Reel Life: Gimmick-o-rama: Tricks that tried pulling audiences in
The first sign of dwindling ticket
sales sends executives in a “What
do we do?!?” frenzy to bring the
audiences back in theaters. Often
deciding that mere quality in a film
isn’t the deciding factor in bringing
back watchers, producers have resorted
to some rather strange gimmicks
to attract the public.
Widescreen
We live in a widescreen world. Every display monitor and TV produced in this day and age has a 16x9 aspect ratio (that horribly stretches any non-widescreen video because people can’t be bothered to change the settings). However, the advent of widescreen adoption in the ‘50s was to bring back those who shied away to the allure of television. Various methods, from running film sideways to two simultaneous projectors doubling the width of the image, were experiments in the hunt for a high fidelity, wide image, giving us cinematic masterpieces like Ben Hur. We’re all definitely thankful for the staying power of this one.
3D
3D definitely existed for a larger part of film history, but the definite “Golden Age” was once again during the ‘50s, becoming another child of the television boom. A few gimmick films were released by big players like Disney and Warner Bros. (and also resulted in the infamous Mystery Science Theater 3000 victim, Robot Monster), but the trend largely died out by the ‘60s, sporadically making appearances in the ‘70s and ‘80s (the third sequel was always 3D) and, of course, in recent years (and seems to be overstaying its welcome).
Smell-o-vision
Smell-o-vision wasn’t always lame scratch-n-sniff cards you carried to the theater with you (Spy Kids 4D, dimension 4 being… smell?). Again, in the ‘50s, Smello- vision was a device installed in theaters that was programmed to release any one of 30 stored odours during appropriate parts of the movie. So really, still a lame gag, but a lot more sophisticated than people would assume.
The antics of William Castle
There wasn’t any filmmaker with a love of vaudevillian showmanship quite like William Castle. His frequent collaborations with Vincent Price (making the latter a household name) were only the icing on the cake. Price gave his campy, low-budget horror flicks an extra dimension of reality with the use of in-theater pieces. For The Tingler, a film about a parasite that lived in the human spine and fed off people’s fear reaction, special buzzers were installed in theater seats to give audience members a jolt, as if the creature were really loose in the room. Flying plastic skeletons spooked audience of The House on Haunted Hill. Sadly, fourth-wall breaking gimmicks like these have been largely delegated to Disney World movie screenings these days, which is quite a shame, although flooding the theater with carbon dioxide to simulate the atmosphere of the planet Pandora probably wouldn’t have helped Avatar.
Widescreen
We live in a widescreen world. Every display monitor and TV produced in this day and age has a 16x9 aspect ratio (that horribly stretches any non-widescreen video because people can’t be bothered to change the settings). However, the advent of widescreen adoption in the ‘50s was to bring back those who shied away to the allure of television. Various methods, from running film sideways to two simultaneous projectors doubling the width of the image, were experiments in the hunt for a high fidelity, wide image, giving us cinematic masterpieces like Ben Hur. We’re all definitely thankful for the staying power of this one.
3D
3D definitely existed for a larger part of film history, but the definite “Golden Age” was once again during the ‘50s, becoming another child of the television boom. A few gimmick films were released by big players like Disney and Warner Bros. (and also resulted in the infamous Mystery Science Theater 3000 victim, Robot Monster), but the trend largely died out by the ‘60s, sporadically making appearances in the ‘70s and ‘80s (the third sequel was always 3D) and, of course, in recent years (and seems to be overstaying its welcome).
Smell-o-vision
Smell-o-vision wasn’t always lame scratch-n-sniff cards you carried to the theater with you (Spy Kids 4D, dimension 4 being… smell?). Again, in the ‘50s, Smello- vision was a device installed in theaters that was programmed to release any one of 30 stored odours during appropriate parts of the movie. So really, still a lame gag, but a lot more sophisticated than people would assume.
The antics of William Castle
There wasn’t any filmmaker with a love of vaudevillian showmanship quite like William Castle. His frequent collaborations with Vincent Price (making the latter a household name) were only the icing on the cake. Price gave his campy, low-budget horror flicks an extra dimension of reality with the use of in-theater pieces. For The Tingler, a film about a parasite that lived in the human spine and fed off people’s fear reaction, special buzzers were installed in theater seats to give audience members a jolt, as if the creature were really loose in the room. Flying plastic skeletons spooked audience of The House on Haunted Hill. Sadly, fourth-wall breaking gimmicks like these have been largely delegated to Disney World movie screenings these days, which is quite a shame, although flooding the theater with carbon dioxide to simulate the atmosphere of the planet Pandora probably wouldn’t have helped Avatar.
