log

I think this is my favorite of these all around. It and The Glass Web were certainly the two I was most looking forward to. Check this out:

We start with a man and a woman in the middle of a plan. They’re trekking across the desert leaving tracks and items as they go: bootprints on the road here, an empty whiskey bottle there, a car stuck in a ditch.

We find out that they’ve stranded her millionaire husband in the desert to die and are making a false trail for the authorities to follow. By the time they realize it’s wrong, they’ll claim they got turned around out there, and hubby will long be dead.

Wow, dark nasty stuff. And on the other side, the husband is not taking this lying down. Even though he’s got a broken leg, he’s working straight out of a field survival manual and trying everything he can to survive and bring his cheating bitch wife to justice.

As if that weren’t enough, this is in color and 3-D, and the desert has never looked so bleak and beautiful. It’s really a superb movie.

They show it flat on TV periodically, but I’ve resisted watching it there. I don’t plan to pass up an opportunity to see it in 3-D though. It’s as good as it gets.

You’ve heard of The 3 Stooges, right? Every hear of Harry Mimmo? Who? Right.

Apparently he was a pretty successful comedian on stage, but this was his only film. He died earlier this year, which made the Expo organizers regret not tracking him down last time.

This is written, directed, produced, and shot by the guys who did the Stooges’ movies. It has some similar qualities, but this guy’s bit is different. He plays The Wacky Italian Guy. Yeah, that’s about as annoying as it sounds.

Here (and where else is he?) he’s onboard a ship dispensing his brand of hilarity. The print looks lovely, and the 3-D is great, but how much you’d like it depends on your tolerance for this shtick. Doesn’t really work for me, but it’s mercifully short.

Here’s something new: a 3-D movie made in the UK in 1953 and never before shown in 3-D. We know it’d never been shown because one eye hadn’t been edited completely. It was finished specifically for this showing.

This is a neat one, though it doesn’t go as far as it should. The story’s a bit elaborate, but the core of it is that a famous scientist has been kidnapped by bad guys and is producing “fake” diamonds of astounding quality. Nowadays we call those “cultured” diamonds, and I, personally, think they’re the greatest thing ever. Everyone in the diamond business is an evil bastard, and cultured diamonds may finally put them out of business.

This movie swerves hard to avoid the financial and political ramifications of that and plays it more like a James Bond movie with US and UK federal agents trying to smoke out the bad guys. It’s a lot of fun, and the 3-D is well done. Best part is, it’s new in 3-D.

I guess it plays on TV flat now and then- at least a lot of people claimed they’d seen it that way. As always, go for the 3-D version if you can, but I’ve no idea when it’ll be shown again- if ever.

This was the first Mike Hammer movie, and it has its good points and bad, often at the same time. For instance, the portrayal of Hammer is as a complete thug. That’s gutsy and raw, but it comes off just plain nuts. The actor they hired to play Hammer was a trained boxer and soldier, so he fights and shoots like he’s trying to kill people. Like I said, good and bad.

The story probably follows the book pretty closely, as it’s not as tight as most movie scripts are. One of Hammer’s friends is murdered after a party, so Hammer runs around town grilling everyone who saw him that night trying to get to the bottom of things. After half a dozen interviews, you might forget what’s going on.

The 3-D is used only for atmosphere (the way it should be, I say), so if you’re waiting for something to poke you to liven things up, you’re pretty much out of luck. There are a lot of fight scenes, though, and some of them are pretty impressive.

For a mystery, The Glass Web kicks this thing’s ass big time, but if you like Spillane, this is probably worth a look.

I’m sitting with huge Disney fans- most of whom work for Disney in one capacity or another. I like Disney’s animated features, and am pretty well versed in them, but I gre up on Warner Bros., Hanna Barbara, and some Jay Ward. I probably can’t name a dozen Disney shorts I’ve seen. To me Chip & Dale come off as more annoying versions of the Goofy Gophers, and Donald Duck…. well, let’s say I’m not a fan.

But this short is pretty good. The chipmunks are near a zoo and find out peanuts are tasty, so they decide to go in the zoo and get some somehow. This (like everything else) pisses off Donald Duck the zookeeper.

It’s not as good a use of 3-D as most of the other animations, butj the print is lovely, and it’s a pretty funny cartoon.

Here’s another one the audience was primed to hate, and it’s a shame because it’s a great-looking, and pretty cool thriller. It does have an ending so unbelievable that it ruins it for most people, especially since it looks so weird. I won’t agree that the effects to pull that off are really terrible- I think they’re adequate for the time period. But what they’re trying to do is nuts.

The story is about a guy who’s about to be married. He’s played by our friend Richard Carlson, finishing out his appearances for the week. He gets called away to the family castle in Scotland because his unclue, a baronet, has died. His fiancee doesn’t hear from him for an awfully long time.

So she goes up there with some other people in tow. He tells them to get lost. He can’t marry her and they can’t stay. Oooh, something bad and creepy is going on.

The movie does more creepy and myserious stuff and then ends with something right out of Lovecraft, but not the good stuff out of Lovecraft. Trust me, it’s weirder than you think.

I like this one for the 3-D and the general atmosphere. I don’t find the ending that ridiculous, but it is far out, and doomed to look weird with 1953 effects. I say check it out, and ignore the ending if you can’t deal with it.

The room was abuzz with how awful this movie is, so everyone seemed prepared to expect (and interpret) the worst. I’d seen it before, and the 3-D is fandamntastic, and I don’t see much about it that isn’t typical of movies of the era. In other words, I don’t think it’s terrible at all, and I found the morons desperate to laugh at everything in it pretty annoying.

The story’s the same as The Ghost in the Darkness- both movies are based on the same true story. The Brits have been trying to build a railroad line across Africa using a team of imported Indian workers.

Everything went fine for a couple of hundred miles, but now they’re stopped cold. The workers want to give up. They say a man-eating lion is out there and it’s too dangerous. Looks like they’re right too: men keep turning up eaten.

It’s shot in California with a lot of inserts from the producer’s home movies shot in Africa. So, yeah, there’s a lot of grainy, flat stock footage used for background, but at least it’s not library footage you’ve seen before.

They use several real animals, including lions and monkeys, but they have to use tricks to pull the lion attacks off without hurting people. Some are better than others, and I thought they used their real lions a lot more than looked safe.

The 3-D in this movie, the first one shot in the NaturalVision process, always looks different somehow to me. Different and better. There’s some lovely looking stuff here, especially in the shots of people close to the camera. They look really round and solid.

This was also the first big-name 3-D movie. It was released at Thanksgiving 1952 and kicked off the wave of 3-D that all these movies belong to. It wasn’t the first thing ever in 3-D or anything, but it was the first major release in American theaters, and it did huge numbers. No one had seen anything like it then, and most people haven’t seen it now.

You’ve got to check it out for historical reasons, but I think it’s interesting on its own merits.

This is a good short. Imagine you’re going to see the first 3-D movie, so you’ve never seen such a thing before. The producers thought it’d be a good idea to put an explanatory film in front to get you into the idea.

It starts flat with a man explaining that movies have been 2-D and that you need to put on your magic glasses to see something new. The film switches to 3-D and he does some demonstrations and explanation.

Then TV stars Beany & Cecil show up to see the wonders of 3-D as does “Miss 3-D” Shirley Tegge. They go visit an opthalmologist to get the lowdown while the host smokes another cigarette (modern audiences always find that hysterical).

This is a nice bit, and there were some Beany & Cecil fans in attendance that really liked it. Mostly, I think it’s good for the 2-D/3-D cutover that so few films do, and for historical value.

This is considered by many the very model of a 3-D movie. Can’t argue much, but as I’ve said many times this week, I think the attention paid it overshadows many fine films.

This was the second major 3-D release back in the ’50s (after Bwana Devil), and was a huge, huge hit. It was also promoted wildly on original release, which probably helped the box office considerably.

Just like at last Expo, one of the stars, Paul Picerni, was here to talk to the crowd. This guy is a real character and has some wonderful stories. True to his actor-ness, he loves the attention too.

His big crowd pleaser was the story of the scene where he’s pulled from a guillotine just before a blade zips down. The guillotine and blade were very real, and they do it in one take, so there’s no fakery there. The behind-the-scenes story is pretty funny.

If you haven’t seen House of Wax you really need to see it in 3-D. Ditto if you’ve only seen it flat. If you’ve seen it, and liked it, please try some more 3-D movies before you get fixated on this one.