"It comes off the screen right at you!", screamed the poster for the 1953 schlock-horror film The House Of Wax 3D.
Audiences, filled with anticipation for the first major studio 3D movie, flocked to cinemas to see the ghoulish spectacle of…. a man bouncing a paddleball into their faces.
This gimmicky showboating set a template for 3D cinema which endured through the medium’s two big boom periods in the 1950s and 1980s.
Films like Andy Warhol’s visceral Frankenstein 3D brought "horror right into your lap", while the sixth instalment of Nightmare On Elm Street splattered viewers with Freddy Kreuger’s bloody entrails.
Bwana Devil, released the same year as House Of Wax, went so far as to ask the question: "What do you want? A good picture, or a lion in your lap?"
It turned out to be the former. Audiences dismissed 3D as a cheap parlour trick… if they hadn’t already been put off by the poor image quality, headaches or nausea.
April 7, 2009
