3-D Whoopee!

Three-dimensional movies have come a heck of a long way since the 1950’s when you had to watch 3-D movies with special viewing “glasses” made of semi-rigid paper and colored cellophane.

These first 3-D movies were in black and white – or rather, green and red – and if you took your glasses off, the picture looked blurry with green and red lines. I seem to remember seeing “House of Wax” and “It Came From Outer Space” in 3-D, but I could be wrong. These two were among the earliest 3-D films.

I definitely saw “13 Ghosts” in 3-D. At certain points in the movie, the audience was instructed by the movie itself to put the viewers on. Then, and only then, did the ghosts appear before you. I remember that well.

The colored-lenses system didn’t last, and was replaced by the use of gray polarized lenses. My most memorable film in this era was “Creature from the Black Lagoon.”

These days, 3-D seems to be back on the rise once again. I have used 3-D glasses to watch “The Polar Express,” “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “Up,” and most recently (this week), “The Final Destination 3D,” the fourth movie in the horror series.

Unfortunately, they make you buy new 3-D viewing glasses at each new movie. At “Final Destination,” a older man in front of me tried to use glasses he had bought for an earlier film (same brand, and identical in all ways), but was politely told that he could do that, but they still required purchase of a new set. Gotcha!

The 3-D experience is pretty cool. “Final Destination” is gory and startling, and sensitive people with jittery nerves should not see it – especially in 3-D.

Gory but cool. Now THAT’S entertainment.