Badmovies.org Forum

So I just bought Friday the 13th: Part 3 on DVD and it has the option of playing in either 2D or 3D.  It also comes with two of those thick paper 3D glasses. I tried 3D but it would not work for me.  Now I have glasses anyway because I am nearsighted and I am wondering if that would affect anything... Does anybody know if it's because of my  regular glasses, the DVD quality, or anything else? Any solutions?  Also has anybody ever had a similar experience?   :question:

I have this DVD, too.  The problem is the DVD quality.  They made the DVD using the red / blue (or red / green . . . I can't remember which) 3-D process, which really stinks when they try to use it for color movies (I have one or two other DVDs like this and the 3-D effects aren't very good).  Unfortunately, the 3-D process they use in theaters won't work on television screens, so we're stuck with this.  The best 3-D effects I have seen for TV are the movies that use the gray flicker-lens glasses.  I bought these glasses and a few movies several years ago and it's the closest you'll get to theatrical 3-D.

Wow, unless you got a great discount, that rig was/is expensive.  And then you get to see cheesy movies with Ron Ford doing bad makeup effects and getting slaughtered on the screen.

I bought it several years ago, so I don't remember how much it cost.  Probably $100 or more, but I think it came with a few movies.  I think I have 4 pair of glasses.  I have cheesy 3-D movies like CAMP BLOOD and HUNTING SEASON, but I also have a couple decent ones I bought on Ebay:  HOUSE OF WAX with Vincent Price and ANDY WARHOL'S  FRANKENSTEIN.

Yup, Camp Blood has Ron Ford and he does some of the makeup effects and Hunting Season has him getting killed in a bit part as a bird watcher and he was also doing the makeup effects. They are truly awful movies, but I'd LOVE to see them in 3D. Just can't afford the set up to watch them.

Yeah, the red-blue process does not work well on colour movies. The other problem with 3-D video is the TV itself. If the hue is a little bit off, it won't filter right. Back in the 80s, there was a bit of experimentation with showing 3-D movies on TV with glasses available through the mail or at certain convenience stores. They put up a test screen every so often so you could tweak the colour if necessary. You had to adjust so that a half-blue half-white screen looked like one continuous colour through your blue filter. It's the blue that's most difficult to get right. A lot of leeway in the red, but it's so easy to get a double image if the blue is not just right.

Has anyone seen COMIN' AT YA! ?  I was wondering if it was worthwhile outside of the 3-d gimmick.

I have the 3-D DVD . . . the quality sucks.  The movie isn't very good either, but I've seen worse.

Thanks Burgo.  I shall avoid it like a streaking Rosie O'Donnell.

This is a bit off topic, but sometimes it's fun to watch a 3D movie on TV without the 3D effects turned on.  Like when they show Jaws 3D on TBS or something.  Everything just looks strange because everything is jutting out at the camera with wired angles.

Haven't bought a 3D movie DVD yet, so I don't know how the glasses work.

I bought my daughter a copy of Fly Me to the Moon a while ago. The 3-D wasn't great, but it might improve with colour adjustment. The beauty is that with a home theatre PC, I should be able to have a profile specifically for 3-D in the display settings. Should save some fiddling.

By the way, Fly Me to the Moon is a fun movie, and Buzz Aldrin provides his own voice. :thumbup:

Thanks Burgomaster and AndyC!  I'm actually kind of disappointed that the problem is not my glasses. If it was I could at least get laser surgery or contacts... Oh well maybe someday a good home 3D system will be released.

The system with the "flicker lenses" (sorry, I'm too lazy to look up the real name of the system) is actually pretty good.  But the glasses aren't cheap and there are only a small number of movies available (and you need to search to find them).

Apparently, there is going to be a 3d blu ray player in the works.

That's field-sequential 3-D. Red-blue is anaglyph 3-D. As I understand it, the big disadvantage of field-sequential is it uses image interlacing, which is fine for a CRT set but problematic if you have LCD or plasma.

On the plus side, there seem to be more and more titles available on DVD for both kinds of 3-D.

I don't think I'll buy any more red/blue DVDs if the movies are in color.  The few I have are headache inducing.  Black and white DVDs using the red/blue system are a bit better.  I have THE BUBBLE, and it's not great 3-D, but it's better than COMIN' AT YA! or FRIDAY THE 13TH, PART 3.

I don't have very many 3-D titles at this point, and what I've got is in colour, so it doesn't work all that well. The best 3-D I've had at home was back in the 80s, when some broadcasters were doing it for Halloween and such. Those were all old movies, even then. Black and white, and fairly high contrast.

And there was usually a host to guide you through adjusting your set and positioning yourself for maximum effect. The test pattern was extremely helpful. I think I still have a tape kicking around of The Mad Magician, Gorilla at Large (which was in colour, but worked OK), and The Three Stooges in Spooks. The Stooges are fantastic in 3-D, since they just went nuts with it and had shot after shot of stuff flying at the camera.

But what made those work, I think, is that the broadcasters knew showing anaglyph 3-D on a TV was tricky business, and they had limited control of it. So they made sure everybody knew how to set things up. These days, the 3-D is just tossed on the flipside of the DVD as a bonus, you get a few pairs of paper glasses and you're on your own.

And even under ideal conditions, the anaglyph DVD just can't compare to the polarization systems in theatres today, and that effect can't be produced without some pretty expensive equipment. So yeah, 3-D at home still has a long way to go.

Yes and no. Having seen it in the theater, the best parts for me, were the non-3-D parts.

As for having a problem with watching 3-D films with regular eye glasses, no. I've never had that problem, as that goes back to watching "House of Wax" in 3-D in its re-release. Of course, every 3-D film I've seen, I've seen on the big screen. While I have seen them advertised, I've never watched a 3-D film on dvd.

And for those board members who might be hearing impaired, or know someone who might be hearing impaired, they are now trying to create subtitles for 3-D films. It looks like the first film to get this treatment will the the latest remake of "A Christmas Carol."