posted 09-28-2005 01:03 PM                    

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Comin' atcha!

Jason's harpoon and Rock's and Rita's breasts leap out in the Castro's "Dual System 3-D Series."

By Dennis Harvey (San Francisco Bay Guardian)

FOR A BRIEF period in 1953-54, two consumer items were vying to get in the American lap: TV dinner trays and the wonders of stereoscopic cinema. It was a bitter struggle, at least on the loser's end. After decades of next-big-thing trumpeting, television finally hit consumer markets in the late '40s, the start of a hugely prosperous, acquisitive era in which each man's castle had to have everything but a moat. Suddenly every family with leisure time and cash to spend was frittering both away on the living room couch, enjoying hours of entertainment that was free – after the initial installment-plan payments, of course.

Hollywood (which wasn't much involved in TV production at first) gasped in disbelief as its audience simply stayed home in mass numbers. How recently had they faithfully gone to the movies once or twice a week! Now these fickle viewers actually needed a reason to go. The older industry responded by summoning up its most grandiose dignity to say, "Yes, but we are the movies, and get a load of this!" That load was to grow bigger (CinemaScope), a whole lot bigger (Cinerama), louder (Stereophonic), explode into gaudy color (Technicolor) on a much more frequent basis, and offer up any other gimmicks that could make the boob tube look puny.

The most infamous and, for a while, most successful of these later innovations was 3-D. Like TV, the concept had actually been around for a long time before it hit the public. Experimental processes were patented as early as 1900, and occasional exhibitions (notably at the 1939 World's Fair) piqued a curiosity that was quickly sated. But with the idiot box breathing down its neck some years later, Hollywood became much more interested – if viewers could be pulled away from their tract homes by big-and-wide 'Scope biblical epics, wouldn't they go ape for depth? The first truly commercial 3-D feature, 1952's Bwana Devil (advertised as putting "a lion in your lap!"), was a hit – but as a below-B-grade jungle adventure without stars, or even Tarzan, it bore the seeds for the form's eventual (well, pretty immediate) doom.

The brevity of the 3-D craze had the advantage of keeping it a kitsch-value novelty over the long haul, however, and today nothing quite puts the way-back machine into overdrive like seeing a vintage stereoscopic title. There are a week's worth of such opportunities in the Castro Theatre's "Dual System 3-D Series," which highlights the NaturalVision system that was the best and most popular among several competing processes in the '50s: a two-projector overlap of polarized left- and right-eye images that, when handled correctly, does not become a headache (sometimes a problem even with IMAX's updated 3-D technology).

The format's greatest original hits are here: The non-Paris Hilton, 1953 version of House of Wax, with Vincent Price as the proprietor of a terminal Tussaud's; that same year's excellent MGM version of Kiss Me Kate, Cole Porter's musicalized Taming of the Shrew; and Hitchcock's '54 thriller, Dial M for Murder. There's also a two-day kickoff run of the rarer Miss Sadie Thompson, in which Somerset Maugham's famous Rain tale of spiritual and carnal torment becomes an excuse for past-prime "breezy kinda gal" Rita Hayworth to "hit this town like an A-bomb." She sings a couple songs and gets hellfire condemnation from a missionary man (the ever-dull José Ferrer) while driving 200 tropical-island-stationed Marines bananas – including a pumped, leering young Charles Bronson.

Surprisingly explicit (featuring rape, suicide, and use of the word "prostitute") in some ways, and not averse to taking aim at meddling religious zealotry ("The way you figure it, he [God] is nothing but a cop," Sadie tells sin-and-punishment-obsessed Ferrer), Miss Sadie ends up a perfect illustration of confused '50s morality. Which is to say, it offers an inspirational prudishness entrée garnished by bullet bras. The pop-up look of swaying palm trees aside, this is a movie that – like so many – did too little to justify its 3-D format. (Even Dial M for Murder makes just one striking use of field depth, when Kelly's hand grasps toward us, mid-strangling, to reach the scissors that will stop her assailant.)

These were A-list productions, but the sudden glut of quick-buck 3-D features like Gorilla at Large, Cat Women on the Moon, and Robot Monster burned out public enthusiasm while forever linking the process (often delightfully) with cheesy genre films. The Castro series offers some B obscurities that might prove to be gems: the gangster noir Man in the Dark, the Rock Hudson western Gun Fury, and the minor Vincent Price horror The Mad Magician (with Eva Gabor!), plus two Three Stooges shorts.

Moviegoers endured several fleeting 3-D revival efforts (using processes other than NaturalVision) before the current IMAX resurgence. In the '70s there were drive-in sex comedies, novelty porn flicks, and the immortal Andy Warhol's Frankenstein, which gets a midnight Castro screening. Complete with chambermaid guts danglin' atcha through a steel grate, and Udo Kier's necrophiliac Dr. F. enthusing, "To know death, you have to fuck life in the gall bladder!", this gory widescreen cult classic dumps all kinds of camp nastiness in your lap. Similarly, your midnight eye will get faux-poked over and over by Jason in Friday the 13th Part 3. That film's lack of 3-D revival since its original theatrical run left a generation of impressionable TV viewers to wonder why knitting needles and harpoons were forever gouging the camera.

'Dual System 3-D Series' runs Oct. 3-9, Castro Theatre, 429 Castro, SF. $5.50-$8.50. (415) 621-6120, www.castrotheatre.com. See Rep Clock, in Film listings, for showtimes.

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posted 09-30-2005 05:47 AM                       

quote: Carl Martin

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i'll be going to miss sadie thompson, man in the dark, and gun fury. i want to see andy warhol's frankenstein, but it'll mean taking the transbay bus home early sunday morning.

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