The Three Stooges made 2 of their shorts in 3D since it was the 50s and that was the popular craze. This is the more horror-themed of the two(the other one PARDON MY BACKFIRE is sadly not about farts but about just being mechanics). You get a mad scientist attempting to put the brain of a beautiful gal inside the head of a gorilla. There's also a big ugly henchman, knives and other weapons thrown at the screen and lots of rampaging gorilla hijinks. One of my favorite shorts with Shemp and even when not in 3D good stupid fun.
Aliens, that are big floating one-eyed creatures, that can do that whole body snatching thing(3 years before INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS!), crash land on Earth and really just want to get back home. Of course that doesn't stop those pesky humans from wanting to stomp some ugly alien butt(when they finally start believing in them anyway). While this one is a pretty ground-breaking film for it's time it's not the most entertaining watch today and stuff like WAR OF THE WORLDS from the same year really blow this one out of the water. Still for some old-timey 3-D sci-fi it's decent.
Director Jack Arnold would go on to make the iconic CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON among other sci-fi and monster classics.
I never knew that this Paul Naschy werewolf flick was presented in 3-D in the U.S.A. back in the 70s until just recently. I also never figured I would get a chance to actually view it like that but thanks to a newly refurbished print I caught it in all it's glorious dimensions recently.
The film itself is a pretty groovy monster-mash done Eurotrash-style. We get Mr. Naschy getting himself bitten and cursed while dispatching a Wolf-Man. Then in order to cure himself he ends up with a vampire couple posing as doctors who specialize in lycanthropy. It's got sexy ladies, blood and monster brawling(including vampire vs. werewolf and some werewolf on werewolf action!). The only thing really missing is anything to do with Frankenstein. The American producer, Sam Sherman, tries to remedy this a bit by calling the main family Wolfstein but this is a pretty tenuous link. If you can overlook that one little thing though this is a great ride for appreciators of monster cinema and it's especially sweet in 3-D. AKA THE MARK OF THE WOLFMAN, THE WEREWOLF'S MARK, HELL'S CREATURES and THE VAMPIRE OF DR. DRACULA
This is the 1st of Naschy's Waldemar The Werewolf flicks to be released. There was supposedly an earlier one titled NIGHTS OF THE WOLF-MAN that was never completed due to it's director, Rene Govar, dropping dead.
There are 13 sequels(or more accurately just follow up werewolf flicks) to this including:
Vincent Price plays the sort of role that he would become famous for in what is one of the most gimmicky horror flicks of the 50's. The fact that this was shot in 3-D is shoved in your face constantly(which woulda seemed way cooler if I was watching it in 3-D). There's stuff flying at your face, everything from battle mace's to rubber-balls, and seemingly a commercial for the 3-D process right in the middle of the movie as someone starts talking to the audience telling them to watch out for his bouncy balls and whatnot. I do recall them showing this along with CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON on TV a lot back when they would do those 3-D TV specials back when I was a kid. I was always more of a fan of the Creature since he was a way cooler monster and I guess I still feel the same way. I also feel like this movie is specifically made to be viewed in a theater and watching it in any other way loses a great deal. There was even an intermission in the DVD version that I viewed recently.
So check this out if you get the chance to see it the way God intended or if you're just a big Vincent Price fan. It's also got Mr. Charles Bronson in one of his earliest roles as a mute henchman named Igor so that's something to see right there.
This was remade in 2005 but all I remember from that one was that Paris Hilton gets killed in a pretty brutal way and there was an actual house made entirely of wax. Like the screenwriters said "hey man let's take the title literally and make a house of wax!"- fucking idiots! Also technically this 50's version is a remake of a 1930's flick called THE MYSTERY OF THE WAX MUSEUM which had Fay Wray in it. I've never seen that one but I'm sure it's better than that new shit.
What do you get when you mix really bad 3-D f/x, retarded slapstick action, unattractive people fucking, jokes that would embarrass a 1st grader and an incoherent storyline? You get this obscure 70's porno right here. Added to those charming elements you witness abrasively annoying acting from people saying their lines like a bunch of assholes(imagine The Chipmunks having a conversation with Barney The Dinosaur), a hodge-podge of random things that are thrown at you that give everything this insane chaotic feel(where the fuck did that gorilla come from?). In addition to the brain damage I think I may have suffered trying to follow the plot I feel I may have lost some eyesight due to the horrible double-vision ancient 3-D technology used. Surprisingly not a lot of sex for an adult movie, of course the print I saw was in obvious bad shape so some things might have been missing. John Holmes appears in one fuck scene that seems like it was taken from a different movie, also Joey Silvera shows up briefly but isn't listed in the credits. While I can't give this a good review as a film I will say that I am glad to have experienced a true 3-D porn flick in a real theater if for no other reason than to say I did it.
This trailer, in true exploitation style, is way better than the whole movie:
It you're gonna remake something remake it in 3-D. That rule seems to never fail and it works here in a big way. Chock full of naked 3-D boobs and gore this movie has everything you could want from a silly killer-fish-on-the-loose tale. The cartoony CGI piranha reminded me more of FINDING NEMO than anything menacing and made me long for the simpler days of rubber fish on a string from the original. They do mix some of the typical shitty CGI gore with some actual F/X work by Greg Nicotero which was nicely done. Highlights for me were a great penis-chomping scene, glimpses of "Girls Gone Wild"-style vagina and Eli Roth getting his head squished by a runaway motor boat. You get guest shots from Richard Dreyfuss, Christopher Llyod and a few porn stars thrown in for eye candy and ultimately to be used as chum. I'm really hoping they follow the original sequel and have some flying piranhas in part 2.
If you're gonna do a remake of anything do something different. Remaking MY BLOODY VALENTINE in 3D is an idea I can get behind. 3D is just cheesy enough to make anything a little bit better. The effect works really good here too, which is a plus. I remember seeing METALSTORM: THE DESTRUCTION OF JARED-SYN back in the 80's with the old style red/blue glasses and that worked OK but this blows it away. But similar to METALSTORM the actual movie is pretty dumb. The ending scenes seem to have been stolen from some SCOOBY-DOO episode and, having watched many episodes of SCOOBY as a kid, I knew exactly how it was gonna turn out, even with all the stupid attempts to switch who the suspected killer is. Now when are they gonna start making virtual reality movies? I wanna feel like I'm in the next remake of this running away from old Harry the crazy-miner just like my life depended on it. As a great big added bonus we get to see some nudity with our slashings. Finally, I was starting to think Hollywood had banned the showing of boobs or something.
