Good 3D movies

[P3D Marvin Jones <Campfire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> A few weeks back I reported that the Dryden Theater of the George Eastm=
an
> House  (after a very sucessful showing of House of Wax) has tentatively=

> planned a week of 3-D movies for some time in 1998.  I very much want t=
o
be
> involved in their selection process.

Many of the 3D movies of the early '50s were "good" in one way or another=
 -
they were typical studio "B" movies, which tended to be far superior to
their counterparts today (which I would suggest the "straight to video"
movies are). However, before you go too far off on a tangent discussing t=
he
relative qualities of this or that movie, let me interject a note of
reality. Most of the 3D movies of the '50s are simply not available in 3D=

today, so good, bad or indifferent, they're not going to be shown at your=

theater! At Paramount, for instance, where I do occasional freelance work=
,
they have only a single archive print of one of their 3D movies, Money Fr=
om
Home, and they would not be likely to let it go out on a rental. There ar=
e
a few side-by-side prints of House of Wax around because the 3D rights we=
re
acquired from Warners in the '80s by a small distributor who converted it=

to that format. I think Universal still has inferior anaglyph prints of
Creature from the Black Lagoon and It Came from Outer Space that were mad=
e
decades ago, but with the tendency of color film to fade, they might well=

be useless now. Some studios have archived matched prints of a few of the=
ir
titles for film festivals. But for the most part, your theater's 3D
festival will be determined not by what you'd like to see, but rather by
what's available, and that's darned little.


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