Harry Essex | And You Thought It Was…Safe(?)

Aww...they're so cute when they're passed out. — Aww…they’re so cute when they’re passed out.

I hate 3D on general principal and consider it a classless, money-grubbing gimmick, trotted out whenever panic grips the hearts of backward-looking Hollywood bean-counters. I reached this conclusion early in life after coming to grips with just how awful Freddy’s Dead, Jaws 3D, and Friday the 13th Part 3D really were. But every critic has that one 3D skeleton in the closet. One black mark on their critical scorecard. One film they like in spite – or perhaps because of – the occasional distracting bit of visual cheese.

Creature from the Black Lagoon is mine. Despite coming out twenty-three years after the other monster movies that celebrated their sixtieth anniversaries in 1991, it made its way onto VHS and into my eight-year-old-self’s collection. I can’t think of a better time to give yourself a classical monster education. And what could be more classical than ripping-off King Kong‘s “beauty and the beast” angle?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Continue reading Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954) →

If I had to sum up the 50s SF movie in one image...it'd probably be that trifocal eye from War of the Worlds. But this would be a close second. — If I had to sum up ’50s SF in one image…it’d probably be that trifocal eye from War of the Worlds. But this would be a close second.

3D is bullshit. You know it, I know it. But movie studios and the technology companies allied with them are, as of this writing, wasting billions of dollars on an international propaganda campaign to convince us otherwise. (I know – “Duh!” right? Well, since I currently can’t spit without hitting a trailer for the 3D Phantom Menace, you get to watch me vent about it.) This has happened before, but those who forget the past are condemned to…do something. I forget what just now. Strain their eyes, get headaches and have seizures if this Cal State study from last August is any indication.

Most of us are old enough to remember the 3D craze of the mid-80s. Even if we aren’t, a casual viewing of Friday the 13th Part 3-D or Jaws 3-D will tell us everything we need to know. But tonight I want to go back – way back – and talk about the wave that struck Hollywood in 1952.

A little-remembered man-eating lions epic called Bwana Devil formed the leading edge of that one. One day, I hope to read someone with a bit more clout than I correctly label Bwana Devil “the James Cameron’s Avatar of its era.” Then as now, the novelty of a “new” viewing format (which is as old as film itself, but never mind that now – 3D is the future!) allowed slack-jawed idiots to pretend the crappy, derivative film they just watched somehow “immersed” them in a “new” and/or “visionary” “experience.” Continue reading It Came from Outer Space (1953) →

For a moment, there was hope