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Watched this last night, one of my very favorite movies of all. Period. I watch it just about every June, its original month of release, and the film says summer to me.

Not sure if I've posted on this before elsewhere (It's starting to get hard to remember!), but a few personal thoughts:

Bradbury indeed - I think this is THE best version of one of his works on film - I always find film or video adaptions of Bradbury lacking because he's basically a poet, a word guy. But as Bill Warren and others point out this one has lots of his dialogue intact. My theory as to why it really feels like a Bradbury story is that they weren't TRYING to make a Bradbury story. It just happened. It was just a film, a job. And a product of its time, which I think makes it authentic in a way most subsequent filmings of RB stories can't be. It IS 50's Sci-Fi with all its paranoia and wonder intact and for real.

Carlson's delivery is just right, full of that gosh and gee whiz that is a bit theatrical but earnestly delivered and really sort of underplayed. Something about the pitch and tone of his voice is perfect for this role. Everybody else is fine too, especially Sawyer and Johnson. Charles Drake is properly stern and Barbara is just one of the most beautiful women ever (if a bit lacking in the scream department compared to Fay Wray). Everybody plays it straight with no irony, and I don't find the film or performances dated at all, more like a time capsule of how folks talked and thought back then.

To me this film MUST be seen in 3D. I saw it perhaps only once or twice as a kid on TV, but it really first "got" me at a 3D screening in college. It stared late, like 11:30 or so, and played for me almost as a dream. I was finally mature enough to really appreciate the plot. Now, I've never had the chance to see it two-projector, only anaglyphic. And the prints ARE inferior. I do have the field-sequential version, and it of course is closer to what it must look like in a polarized showing. Of course you can't project the field-sequential version.

However, the brownish and darkish nature of red/cyan makes for a dreamy and claustrophobic effect that I think actually enhances the whole otherworldly milieu. I always associate the film with the fuzzy and just out of reach imagery of anaglyphic 3D.

And to my amazement, it actually works better on a video projector than on film! (I've seen it in 35mm anaglyph several times since). Because you can tune the image, you can get better cancellation of the images and brighten up the picture some. My new upconverting player makes it even better. I really get some great 3D out of this - only the "comin'-at-ya" stuff really doesn't work, but it never does for me in moving picture 3D of ANY kind. (Works great in stills, though).

So I end with yet another plea for an official anaglyph DVD release! The sharpness could be vastly improved over the old videotape source our bootlegs come from. Seems to me that you could also improve the whole thing by remastering the two records seperately and recombining them digitally? Some of the fuzzyness that occurs from the overlapping in a physical film print might be sharper?

Please, Universal, help this individual and lonely not-so-young man see the visitors as they really are!

SAM33

P.S. - It was EXACTLY 92 degrees here yesterday - fortunately, no one was murdered.

Well I'll watch it for you in the interim, Joe.

SAM33