte: yeah, it didn't really work that's what sort of, quote unquote killed. It was the fact that it had so many issues. It was prone 

Adam: to issues. I mean, it wasn't the image that, that was wrong. It was the exhibition. Yeah.

Charlotte: It was difficult. It's hard to get two things exactly. In sync things have to be perfect or it's not gonna work 

Charlotte: from our personal experience , it's really easy to sympathize with the fifties projectionist that we're trying to make these two things work 

Adam: so that takes us out of the fifties. 3d is dead sort of, well, I mean, it, like you said, it never goes away.

Adam: There's still movies being produced independent movies, shorts and things like that. But major exhibition is gone. So it kind of goes away for the most part 

Charlotte: until the 

Adam: technology changes until technology changes in the eighties. 

Charlotte: Yeah. The boom in the eighties is credited with starting in 1981 with the film coming at ya, coming 

Adam: at ya. So good. 

Charlotte: Coming at. You really just describes the gimmick. It basically just says, this is 3d and everything's gonna be coming at you. And it does what, it's a 

Adam: great name for a movie. It is coming at you.

Charlotte: So coming at you, 91 minutes of pure coming at you, every single imaginable be here's the synopsis of this one. Wait, who's it directed by?

Charlotte: It is directed by, Fernando bald. But Tony Anthony produced it. He also stars And he also stars in it. This guy is awesome.

Charlotte: The synopsis tragedy strikes is two ruthless brothers, kid, a bride during her wedding hurt and angry. H H heart begins his quest to find the love he lost and take vengeance upon the wicked. The film features many 3d effects, many of which are intended to fly off the screen at the audience. And they do.

Adam: Yeah. I mean, that's, it's operating Mo it's just stuff flying at you. You know, we never find out 

Charlotte: what HH stands for. No, 

Adam: never. 

Charlotte: I think it's great that the guy's name is Tony Anthony too. So his name is Anthony Anthony . 

Adam: So Anthony Anthony was born here in the United. But moved to Italy and became a star in Italy.

Adam: And he star in a series of films where he played a knockoff of the man with no name called the stranger. 

Charlotte: Nice. 

Adam: So this is the movie credited with the kicking off the 3d craze in the eighties. In the eighties. Yeah. Yeah. It was a surprise hit 

Charlotte: it's back. It's bigger. It's better. And it's coming at 

Adam: you. I love this too. So one sheets for this film had this on them.

Adam: It says warning. The management is not responsible for where the screen ends and you begin what does that even mean? I know it's so cheesy though. I love it. It feels like a William castle movie. Yeah. 

Charlotte: It kind of does, doesn't it? Yeah. 

Adam: Mr. Gimmick. 

Charlotte: I think one of my favorite parts of this film are the opening credits. 

Adam: Oh, I, I honestly think this is probably one of the greatest opening credit sequences of all time. 

Charlotte: , all of the credits are actually

Charlotte: In the film. So they're on objects that he's interacting with. So he moves a blanket. There's a name on a horse saddle that was underneath the blanket. 

Adam: That's yeah. Out his shotgun in the director of photography's name is on it.

Adam: He picks up this bag and on one side it says somebody's name and then he flips it around and it says somebody else's name. It's so great. Yeah. It's a 

Charlotte: lot of fun, 

Adam: Imagine trying to shoot that , you have to get it just right. Yeah. It's really, really fantastic. 

Charlotte: watching the film. You can see how much fun they had making this movie, 

Adam: yeah. they're real filmmakers. Every moment in this, every shot is composed. I think that Ferando Baldy really uses the 3d in a way that you don't see a lot of filmmakers. Like his understanding of it is so great that all of his compositions have depth and they just seem so composed, you know, mm-hmm,

Adam: And then he hits you in the eye with something. So, 

Charlotte: and then he hits you in the eye again. and then he hits you in the eye again.

Charlotte: And 

Adam: it was so good. He does it two or three more times 

Charlotte: It's as if they were testing it multiple ways and they couldn't decide. So they just put 'em all in there.

Charlotte: Yeah. Just 

Adam: leave 'em all in it's it's great. 

Charlotte: Or they gotta make that run time somehow and as much as I like coming at you, I think I like treasure of the four crowns even more because it's so over the top. 

Adam: Oh yes. We'll talk about that in the next one, for sure. Okay.

Adam: so let's talk about the great use of black and white to emphasize color in that film.

Adam: Like the scene where Tony, Anthony is shot by the two brothers when they come in, and it suddenly goes black and white and you're like, what the heck is happening here? This doesn't make sense, right. Until he's shot and his blood is in red. Right. And it's like, whoa, that's so effective.

Adam: It's very, very cool. You don't see that often. He does that throughout the film to emphasize different things with the Spears. Yes. The Spears that are red, the bat. 

Charlotte: Yep. The bats are blue, blue. The rats are green. Green. Yep. It's I still think it's just 

Adam: really weird. It's very strange. But the blood is very, very cool effect.

Adam: Yeah. And that scene, when he breaks, open that, I think it's rice or wheat or something like that. And, and the wheat falls out at the camera, but it's yellow. It's very 

Charlotte: cool. 

Adam: So this is filmed in the Optima three format.

Adam: So what the opt max three system does is it takes one strip of film and it stacks the left and right eye on top of each other within a frame. 

Charlotte: So it's called over under yep.

Charlotte: That's called. And that is also called techno scope techno scope. Yes. Which was used for a lot of spaghetti westerns, which makes sense that it was used for this. 

Adam: It also makes 3d way more cost effective because you're using half the amount of film you would, if you're using two cameras.

Adam: You're 

Charlotte: actually just shooting the same amount of film you would for a normal film. 

Adam: Correct. But for a 3d film, it makes it way more cost effective. Right. Cuz normally, because you're before it was by dissecting each frame and turning you know, it into the left and right eye in a single frame. Yeah.

Charlotte: So if you think of a frame of film with four Sprocket holes or four perfs, techno scope, each frame was only two perfs or Sprocket holes. So each frame was really small, but they,

Charlotte: Alternated left 

right. 

Adam: Left, right left. Right. So, so when it's projected, there's a another piece of equipment that needs to be attached to the projector.

Charlotte: Tony Anthony developed a 

Adam: lens. He did yes. On the projection side.

Adam: Yeah. A cost effective one. Oh also the resulting image is a 2.4 to one aspect ratio because of the width of the frame and how small it is.

Adam: So you're getting a very kind of anamorphic wide screen type of look with this 

Charlotte: as well, but with more grains. So if you've ever watched an eighties 3d film, that was a techno scope film. They're often very, very grainy because You're blowing the image up. Just think about when you take a picture from your iPhone and you try to make it really large and it looks not so great.

Adam: Well the, exactly the resolution is smaller. It's it's half of what it normally would be. Yep. So for a 

Charlotte: 35 millimeter. 

Adam: So you're talking all of your eighties films, like jaws 3d. The Optum max was actually used specifically for, Friday, 13th part three was like one of the first ones on it.

Adam: Treasure of the 

Charlotte: four crowns, treasures of four crowns, the man who wasn't there, three D 3d, 

Charlotte: When you're scanning a film and it's techno scope, you end up having to remove the frame before and after each splice. because if you don't, a lot of times that splice would sort of go in frame and you know, you'd have a big splice mark so at every frame they built in an extra frame on the head and the tail to make sure that you're not cutting into the picture.

Charlotte: . 

Charlotte: So whenever you're scanning that and you gotta put it back together, whatever, poor, unfortunate soul has to conform the film. They have to remove frames the head and the tail, 

Charlotte: they're very labor intensive to work on. Right. And then if those are then AB reels, which we can talk about that at a later time. 

Adam: Yeah. I think you're just gonna blow people's minds. I actually hear minds exploding right now. 

Charlotte: It's like scanners. 

Adam: Yeah, basically. Yeah. Everybody's head just went 

Charlotte: or is it like chopping 

Adam: mall? Oh I think scanners is the better one. 

Charlotte: Okay. Yeah. All you gotta know is that it can be really complicated. yeah. So if you ever think, why don't they release this in 3d? All you gotta do is put the left and the right add together.

Charlotte: It's really complicated if you have CSCOPE and then if you have other things like AB reels, the man who wasn't there, I think that was ABC and D reels, which is just who does that?

Charlotte: Nobody even, and that makes no sense to most people I'm sure, but just understand that it's really complicated at times you need algorithms and that's not even lining the images up and doing your restoration work and color and all that. You're not even there yet just getting the film ready and what we call conformed to work on right.

Charlotte: Is a lot of work. Yeah. So big ups to the 3d film archive for doing all that 

Adam: work. Big, big ups to screen factory too for Friday the 13th part three. Yeah. That sat around for years and years. Not in 3d. Yeah. Like the, the eyes were scanned, but no one wanted to pay to have it formed into 3d again, cuz there's so much cost of associated with them upfront.

Adam: Yeah. A lot of, lot of times we will see flat versions of them for years and years. Yeah. Because they so grab them on disk while you can. 

Charlotte: Yeah. Yeah. Cuz depending on who's working at whatever studio at the time who thinks there's value in this or there's not value in this right.

Charlotte: They'll get released or they won't, 

Adam: or 3d is popular at that time, you know? yep. That's really all it is. It's it's 3d popular right now. Oh no, it's not. We'll wait 10 years. 

Adam: Okay. Well, so this was fun. I'm enjoying this 3d rabbit hole that we're going down. And we get to really talk about the 80 stuff next week, which is what I'm really excited about. Yeah. Those are 

Charlotte: fun. And we'll go into the different technology that they did and.

Charlotte: Talk about the Optima three and 

Adam: yeah. And then we also will talk about the final, big boom and the 2010s and the 2010s. Yeah. And then ultimately what finally killed that. Yeah. 

Adam: And actually have some production stories during that time period.

Charlotte: I can't wait. I really can't. I can't. I just can't. I'm gonna, it's gonna be so hard to sleep. It's gonna be amazing. Yeah. Well, thanks again for joining us. We ramble on about some 3d stuff. Hope your head didn't 

Adam: explode.

Adam: I think heads did explode. 

Charlotte: Yeah. It was fun talking 3d. We didn't even really get to mention some of the others 

Adam: there's just so many , to mention you know, yeah.

Adam: There's a lot of really fun stuff in the fifties, a lot of cool musicals and westerns that we didn't talk about. No Giro, but we can, we can always have a third episode at some point about 3d. So we we'll reserve the right to talk about them in the future. 

Charlotte: Yeah. I reserve the right to talk about anything on this show.

Adam: Send us. Your favorite fifties, 3d films, like physically send them to us.

Adam: Yeah, I'm just trying to collect a few more.

Charlotte: 

Charlotte: If you have questions for us, you can send us an email we're at perf damage podcast, gmail.com can send us a note on Twitter. We're at perf damage. Love to hear from you love to hear what your favorite 3d films are from the fifties thanks again to the 3d film archive.

Charlotte: They have a website. It.

Charlotte: 3d film, archive.com highly recommend going to that site. If you have anything you wanna look up about 3d, they also have a killer section of their website about wide screen and the wide screen wars. It is an invaluable tool for those of us in the archive community, especially with films with the fifties, trying to figure out what the aspect ratio was.

Charlotte: Huh? That's another, that's another episode right there. Yeah. It's invaluable for research. Yeah. The fifties. It can be very, very difficult to figure out what your aspect ratio is on a film. That is not something that's been very well documented except for this website, which is incredible. So thanks again.

Charlotte: Just gotta give them a yeah. Big shout out, cuz thank you Bob for monk. Yeah. And team and team for that because I use it a lot. Anyhow, it's been real. . It's been real D it hasn't been real D yet. Yeah, it will be next week. 

Adam: Real D we'll get into expanding real D next next week. Yeah, 

Charlotte: this week it's just been natural.

Charlotte: It's been very natural vision. 

Adam: Yeah. Natural vision. It's been natural 

Charlotte: vision and a little Opti max three. They're not the max two or one. I don't know. I guess we'll find 

Adam: out next week. That's a good question. Yeah. All right. Well until next time, thanks for joining us here on perf damage on damage.