3-D monsters made walking home scarier

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I had finally adjusted to walking home at night from the movies with images of vampires and werewolves dancing in my 12-year-old head when a new challenge arose.

Now I had to think about flaming arrows, vats of boiling wax and be-fanged gorillas lunging right out of the screen as the audience in the neighborhood movie house screamed and ducked for cover.

Movie makers had just created a new weapon in their fight against the competition of television – three-dimensional (3D) flicks that put you right into the middle of the action.

It was the early 1950s. With the pioneering adventure film “Bwana Devil” leading the way, Hollywood pulled out all the stops over the next few years. Now I could stroll down a couple of blocks in Wilkes-Barre’s Rolling Mill Hill section and be assured of a theatrical experience that no tiny black-and-white screen could equal.

Here’s how 3D worked. Entering the movie house, you’d be handed a set of plastic glasses with wire-like ear pieces that you could bend to fit. When the credits for “It Came From Outer Space” or “Creature From the Black Lagoon” rolled, with the words themselves seeming to hang in front of you, you were already beginning your journey into the lonely southwestern desert or up the mossy jungle river.

Probably you’d read news stories about people freaking out at 3D showings, a kind of background knowledge that would heighten your anticipation. That anticipation was likely about when the fireworks would really start.

Hollywood, being Hollywood, structured 3D movies around opportunities to shock the folks in the seats. A sci-fi film would move the camera slowly toward an alien space ship, heightening the suspense and preparing for the alien to emerge, face growing closer like in a nightmare as people held onto the popcorn for dear life and cringed gasping in their seats.

Or, a camera would sweep along a jungle river, showing every little movement of the water or floating vines, making you wonder when the creature would pop up seemingly just inches from you. For a flat-screen veteran like myself, this was another world entirely.

Westerns had their own scary moments. You’d see a troop of U.S. cavalry moseying along the plains which meant that before long, there’d be a firefight with arrows flying right at you and patrons screaming around you, as if the battle was right there and you needed cover – fast.

One of my favorite 3D scenes occurs in the 1953 “House of Wax” when bad guy Vincent Price falls into a huge vat of boiling wax, which predictably “splashes” right out into the audience. Yes, people ducked and raised their arms protectively as the villain screamed.

We’ve had 3D films in recent years – and without the need for glasses. But when I see them on flat-screen TV, they don’t seem to be trying to terrify the audience as their 1950s counterparts did. With no glasses needed, you’re also not walled off from your familiar world.

So pervasive was 3D in the 1950s that even The Three Stooges got into the act with a short that involved an angry gorilla stalking the audience.

Do I miss those days? Sort of, but what I really regret is that somehow the 3D epic “Cat-Women of the Moon” slipped past me.

I probably didn’t miss much, if reviews are to be believed. But the old promo shouts “Without men for centuries,” and – yeah – that might have been something to think about on the way home.

Tom Mooney is a Times Leader history and genealogy writer. Reach him at [email protected]

Tom Mooney is a Times Leader history and genealogy writer. Reach him at [email protected].