When will they release the classic 3-D movies such as Buana Devil, House of Wax, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, Dial “M” for Murder, etc. on DVD?
Moved to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I assume you mean in 3D versions for a 3D TV set. Those movies, at least Bwana Devil and Creature, were done with the 2 color system. However I believe they were initially shot on twin cameras, so if the prints are still available they should be able to make a new version. Creature, sadly, was shot in black and white. It could have been a wonderful movie in color. Bwana Devil was shot in color though, and called the first color 3D movie.
I’m pretty sure they were all originally released using the polarized filter system. Some may have been re-released in anaglyph versions, but that wasn’t how they were first shown.
Most early 3D films were done in polarized form, though some (like Bwana Devil and It Came from Outer Space) did have anaglyphic prints struck later on.
Creature from the Black Lagoon and Dial “M” for Murder have both been released on 3D Blu-Ray (Creature, unfortunately, only in the larger, expensive Universal Classic Monsters set). Warner Bros. has The House of Wax and Kiss Me Kate tentatively slated for release on 3D Blu-Ray later, and plan to eventually remaster and rerelease all of their 50s 3D films in the format.
DVD doesn’t support the current crop of 3D TV formats, but unauthorized releases exist for most classics in either anaglyphic or sequential-field 3D. (Sequential field uses LCD shutter glasses, similar to the current shutter glasses, but require a special box to drive the glasses, and due to the vagaries of NTSC, are pretty flickery and may not work properly with non-CRT TVs). The Illustrated 3D Movie List indicate that a number of these (including Bwana Devil, also on your list) exist in unauthorized 3D releases; some clever Googling or auction-site hunting will often turn up sources, but buyer beware.
Because polarized viewing required polarized glasses and a polarization-retaining screen, both more expensive and less available in the 50s than now, the movies were originally struck and released in polarized-viewing 3D, generally exhibited in the nig cities. For viewing out in the sticks, where they wouldn’t have the screens, or the polarized 3D projectors, and the polariZed viewers might have been prohibitively expensive, they struck the ged-and-blue/green anaglypghic prints, which could be shown using an ordinary projector and screen, and cheaper red/green glasses. This worked fine for black and white features like Creature from the Black Lagioon, but not so well for color releases like Dial M for Murder or urders in the Rue Morgue, but I know they were released in analyph as well – I’ve seen them. The color balance gets really weird, but it is still visible in 3D.
Some films have been released in 3D analglyph on VHS and DVD. I’m surprised more of them weren’t. A lot of films were released using a 3D TV system using liquid crystal glasses that long predates the current mass-market 3D systems, but it wasn’t as widespread, and requires a special box that provides the switching signal. These won’t work with the current 3D technology.
In the what now? :eek:
This is what they get for putting the “n” key next to the “b” key.
Correction, please. Creature from the Black Lagoon is currently available as an all region single disk from Amazon UK. You do not need to buy the entire Universal Classic Monsters set. It is the same disk that is included in the U.S. set and plays just fine.
…and as an additional boon if one wants the entire Universal Classic Monsters set, the UK version is markedly cheaper than the US version. (Currently ~$40 cheaper after conversion, comparing amazon.co.uk vs. amazon.com)
But will they play on a US player?
They’re region free (confirmed on a couple of Blu-Ray collector forums, as Amazon’s listings aren’t always accurate), so they’ll play fine.
Creature was a wonderful movie in b&w; I doubt color would have added much. I know that 3D didn’t add all that much either (I saw in in 3D in the early 80s).
A thread about 3D classics and no mention of “Prison Girls”?
Ah, kewl
Dying to see it.