Arch Oboler, an important figure in the history of radio drama, is most remembered for shaping the Lights Out horror series, a clear inspiration to Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone. As far as his forays into cinema are concerned, he’s most famous for his innovations in the stereoscopic process known as 3D.
Although 3D experiments had been around for decades, Oboler took a chance on creating America’s first commercially released 3D feature (and in color), 1952’s Bwana Devil, which became a hit that kicked off the ’50s craze. Over a decade later, he created the first film in a revised 3D process (billed as Space Vision) that used a single camera to shoot two images on one filmstrip for a projector with a special lens, as opposed to the more cumbersone process of two cameras and projectors. This became the standard 3D process for the next 30 years.
That first film was called The Bubble, later reissued as The Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth. It’s now available in a version restored by 3-D Film Archive in its widescreen ratio. It’s a 3D Blu-ray, but the disc detects if you’re playing it on a 3D player and 3D TV, and if not, it defaults to the “flat” version. The disc can’t tell whether you’ve got the glasses, but you need those too. (This review is based on viewing the flat version only.)
The story features a couple (Michael Cole, Deborah Walley) and a good-time pilot (Johnny Desmond) who find themselves trapped in a strange town when the wife has to give birth. It’s a senseless, thrown-together, movie-set kind of town, surrounded by an invisible bubble and populated by zombies who repeat the same actions over and over, as though they’re in a museum exhibit of life on Earth. Under the Dome author Stephen King was surely aware of this movie.
Aside from a couple of deadly incidents, the “action” consists mostly of wandering around in anguish, with the husband drawing parallels between this empty way of life and the normal middle-class life he’d been living before. A tray of beers floats around on clearly visible wires, possibly thanks to increased resolution on Blu-ray. Everyone is fed and brainwashed daily in a weird womblike rock. After some frantic philosophizing about the callous, godlike aliens, it ends anti-climactically.
Complete with lots of comical, in-your-face, “comin’ at ya” business (like a dancer kicking her legs at the camera), this film is more intriguing technically and existentially than dramatically. The lurching yet immobile narrative is partly the result of Oboler’s excising of 20 minutes out of the initial release. That footage is still gone, but the script pages are provided as an extra, and the missing dialogue is unilluminating.
As though Oboloer were still writing for radio, it’s a cramped production in terms of budget, dependent on speculation and unconvincing spectacle, and our central couple is more grating than credible. The paradoxical result feels gonzo yet muffled. As long as you understand what you’re getting, this curious oddity is worth watching once.