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Like a lot of people before me, I'm fascinated by 3D photography. Whether it's my own photographs (like friend Al Petrella's 1967 Corvette above) or examples created from exisiting images such as the old films and posters on this page, I find them fascinating as well as fun to make. |
This page focuses (pun intended) on the in-your-face pop culture kind of 3D but there are other sorts as well which I'll put on a different page. They all look strange if you don't have 3D glasses; any red/blue glasses will do, even the ones from a Hannah Montana promo. |
3D imagery was big in the Fifties;
it really got going with films like The House Of Wax,
It Came From Outer Space, and later even The
Creature From The Black Lagoon was filmed in 3D. These
latter two were not filmed in the typical red-blue process
everybody is familiar with now (and which you're looking at
on this page) even though these days at revivals that's how
they are presented. It's too bad, because I've read that the
old system, which involved a dual projector system with
polarized prints for each eye, worked extremely well. It
must have been cumbersome for theaters, though, and film
breakage would have been a nightmare. In the 1980s Universal
reissued both of these films in the more common anaglyph
process you see here, and that's the only way I have been
able to see them in 3D. However, the anaglyph process works
very well for images on the web - if you have your
red-and-blue glasses, of course. The Astounding She
Monster was not a 3D movie; I just thought the poster
was great. In fact, it's considerably better than the film
itself, a common occurrence with low budget horror
films.
Alfa Romeo made a curious sports car in the 1950s
which was called the Disco Volante. It was not as elegant as
some of the later Alfas or the Ferraris and Jags of its day, but it
had one thing going for it: its name, which, when translated into English,
is Flying Saucer. So here we have some Italians and their
poster for an American film of the Fifties, one that is quite well known
under its usual name of Earth vs The Flying Saucers. I like this
poster a lot; it is less "pulpy" than many American posters but still
has an undeniably high luridity factor. It manages to make the film seem
like some kind of high-tech Gothic; that background and the
mobs look nothing like anything in the movie! The Italian posters often have a
different look than the original American ones; usually they
just aren't done as well, but sometimes they are quite
striking. There are more down the page.
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One of the all-time greats of the genre, Forbidden Planet was filmed "flat". They might have had some trouble with doing 3D cartoon animation of their Id Monster, in any case. Flat or not, it's a tremendous film, full of iconic imagery and with some pretty cool ideas for its time: people being "disassembled" for the transition from light speed to sub-light velocity and then reassembled once the "bounce" is over; the fabulous Krel race with their "cloud-piercing towers of glass, porcelain, and adamantine steel", a race which destroys itself overnight in an orgy of violence generated by their subconscious minds. |
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There is at least once scene which still has not been surpassed by modern special effects people - the incredible trip through the Krel undergound world. "Prepare your minds for a new scale...of physical scientific values, gentlemen." And what a soundtrack; it's perfect for the film, and along with the score for The Day The Earth Stood Still it established an other-worldy mood which no recent scores have been able to match - not because newer efforts were poorly done or uncreative, but these two soundtracks were revolutionary. Nothing had ever been used in a film like these while now their effects tend to be taken for granted. |
Lethal Liquid, as near as my
non-existant Italian can tell, was the Italian title for
what we call The Blob. In true Fifties exploitation
style this poster doesn't look anything like the film at
all; the movie's Blob is certainly not some fog-like cloud
which drifts like smoke across the screen. But otherwise
it's got all the elements of a great exploitation poster:
sex, violence, fear, and stark graphic style. What a great poster! This is easily
a match for all the wonderful posters American International
Pictures issued in the Fifties for films which couldn't even
begin to live up to the visuals the posters promised,
although this film does actually deliver some interesting
moments of...blobbiness. The Blob gets an extra award
for having the oldest actors to portray teenagers. Only
Earth vs The Spider could compete for that one, and I
decided it lost.
I believe Invaders From Mars was originally
titled Invasion Of The Elocution Tutors. Just kidding. However,
the peculiar Hollywood accents the female leads of this film affect
do take the cake for their otherworldliness: "My husband is an engineeah,
not some comic book scientist!" I suppose it was a holdover from the
earlier days of live theater when everyone aped British accents in an
effort to sound cultured; it was certainly the norm in films of the
Thirties and it continued well into the Fifties. This is just a good
example. At any rate, here is an Italian
poster that actually looks very much like the American art -
in fact, I think it reuses original American source
material, just adding Italian text.
