Radio writer-producer-director Arch Oboler, a kind of Bush League Orson Welles, broke into films in the 1940s and almost all of those he wrote, produced, and directed are unusual. However, it was not a success, and led to no additional 3-D productions. The only major 3-D release between Revenge of the Creature (1955) and The Bubble had been a Fox film called September Storm (1960) shot in Stereo-Vision 3-D and converted to 3-D CinemaScope. The 3-D craze of 1952-54 petered out quickly after 20th Century-Fox’s hugely successful dissemination of CinemaScope during late-1953 and early-1954. The presentation now is probably better than when the film was new, and the 3-D is spot-on perfect throughout. A restoration demonstration makes clear how much work was done to remove visible negative splices and other viewing imperfections. The 3-D Film Archive, primarily Bob Furmanek and Greg Kintz, have done another incredible job here, literally rescuing the nearly-lost film: the original negative was rotting away in a stiflingly hot public storage locker rather than an environmentally-controlled film vault, its reels kept in rusted film cans. The effect is almost perfectly realized (the wires suspending it become visible toward the end of the shot) it’s still one of the most impressive 3-D effects shots ever done. It floats about the room, gradually drifting out into the movie audience. An early scene, which in terms of the plot has no reason to exist at all, features a tray holding two glasses and two bottles of beer. The primary reason to watch The Bubble, however, is for its 3-D photography and effects, and on that count the picture is quite remarkable. Even without the 3-D, there’s no movie quite like it. comic books of the early ‘50s, as to be a unique synthesis all its own. But it’s also so strange that, even though it borrows elements from those TV shows, written science fiction, and even E.C. As a movie, The Bubble is draggy and obviously fairly cheap, resembling as it does a protracted episode of ‘60s sci-fi shows like The Outer Limits and The Invaders. It only delivered about one-tenth of its full impact.Ĭonversely, the 3-D Film Archive’s Blu-ray presentation of The Bubble, here under its original title, far surpasses all expectations. Decades later Rhino released a very poor, unrepresentative DVD of the film, badly converted to anaglyphic (i.e., “red-green”) process. Nonetheless, its 3-D effects, filmed in “4-D” Space-Vision, were nonetheless impressive, sometimes even startling. I could tell right away that I was looking at a strange movie at least ten years old, and its very existence baffled me. The sci-fi/special effects boon instigated by Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (both 1977) was just getting underway, and here was a movie with a decidedly retro-looking one-sheet prominently feature a ‘50s-style flying saucer, one that, as is it turned out, wasn’t even in the movie. I first saw (Arch Oboler’s) The Bubble (1966) in the late-1970s under its reissue title, The Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth.
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