THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, June 13, 1996 TAG: 9606130038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
LENGTH: 115 lines
WHIIIISSH! There goes an arrow, right by your ear. Don't duck, or you'll ruin the effect.
This was in the early days of three-dimensional movies, when producers gave us tomahawks in the lap and, perhaps, crossed eyes in the head. Things from outer space got in our faces and the creature from the black lagoon loomed at us.
But to get the effect, you had to balance the cardboard glasses at just the right angle and then stay perfectly still while juggling a soft drink and a box of popcorn. Even if you managed this awesome feat, you probably ended up with a headache.
This is the laughable, often formidable, past of 3-D, the movie experience that made a spectacle of itself. It was a sight for sore eyes.
Until now.
With the opening of the Family Channel IMAX 3-D Theater at the Virginia Marine Science Museum Saturday in Virginia Beach, 3-D finally comes of age. ``Into the Deep,'' the first underwater movie to use the IMAX 3-D process, delivers the in-depth effect of 3-D in a way that is smooth, rhythmic and bathed in relaxing, cajoling undersea colors. The theater, which was assured via a $1 million donation from the cable TV channel that now bears its name, is state of the art - and the art has been perfected.
There are still glasses, but they are large-lensed, and don't need balancing. The film frame is the largest in motion picture history - 10 times the size of conventional 35 mm and three times the size of standard 70 mm.
As part of the $35 million museum expansion, the movie experience is so real you'll feel wet.
It's a far cry from the B-budget early 1950s flicks that were the fleeting heyday of what was
called ``Natural Vision,'' ``Stereoscopic Vision'' or, more commonly, 3-D. It is, indeed, a checkered, tawdry past that culminates in such a glowing present ode to technology.
3-D, you've come a long way.
Technicians have been trying longer than most of us realize. Experimentation with ``in-depth'' still photography goes back to the 1800s. By the end of silent movies, no fewer than 200 different stereoscopic movie systems had been patented, but none proved commercially viable.
Desperation prompted the movie industry to start throwing spears and tomahawks at audiences. Faced with life-threatening competition from television, the movie industry realized it had to offer something customers couldn't see at home. They tried 3-D.
At the gala opening dinner for donors to Virginia Marine Science Museum two weeks ago, the conversation shifted to the question of what was the first 3-D movie. The trivia winner was ``Bwana Devil.'' It arrived in Norfolk in 1953 and was the first feature-length dramatic film made especially for three-dimensional projection - promising the dubious prospect of a lion in the lap.
Preceding the local opening were reports that New York audiences had screamed as a lion appeared to leap from the screen.
``Bwana Devil'' was a big hit although it was an awful movie. For the record, the plot, set in Africa, concerned a couple of lions who halted the construction of a railroad by devouring the workmen, until engineer Robert Stack knocked them off.
Columnist Louella Parsons called it ``the `Jazz Singer' of 3-D'' and predicted that eventually ``flat'' movies would be obsolete. The Production Code refused to give the movie a seal of approval, not because of its gory violence, but because of a frank love scene between Stack and the now-forgotten blonde Barbara Britton.
``Bwana Devil'' was quickly forgotten, but it set off a chain reaction. The first major studio release of a 3-D movie, and the most profitable of them all, was ``House of Wax,'' which opened in Norfolk on June 14, 1953, with a then-expensive admission price of 80 cents.
The best effect was one in which a character used a paddleboard to bounce a ball into the audience. Vincent Price lurked in the shadows while Phyllis Kirk and Carolyn Jones took turns screaming and looking terrified. Charles Bronson, then billed under his real name, Charles Buchinski, played Igor.
The film required two projectors to run at the same time. Since most theaters had only two projectors, there was a lengthy intermission while the reels were changed. Pandemonium usually reigned during 3-D intermissions as kids, apparently trying to duplicate the 3-D effects, specialized in throwing things at each other.
Among the more curious attributes of ``House of Wax'' is that is was directed by a one-eyed man, Andre de Toth, who never had any idea what the 3-D effects looked like. Asked about it, he said, ``Beethoven couldn't hear music either, could he?''
Helen Rose, the costume designer at MGM, warned, during the production of ``Kiss Me Kate,'' that actresses could no longer wear padding, or even girdles, because the new process would ruthlessly reveal all.
Three-dimensional movies were all over Hampton Roads in 1953. The Memrose had the first 3-D Western, ``The Charge at Feather River,'' with Guy Madison, with ads promising that ``only 3-D could bring its vastness so close to you.''
``It Came from Outer Space'' offered an avalanche in which rocks seemed to bounce into the theater. ``The Creature from the Black Lagoon,'' a year later, was a hit, but just as big a hit in its ``flat'' version as with the glasses.
A year later, 3-D was all but forgotten - replaced by the wide Cinemascope screen pioneered by 20th Century-Fox, invented by a Frenchman named Dr. Henri Chretien.
The death of 3-D was prompted, of course, by poor plots and inferior production. The coffin was sealed when studios took a meaningful poll by releasing several big-star movies in both 3-D and conventional processes. These included ``Miss Sadie Thompson'' with Rita Hayworth singing ``The Heat is On''; Grace Kelly reaching into the audience for help in Hitchcock's ``Dial M for Murder'' and MGM's 3-D musical ``Kiss Me Kate'' with Kathryn Grayson and Howard Keel. In each case, audiences went for the ``flat'' version rather than the 3-D edition. It was the end of a brief era.
But the creature from the Black Lagoon never saw 3-D like IMAX 3-D.
Three-dimensional movies, as a genre, have quite a past to live down, but IMAX 3-D is up to the task. ILLUSTRATION: The Movies Then: House of Wax, 1953
B\W photo by Galahad Brooks
The Movies Now: Into the Deep, 1994
Color photo by Bob Cranston
KEYWORDS: VIRGINIA MARINE SCIENCE MUSEUM EXPANSION by CNB