A few thoughts on the Music Box Theatre’s latest series, a weeklong, first-class eyeful carrying the moniker “Triple Threat! A 3D Series” and opening Friday.
First: There’s something for everyone. The 13 films cover the heyday of the 3D theatrical exhibition format, with Vincent Price starring in “House of Wax” (1953), a techno-flurry of 2010-2013 films either originated or rejiggered for 3D (“Toy Story 3,” “Saw 3D,” “Jackass 3-D,” “Hugo,” “Tron: Legacy,” “Prometheus,” “Gravity”) and a couple of fascinating international outliers: Jean-Luc Godard’s “Goodbye to Language” (2014) and Bi Gan’s elegant “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” (2018).
Second: The presentation. I’ve seen one 3D film at the Music Box since the Lakeview theater invested in a digital 3D system with top-of-line $60 eyewear. In a word: YES. It’s a world away from the cruddy cardboard throwaways, aka Squint-O-Murk-O-Vision. (Trademark pending on that name.)
The Music Box invested several tens of thousands of dollars in the XpanD-brand system. It utilizes four transmitters mounted to the back wall of the main auditorium, which sends signals to the screen, which bounce off the screen and hit the eyewear. That’s an amateur’s account, but the results — supple color, very little murk, serious spatial depth — are the best 3D I’ve seen.
A “House of Wax” lobby card shows Vincent Price in 1953. (LMPC/Getty Images)
Third: The other day I saw sizable parts of two of the “Triple Threat!” series offerings, the old stuff. I’d never seen director Alfred Hitchcock’s 1954 “Dial M for Murder” in 3D. Most of the 1954 audiences didn’t see it that way, either, since Hitchcock’s film played mostly “flat” in wide release. “House of Wax,” I had seen in 3D, but roughly four decades ago, when the viewing quality I’m guessing was somewhere between iffy and Squint-O-Murk-O-Vision.
“Dial M for Murder” (2:30 p.m. April 7 and 4 p.m. April 10) may be blessed with an indelible title, but it’s always been minor Hitchcock, who dutifully shot it with the bulky, enormous and mobility-impaired equipment 3D required. In 3D or flat (i.e., “normal” vision) it’s a movie co-starring foreground table lamps, strategically placed in the frame to augment the illusion of depth. Ray Milland and Grace Kelly are, well, Ray Milland and Grace Kelly: marvelous, though hemmed in by the living room interiors and expository passages of the Frederick Knott story.
But then! The murder sequence. Here Hitchcock’s genius flourishes in the nick of time, and as Kelly’s character, mid-strangling, reaches back, back, back toward the camera for the scissors to stab her assailant, the composition remains startling and perfect. She’s reaching for us, it seems, pleading wordlessly for someone in the audience, behind the glasses, to hand her the damn things so she can take care of business.
In contrast “House of Wax” (4:15 p.m. April 5 and 7:15 p.m. April 10) doesn’t save its 3D-ness for one crucial scene; it hurls objects at your face, along with raging flames, practically from the start, which is part of its shameless charm. When Vincent Price’s obsessive sculptor poo-poos his soulless business partner’s thirst for sensation and gimmickry, the movie seems to be scolding itself. Or congratulating itself. It’s fun to have legit, first-class 3D, whatever the class of movie, alive and kicking and invading our space once again.
“Triple Threat! A 3D Series” runs April 5-11 at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.; musicboxtheatre.com.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
