![]() The Paramount Ranch, now located in The Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, sat in for an African savanna. The title of Oboler's film was ultimately changed to Bwana Devil. Oboler and co-producer Sid Pink scrapped ten days of footage they had shot for The Lions of Gulu and started over using the Natural Vision process. Oboler was impressed enough to option it for his next film project. Milton Gunzburg turned his focus to independent producers and demonstrated Natural Vision to Arch Oboler, producer and writer of the popular Lights Out radio show. ![]() Only John Arnold, who headed the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer camera department, was impressed enough to convince MGM to take an option on it, but they quickly let the option lapse. Both Columbia and Paramount passed it up. 20th Century Fox was focusing on the introduction of CinemaScope and had no interest in another new process. Cinerama had premiered on Septemat the Broadway Theater in New York and was a success there, but its bulky and expensive three-projector system and huge curved screen were impractical, if not impossible, to duplicate in any but the largest theaters.įormer screenwriter Milton Gunzburg and his brother Julian thought they had a solution with their Natural Vision 3-D film process. Television was seen as the culprit and Hollywood was looking for a way to lure audiences back. Natural Visionīy 1951 film attendance had fallen dramatically from 90 million in 1948 to 46 million. The story was also the basis for the film The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) with Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer. Patterson, the British engineer who killed the animals. These incidents were also the basis for the book The Man-eaters of Tsavo (1907), the story of the events as written by Lt. The plot was based on a well-known historical event, that of the Tsavo maneaters, in which many workers building the Uganda Railway were killed by lions. Jack kills the lions and proves he is not a weakling. A grim battle between Jack and the lions endangers both Jack and his wife. After the game hunters are killed by the lions, Jack sets out once and for all to kill them. Hayward desperately attempts to overcome the situation, but the slaughter continues.īritain sends three big-game hunters to kill the lions. A pair of man-eating lions are on the loose and completely disrupt the undertaking. Two men in charge of the mission are Jack Hayward and Dr. Thousands of workers are building the Uganda Railway, Africa's first railroad, and intense heat and sickness make it a formidable task. Oboler’s film, based on the true story of the Tsavo man-eaters, is about two man-eating killer lions holding up the building of an African railway in Kenya when the British railroad workers are either eaten or scared off – until an American hero, head engineer Jack Hayward (Robert Stack), saves the day.The film is set in British East Africa in the early 20th century. Warner Brothers used the Natural Vision process to shoot House of Wax and premiered it on 10 April 1953 as ‘the first 3D release by a major studio’ but Columbia beat them by two days with Man in the Dark. Nevertheless the other studios promptly their own 3D films. Despite being a stonking success with audiences and earning a huge $2.7 million in rentals in North America in 1953 and a total of $5 million, studio United Artists recorded a loss of $200,000. However, that is where both almost all of its interest and all of its excitement end.įilmed with the Natural Vision 3D system, it sparked the first 3D movie craze. ‘The Miracle of the Age!!! A LION in your lap! A LOVER in your arms!’ Writer-producer-director Arch Oboler’s 1952 adventure thriller has the enormous distinction of being the very first 3D sound feature movie in English and the first 3D film in colour. Bwana Devil * (1952, Robert Stack, Barbara Britton, Nigel Bruce) – Classic Movie Review 5198
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |