Creature From the Black Lagoon (Blu-ray) (Blu-ray 3D and 2D)

Today is the first time I've seen Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3-D since it was released in 3-D back in 1954. That was nearly sixty years ago and I was only 12 years old the first time I saw the film. If you've never seen Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3-D, then you've never seen it. Without 3-D it's just another B horror movie, but with 3-D it becomes an amazing adventure. When I was a kid in the fifties, I dreamed that some day I'd own a giant flat-screen color TV that would hang on the wall and show pictures in 3-D. Today, as I sit watching the 3-D Blu-ray disk of Creature on my flat-screen 60 inch plasma 3-D TV, I know I'm finally living in the future of my childhood dreams. I'm not going to comment on the story or the acting in this film, because most people have seen Creature on TV and there is nothing new I can add to what has already been said about the movie after nearly sixty years. Therefore, my review will focus on the technical aspects of the new Blu-ray 3-D disk. The first thing I want to point out that this is not the cheesy and inferior anaglyphic 3-D you watch with red/green cardboard glasses. This is real 3-D on a special 3-D Blu-ray disk that requires a 3-D TV and the special 3-D glasses that came with the TV. Other than being in black and white, the 3-D on this disk looks exactly like the best 3-D films shown in theaters today. A standard 2-D version of the film is included on the disk in case you don't have a 3-D TV, but naturally you won't be able to see the film in 3-D unless you have a 3-D TV and use the glasses that came with the TV. The restoration and the 1080p HD transfer is so good that the film looks like it was just made. The 3-D and the general picture quality are as good as what recall seeing in the theater when the film was new. In a word, the quality of the 3-D image on this disk is excellent. Although Creature was not shot with anamorphic optics, it was not uncommon in the fifties to crop a standard 35mm image in the camera for widescreen projection. Creature was composed for a projection mask that's very close to the 16:9 aspect ratio of today's HDTV and the transfer on this DVD preserves the widescreen aspect ratio of the original theatrical presentation. This film probably has some of the best stereoscopic photography of any 3-D movie that was made in the fifties or at any time since. The out of screen effects are particularly well done. Most 3-D films of that era relied on the actors to throw objects at the audience to show off the out of screen 3-D effect. While there are some throwing scenes in Creature, most out-of-screen effects in Creature are more subtle than that. The underwater stereo photography is particularly stunning. My living room was transformed into an aquarium, with exotic fishes swimming all around me while bubbles floated inches before my eyes. Divers with spear guns swim out of the screen and into the living room. In scenes above the water the shimmering river seemed to flow out of the screen and onto the floor. Even in scenes where actors are only talking, the solid roundness of human faces and bodies is noticeable. It's like looking into a mirror. That level of realism seems to be missing in the 3-D movies made today, where close-ups of faces look flat. The camera rig built by Universal was a superior piece of engineering. Most of the 3-D camera rigs in 1954 were so heavy and bulky that the camera could hardly move, but Universal made one which was small and light enough to be maneuvered underwater. The universal rig was also capable of extreme close-up 3-D photography. One scene in Creature shows an extreme close-up of the fingers of a human hand in 3-D. In contrast, Alfred Hitchcock had to have a giant finger and telephone built by the prop department to film the close-up of a hand dialing a phone in Dial M for Murder, because the Warner Brothers 3-D camera was incapable of taking extreme close-ups without causing eyestrain. Finally, we get to the extras and commentary on the disk. There's an interesting Universal bonus feature on the disk, which covers the history of filming Creature complete with behind the scene photos and interviews of actors who were in the film. Both stunt men who wore the creature suit are alive and had interesting stories to tell. I wish they had included some information about that amazing Universal 3-D camera rig, but the average person is not really interested those technical details. The optional running commentary soundtrack is full of facts, but the rapid-fire delivery of the narrator sounded like the pitch man on a late night infomercial. The Blu-ray disk also features an optional sound track in French. Universal has finally unbundled the 3-D version of Creature from the classic monsters series, which makes it truly affordable. I bought this disk from Walmart at the bargain basement price of $14.96, so anyone interested in owning a classic 3-D film on Blu-ray 3-D would be crazy not to buy it.

this is a cheesy sci-fi movie. but the 3d is great. that's why i bought this. lots of pop out moments