3d

The Atomic Gill-man

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Based on the commemorative toys, posters, and Blu-ray box sets that group him in with the rest of the riff raff, you might forget that The Gill-man is a latecomer addition to the Universal Monsters brand. 1954’s Creature from the Black Lagoon was made decades after the respective premieres of Universal’s A-Lister monsters Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man, who had already been wrung dry for all they were worth in now-forgotten sequels like Son of Dracula and Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man long before The Gill-man first emerged. The initial 1930s run of the Universal Monsters brand under studio executive Carl Laemmle Jr. were all earnestly committed to a Gothic, German Expressionist mood that birthed some of the greatest horror iconography in the history of Hollywood filmmaking. Then, a successful repertory run for those pictures in the 1940s convinced the studio that there was more money to be made, especially among younger audiences, so the same monsters were rushed out (with their new friend The Wolf Man in tow) in a flood of by-the-numbers sequels aimed directly at children. By the 1950s, that second wave of Universal horror titles had long crested, detectable only in the scummy sea foam of the Famous Monsters’ team-ups with the comedy duo Abbott & Costello. It was during that post-boom lull that the studio gave life to The Gill-man, cashing in on an entirely different genre’s newfound popularity.

From the very first minute of Creature of the Black Lagoon, it’s immediately clear that the film was produced for its commercial value as Atomic Age sci-fi, not as a conscious contribution to Universal Monsters tradition. The film opens with a stereotypically 50s sci-fi monologue about the evolution of living organisms emerging from the sea to breathe air and walk on land, suggesting that the next logical evolutionary step would be for humanity to mutate again, adapting to life in outer space. Before we can leave this oxygenated prison planet behind to embrace our inevitable intergalactic future, however, we must take a step back to investigate how we got here. The Gill-man is a living, swimming specimen of the missing link between us and our amphibious forefathers: half-man/half-fish. He is discovered during an archeological dig in the upper Amazon, led by scientists who expect only to find ancient Gill-man bones in the mud beneath the Amazon River. As they scuba dive in The Gill-man’s home waters, he swims just outside their sight & reach, studying them in return (and demonstrating a particular fascination with the fashionably swimsuited Julie Adams). Once his presence is discovered, the scientists debate whether to shoot The Gill-man with cameras or with a harpoon, whether to treat him like a fellow man or like the catch of the day. Some see a monster, while the more enlightened see a mirror.

Universal was smart to hire Jack Arnold to direct The Gill-man’s debut, as other Arnold titles like The Incredible Shrinking Man, The Space Children, and It Came from Outer Space would go on to rank among the best that Atomic Age sci-fi had to offer. They were also smart to cash in on the 3D filmmaking craze of that era, allowing Arnold’s crew to perfect underwater 3D filmmaking months (months!) before James Cameron was even born. As gorgeous as the lengthy sequences of The Gill-man stalking his human prey underwater can be, however, the true wonder of the film is the creature’s design, the best of Universal’s monster creations since Jack Pierce transformed Boris Karloff into Frankenstein(‘s monster). Disney animator Milicent Patrick sketched a perfect aquatic-horror figure in The Gill-man, and her design remained remarkably intact as it came to life as the rubber-suited monster we see onscreen. The Gill-man was portrayed by two different actors depending on where he staged his attacks (Ricou Browning in the water, Ben Chapman on the land), alternating between lumbering beast and balletic swim-dancer. The rhythms & beats of the story are typical to Atomic Age creature features of its kind, but it’s the elegance of The Gill-man’s look and his underwater movements that earned him a place among the other grotesque icons of the Universal Monsters brand.

If The Gill-man shares anything in common with the elder statesman monsters of the Universal horror canon, it’s that he was also dragged back out of the water for needless cash-in sequels. Both 1955’s Revenge of the Creature and 1956’s The Creature Walks Among Us spend the first half of their runtimes swimming in the exact waters of the original Black Lagoon, with scientists hunting the poor fish beast until he finally lashes out for vengeance . . . again & again. Only, in the respective second halves of those films’ ropey plots, the creature is relocated to new, novel locales so he can expand the scope of his out-of-water mayhem. In Revenge of the Creature, he’s trapped in a Sea World-style amusement park in Miami for public display, which inevitably leads to a creature-feature version of Blackfish in which one of the captive fish(men) gets violent revenge on his aquarium prison guards. The Creature Walks Among Us then returns to The Gill-man’s Atomic Age beginnings, with scientists forcibly mutating him into an air-breathing, clothes-wearing half-man as an experiment to determine whether humanity can rapidly adapt to living in outer space. Overall, neither sequels is especially essential or even memorable, but they do offer some novelty in depicting The Gill-man flipping cars and invading suburban homes instead of sinking boats. They also firmly establish the poor creature’s status as Universal’s most empathetic monster icon. Over the course of three films, The Gill-man is put through even more needless, inhuman suffering than Frankenstein’s creature. He’s hunted, drugged, harpooned, set on fire, imprisoned, forced to work as an underwater circus act, and then, as the final indignity, they make him wear pants. The only way it could’ve been worse is if they made him work a desk job.

The Gill-man’s sci-fi genre markers are not a total anomaly within the Universal Monsters canon. If nothing else, their adapted figures of Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Jekyll, and The Invisible Man helped define what the mad scientist trope would come to look like in cinema instead of on the page. It’s just that The Gill-man arrived so late to the party that his outings feel entirely separate from the heavily crossed-over run of Universal Monster sequels that preceded them by a decade or two. Truly, the only reason that The Gill-man is so heavily featured in the Universal Monsters branding is because he looks really, really cool. The visual stylings of Milicent Patrick’s creature design and the underwater camerawork of Jack Arnold’s second unit are what makes him such an enduring sci-fi horror figure despite being so obviously dated to 1950s sci-fi in particular. Creature from the Black Lagoon is an all-timer creature feature that’s very much rooted in its time.

-Brandon Ledet

Dial M for Murder (1954)

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In narrative terms, the 1954 crime thriller Dial M for Murder isn’t much of an outlier in director Alfred Hitchcock’s career. If anything, it’s a useful timesaver for anyone looking for an overview crash course in Classic Hitchcock storytelling, as it effectively plays like what would happen if Strangers on a Train was retold within the stage-play limitations of Rope. Both of those preceding Hitch classics are hypothetical plottings of The Perfect Murder, which inevitably go awry in execution, leading to the murderer’s demise. The premeditated killer in this case (Ray “X-Ray Eyes” Milland) blackmails an old college classmate into killing his adulterous wife (Grace “Princess of Monaco” Kelly) as a lucrative act of marital revenge. The story is mostly contained in a single living room set and is rigidly sectioned into three dramatic acts: the opening act in which the killer explains the scheme to his accomplice, one in which the accomplice fails in his mission mid-strangling, and a final act of Columbo-style “howcatchem” investigation that puts the pieces of the puzzle back together through the nosy inquiries of an unassuming detective (John “Comic Relief” Williams). It’s all very tidy & succinct, possibly owing to the fact that Hitchcock was planning the much more elaborate production of Rear Window while going through the motions of adapting this morbid little stage play.

The surprising thing about Dial M for Murder is that its stage-bound telling doesn’t convey Hitchcock’s visual artistry, which is usually foregrounded as a knack for special effects dazzlement. At least, that’s what I thought when I first left the theater. At the start of the local screening of Dial M in The Prytania’s Classic Movies series, I was disappointed in the quality of the film scan, which appeared to be a fuzzy SD transfer from an ancient DVD print. Then, when Grace Kelly appears onscreen in the first interior scene, her gorgeous face & gowns were suddenly in sharp focus, as if someone had flipped on the HD-quality light switch. The initial fuzziness then periodically returned in a few exterior shots, which appeared to be partially composited or greenscreened for no practical, discernible reason. It turns out, of course, that this alternating visual quality was a result of the film being shot for 3D processing, then later retrofitted into a 2D print. It was produced in the brief early-50s window when the classic red-and-blue 3D glasses presentation was a popular fad, but the novelty of the effect had worn off by the time Dial M hit theaters, and the prints were descaled to a measly two dimensions halfway into its run. As Hitchcock bitterly acknowledged, 3D was “a nine-day wonder, and [he] came in on the ninth day,” making for one of the rare times when he was a latecomer instead of an innovator in visual effects.

The Prytania’s Sunday-morning Classic Movies slot is a reliably wonderful way to catch up on any Old Hollywood mainstays that might be personal blindspots, and Hitchcock’s catalog has long been the backbone of that program. Since the single-screen theater is over a century old, it feels like time-traveling back to the classic films’ initial release, when they likely screened in that very theater. That effect was especially potent for their most recent screening of Dial M for Murder, which was preceded by a classic Looney Tunes short instead of trailers for upcoming attractions (the Hitchcock-spoofing Tweety Bird short “The Last Hungry Cat,” for anyone curious). Part of me wishes that they could have presented the film in its original 3D format, glasses and all, for maximum time-travel novelty. The truth is, though, that Dial M‘s 3D format was very quickly rejected by contemporary audiences, so that most people did see it screened in its confused & compromised 2D form, making my experience with the film authentic to its initial run. To the theater’s credit, they will also be screening William Castle’s 13 Ghosts in its original “Illusion-O” presentation this October, which was Castle’s personally branded 3D gimmick. There’s something beautiful about the fact that Castle’s own special-effects artistry is still chasing after its classier Hitchcock equivalents all these decades later, sometimes in the exact venues where they started their one-sided feud.

While learning about Dial M for Murder‘s retracted 3D tech after leaving the theater did help make sense of why its exterior & effects shots looked so bizarrely hazy, I still can’t figure out why Hitchcock would choose to give such a stage-bound story that treatment in the first place. The beauty of Dial M is in its narrative simplicity. By the final act, the nosy detective’s post-murder puzzle solving mostly comes down to three isolated pieces of evidence: a key, a letter, and a silk stocking. Those three pieces are moved around the puzzle board through verbal speculation, with most of the visual spectacle resulting from Grace Kelly’s elegant beauty and Ray Milland’s dastardly performance as a smug drip who hates his elegantly beautiful wife. Even so, Hitchcock finds small moments for visual extravagance, such as the husband’s explanation of how the murder should go down being framed in a high-angle shot from the ceiling’s POV, as if he and the killer were pieces on a board game. The only moments I can recall that may have benefited from the original 3D effect are the isolated shot of the contract killer reaching his hands out to strangle Kelly as she answers a phone call and the surreal shot of Kelly later answering to a judicial panel as if she were being tried for murder in the courts of Hell. Those few seconds of screentime are not worth filtering the rest of the picture through the 3D process, especially since it mostly consists of lengthy conversations in a single parlor.

It’s a testament to the strength of the stage-play source material and Hitchcock’s ability to wind up tension in his audience that Dial M is still solidly entertaining despite all of the needless distractions of its 3D processing. The Prytania’s Classic Movies crowd was an especially robust turnout that Sunday morning, likely owing to the director’s name recognition. Hitchcock always delivers, apparently even when working on autopilot.

-Brandon Ledet

Love (2015)

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three star

Browsing through John Waters’s Top Films of 2015 list (which included personal favorites Tangerine & The Diary of a Teenage Girl! whoo!), I was reminded of a film I was once mildly interested in, but had since completely forgotten: Gaspar Noé‘s Love. I’m not typically a fan of Noé‘s work. His provocateur tendency for shock value & Max Landis-levels of insufferable public persona usually keep me away from rushing to check out his work. Waters has a way of getting me to scope properties far outside my comfort zone, though (Alvin & The Chipmunks: Road Chip comes to mind). His blurb for Love made the film feel near impossible to resist: “The first Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival to show hard-core heterosexual rimming—in 3-D, no less. Thank God for Gaspar Noé.” With a byline like that from The Pope of Trash himself, I figured Love was worth a gander no matter how little patience I have for Noé’s personality.

Love is an erotic drama featuring not one, but two overriding gimmicks: 3D & unsimulated sex. Whether the film is a heartfelt indie drama that approaches high art in its fearless depiction of human sexuality or a well-manicured HD porno with a nice soundtrack is mostly up to the audience. Director Gaspar Noé certainly didn’t distance himself from the porno accusation. He was quoted before the film’s release as saying, “With my next film I hope guys will have erections and girls will get wet.” Sounds like porn to me. In modern film naked breasts are plentiful, but erect penises are . . . hard to come by. Whether or not Noé is aiming for pure shock value, you have to admit that there’s something unique about an art house drama that not only starts with an unflinching depiction of mutual masturbation in its very first frame, but also features an erect penis twice ejaculating directly onto the camera lens (“in 3-D no less!”). However, it’s difficult to claim that the film purely exists for titillation. Only 15 or so minutes of the film’s 135 minute runtime are hardcore sex (though those 15 minutes obviously make a massive impact) and the drama that surrounds that pornographic material is far too sad to be sexually stimulating. The truth is, of course, that Love exists somewhere between those two extremes, high art & cheap porn, and that push & pull is partly what makes the film an interesting work.

The trouble with Love, unfortunately, is that its central drama isn’t nearly as engaging as its hardcore 3D sex gimmick. Noé positions himself as something of an indie circuit carnie huckster here: he promises the greatest show on Earth with a cavalcade of fleshy delights, but once you’re in the tent he has already separated you from your dollars & has very little pressure to deliver the goods. Our fearless protagonist in this particular 3D sex circus is a selfish asshole of a film student emotionally stuck between two women he doesn’t deserve: the mother of his child & an ex-girlfriend he cheated on to produce that child. When he discovers that his ex (who has a history of self harm & substance abuse) has been missing for months, he takes a drug-addled trip down memory lane, ignoring his current family unit so that he can mentally relive his glory days of vicious break-ups, drug-fueled arguments, and, of course, rampant forays into sexual bliss & discord that he experienced with the one who got away. He imagines that his life would’ve been better if he never split with his now-missing ex, but never takes personal responsibility for how shitty things turned out, when it was most certainly his fault. Worse, his disregard & negativity towards his current relationship shows the pattern repeating itself and when the mother of his child spits “Take care of your past while I take care of your future” it’s all too apparent where their own romantic bond is heading. The sad thing is that he’ll probably regret that break as well & find anyone but he person responsible, himself, to blame for it. His negativity & selfishness are purely toxic. God help anyone who loves him.

It’s just as difficult to pinpoint exactly how you’re supposed to feel about Love‘s protagonist as it is to decide where the film falls on the art/pornography divide. He’s a selfish ass, prone to sexist remarks like “Living with a woman’s like sharing bed with the CIA” or calling the supposed love of his life variations of “whore”, “cunt”, “bitch”, etc. He also uses transphobic language in a scene that felt like it would’ve been uncomfortable as far back as the 90s, but even Noé himself has referred to the actress in that scene as a “tranny” in his interviews. Gaspar Noé aligns himself so closely with the protagonist that it’s impossible to separate them. Murphy is an idealist film student who wants “to make movies out of blood, sperm, and tears” & “make a movie that depicts sentimental sensuality.” I’m not sure Love accomplishes either of those goals (except maybe the part about the semen), but those sentiments really do feel like a mission statement directly from the horse’s mouth. The question is if Noé is living out his own romantic bitterness on screen here or skewering himself for indulging in that bitterness & self-absorption in the first place. I don’t have an answer,but I will say that this aspect of the film isn’t nearly as interesting as its salacious carnie gimmickry. Its story is pitifully thin, drawn out, and overlong. No matter what Noé was trying to say with his romantic navel-gazing, what he ended up proving was that the least interesting thing about Gaspar Noé films is Gaspar Noé himself.

By all means, Love shouldn’t be a likeable film. Its director is something of a self-indulgent ass. Its acting isn’t anything special, which is a major problem for a romantic drama built on emotional performance. Its dialogue can be laughably awful, especially in Murphy’s internal monologues that include statements like “I’m a loser. Yeah, just a dick. A Dick only has one purpose: to fuck. And I fucked it all up.” Ugh. Its electric guitar solo soundtrack often spoils the mood of its erotic moments with unbearable cheese. Themes are drilled home in obvious, self-congratulatory ways, such as when a title card explains the definition of Murphy’s Law (because the protagonist’s name is Murphy! get it?!). Still, Noé sets this paper thin, self-indulgent narrative to an interesting enough visual language that it’s impossible to brush it off entirely as an empty exercise. Beds are colorful voids playfully shot form above as the hardcore sex sessions they host play out in a frank, striking manner. The film’s drug use isn’t particularly interesting by its mere existence, but they do lead to interesting psychedelic images made of flashing lights & 3D ejaculate that afford the film a unique look. The same dream logic of haunting memories that elevated the relatively week narrative of the VHS slasher Sorority House Massacre work their wonders here in an interesting way as well. A tour through a European swinger’s club is treated with the same sex  church reverence as the gorgeous Atlanta strip club sequence of Magic Mike XXL. The stark, alternating lights of dance clubs & bedrooms can be downright hypnotic. Love might be riding on the novelty of its hedonistic 3D sex gimmick, but it does it well enough not to lose your attention before the credits roll.

If Gaspar Noé was trying to break any special sort of ground here, I don’t believe he accomplished his goal. Much like history’s first 3D feature film, Bwana Devil, Love talks a big game about delivering a one of a kind spectacle, but ultimately ends up feeling like so, so many works that came before it . . . just in 3D. I’m not sure, for instance, that the world needed another indie drama about how monogamous jealousy & fear of polygamy can ruin long-term relationships. That story’s been told before with much more interesting nuance in its character & narrative beats. As far as the hardcore, unsimulated sex goes, 2014’s French sex thriller Stranger by the Lake indulged in the same pornographic impulses, but had a lot more to say about the push & pull between lust & companionship. I honestly believe that John Waters has made the best case for Love’s position as a groundbreaking work of cinema. It truly is “The first Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival to show hard-core heterosexual rimming—in 3-D.” That much is true (although it’s possible Mr. Waters mistook some of the film’s cunnilingus for rimming). Even if that’s all the film accomplished I still enjoyed moments where it desperately reached for more, Gaspar Noé‘s obnoxious personality notwithstanding.

-Brandon Ledet

Roger Ebert Film School, Lesson 6: Bwana Devil (1952)

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Roger Ebert Film School is a recurring feature in which Brandon attempts to watch & review all 200+ movies referenced in the print & film versions of Roger Ebert’s (auto)biography Life Itself.

Where Bwana Devil (1952) is referenced in Life Itself: On page 28 of the first edition hardback, Ebert recounts a small list of films he remembers seeing at the cinema with his parents. The titles included A Day at the Races, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, and the world’s first 3D feature, Bwana Devil. He explains that the list is so short because his Aunt Martha was more often the one who would take him to see movies as a child.

What Ebert had to say in his review: Roger never reviewed the film officially, but he does recount seeing it in a blog post in which he slams the resurgence of 3D, a format he generally found distasteful. He said, “Faithful readers will know about my disenchantment with 3-D. My dad took me to see the first 3-D movie, Arch Oboler’s ‘Bwana Devil,’ in 1952. Lots of spears thrown at the audience. Since then I have been attacked by arrows, fists, eels, human livers, and naked legs. I have seen one 3-D process that works, the IMAX process that uses $200 wrap-around glasses with built-in stereo. Apparently that process has been shelved, and we are back to disposable stereoscopic lenses, essentially the same method used in 1952.”

Some films are interesting only in their historical, cultural relevance. Think, for instance, of James Cameron’s lucrative, yet oddly forgettable eco-minded blockbuster Avatar. When Avatar was released it was a wildly successful film, mostly because it was sold as the first major advancement in the IMAX 3D format. That relevant-today-forgotten-tomorrow aspect of Avatar actually has a rich history in 3D’s storied past, apparently. For instance, the first full-length feature film ever released in 3D (and in color no less!) is a forgotten trifle named Bwana Devil, a film only significant for its “Natural Vision” visual gimmick. In a time when there was a palpable fear that television was going to destroy movie ticket sales, gimmicks like 3D were thought to be cinema’s potential savior. Cheaper than formats like Cinerama & Cinemascope that required curved screens & multiple projectors, 3D promised to be the most viable option for keeping movie ticket sales alive & thriving. It seems that in the rush to be the first film to deliver that medium historically, Bwana Devil forgot to put together anything resembling basic filmmaking competence. “Shameless cash grab” is an accusation that gets thrown around fairly often in film criticism, but Bwana Devil wears that distinction proudly on its sleeve.

Reportedly filmed in the Belgian Congo, Kenya, Uganda, and California, Bwana Devil is a pitiful mishmash of stock footage & shoddy narrative connective tissue that makes Ed Wood look like an editing room genius. Depicting the construction of Africa’s first cross-continental railroad, Bwana Devil mimics the grand scale of Africa-set Hollywood epics, but without the funding or talent required to match its oversized ambitions. The main conflict of its plot concerns a series of man-eating lion attacks that delay the railroad’s construction. The story that surrounds the attacks & the hunters determined to stop “these infernal devils” is, honestly, too dull to bother describing here.The visual effect of these attacks is achieved through a mix of trained lion footage & quick shots of lion puppets, which might be the only technique in the film that sorta works. All other non-lion nature footage is achieved by projecting actors filmed in California on top of director/producer Arch Oboler’s vacation footage shot while on safari with his wife in Africa. The safari footage is so poorly lit & grainy that the mix is more of an abomination than a mere distraction. Although the disparity in film quality is laughable, it’s not laughable enough to make Bwana Devil recommendable as so-bad-it’s good camp fest. It is, in every way, a forgettable picture.

Roger Ebert was very vocal about his distaste for 3D cinema as a medium. His biggest gripe was that the format often darkened colors in projections to a distracting degree. Bwana Devil is often cited as a critical failure & an audience favorite, but I think audiences who enjoyed the film more likely enjoyed its novelty more than its content. The most common complaint about Bwana Devil at the time of its release, from audiences & critics alike, echoed Ebert’s exact concerns: that the process rendered the film too dark when viewed through the specialty glasses required to created the 3D effect. Bwana Devil’s advertising famously promised “A lion in your lap! A lover in your arms!”, but the most visually striking image the film produced was the look of its 1950s audience watching it in the theaters. Consider the iconic LIFE Magazine image of the Bwana Devil audience donning their 3D glasses & enjoying the film’s novelty. There’s far more historical significance & interesting visual composition in that single still image than there is in the entirety of Bwana Devil‘s entire 79 minute runtime.

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I don’t fully agree with Ebert’s assessment that 3D is an entirely empty gimmick, a needless distraction. I’ve had plenty of fun experiences watching loud, vibrant action movies in 3D that have made pretty great use of the format. Bwana Devil, however, is a clear example of 3D done wrong. It’s an empty exercise that relies entirely on its own novelty for entertainment value. It’s a little sad that Ebert’s first 3D experience was one of the last ones he remembered somewhat fondly (if not only because he experienced the novelty with his father), but it’s also a little funny that a film so shoddily slapped together provided that positive memory.

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Roger’s Rating: N/A

Brandon’s Rating: (1.5/5, 30%)

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Next Lesson: 8½ (1963)

-Brandon Ledet