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3D Earl Owensby Studios 3-D movies of the 1980s (1 Viewer)

Interdimensional

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I thought it'd be worth starting a thread to compile information and continue discussion of the six 3-D films made by Earl Owensby Studios in the 1980s, (none of which are currently available on 3D-Blu-ray, and some of which may be only on VHS).

http://www.earlowensbystudios.com/


I believe the titles were:

Rottweiler: Dogs of Hell
Tales of the third dimension
Chain Gang
Hit The Road Running
Hyperspace aka Gremloids
Hot Heir aka Great Balloon Chase



I came across a video overview of the studio from when it was put up for sale in November of 2014.


I'll continue from some of the posts in Bob Furmanek's thread:


aPhil said:
Yes, I worked on all six, but only the entire shoot for the 4th and 5th ones
("Tales of the Third Dimension" and "Chain Gang").

Worth Keeter, who directed all but the last one
("Hyperspace," aka "Gremloids" in parts of Europe and
only one of the three stories plus wrap-around segment in the anthology "Tales of the Third Dimension"),
has been a close friend for over 40 years.

Worth and I recently wrote down the 33 movies and their approximate shooting seasons during the Owensby reign from 1973 to 1988
(as, like everything, there is a lot of myth attached and we wanted to get a real list and number for our personal reference -- Worth worked there full time from around 1975 to 1987).
revgen said:
A few questions

1) Are all 6 Owensby 3D films owned by a single entity?
2) What shape are the film elements in?
3) What would it cost to license these films for Blu-Ray 3D?

StephenDH said:
EO's "Rottweiler" is said to have particularly good 3D (by Lenny Lipton I think) but I've only ever seen the 2D version.
Bob Furmanek said:
I've seen several of the Earl Owensby films and found they were very well photographed with excellent 3-D. They were MUCH better than the other features in production at that time. I particularly enjoyed TALES OF THE THIRD DIMENSION.

Phil, you might know the answer to this: the 3-D bubble burst pretty quickly and by the summer of 1983, it was pretty much dead. I know ROTTWEILER had a limited amount of playdates but I can't find any bookings whatsoever for the remaining five. Are you aware of any 3-D showings?

Dan Symmes felt that HOT HEIR was very well done and praised it in the July 1983 issue of American Cinematographer.
 

Bob Furmanek

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aPhil

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Most of the 3D films I saw when projected at the Roger's Theater in Shelby, NC (the city where Owensby has his complex),
and
"Rottweiler" (aka, "Dogs of Hell" on video) was the only one that I saw commercially screened (3D) in another territory.

I saw video boxes for the release of "Chain Gang" and "Tales of the Third Dimension" in foreign territories,
but I don't remember any 3D theatrical releases in the USA.

Owensby likely has the materials to all 6 of the 3D films and possibly all the rights to them
(although I think there may have been as many as 3 different companies/groups involved in the different 3D movies).

As to the quality of the elements, I doubt that they have been stored under good climate conditions.

I'm surprised that Earl (Owensby) has not made more use of his library of films --

While many of the 33 features there were produced and owned by others
(Helmdale did "A Breed Apart," HBO did "Florida Straits," ABC & Universal did the 2 hour TV pilot "(Asimov's) Probe," 20th Century Fox did the final production shot at one of the Owensby facilities, "The Abyss"),
there are still a large number of films in Owensby's library.
 

StephenDH

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I glad to see Earl Owensby back on this forum. My thread about him fizzled out. He may be the record holder for the most 3D movies produced by one person.
 

Josh Steinberg

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I had never heard of him before the threads here on HTF, but I'd love to check out the 3D versions if they were ever made available.
 

RolandL

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I have some 35mm 3D frames from Hit the Road Running. I think they came with an issue of the WideGauge Film and Video Monthly newsletter by Scott Marshall.
 

Interdimensional

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Phil, do you recall what sort of production schedule these had? Did they just crank them out one after another, or was there some overlap.

Would the 3-D productions all have been about the same amount of effort/budget, or would some have been a little more ambitious than others? Do you have any memories that stand out from those days?


aPhil said:
Owensby likely has the materials to all 6 of the 3D films and possibly all the rights to them
(although I think there may have been as many as 3 different companies/groups involved in the different 3D movies).

As to the quality of the elements, I doubt that they have been stored under good climate conditions.

I'm surprised that Earl (Owensby) has not made more use of his library of films --

true, maybe it's the nature of the films that they had a short shelf-life, commercially speaking. A lot of B-movies, TV movies, Drive-in movies and Direct-to-video movies seem to be produced to cash-in on the latest fad and then more-or-less abandoned.

Personally, I find such films only become more interesting as time goes by, because they become time-capsules of their era.


StephenDH said:
I glad to see Earl Owensby back on this forum. My thread about him fizzled out. He may be the record holder for the most 3D movies produced by one person.
it's an impressive output alright, seems to outnumber any of the major studios during the 80s revival. I should've done a search before posting, I missed your earlier thread.


Bob Furmanek said:
Thanks, Phil.

I had been told some time ago that MGM held rights on his 3-D titles.

From their website they released Rottweiler and Chain Gang to dvd on the Earl Owensby Studios label, which would suggest they did retain rights to at least those films.

I wonder which would be the better scenario, from a film preservation perspective.
 

aPhil

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Since we worked on many of the films at Earl Owensby Studios, Worth Keeter and I put together a list of the 33 feature films shot between Nov 1973 and the final film in 1988.


We did this a couple months ago just so we could keep it clear in our heads,

and since you asked about the production dates for the 3D films:


ROTTWEILER (aka Dogs of Hell) in 3D was shot in the Summer/Fall of 1981

The Owensby company was used next to do “Last Plane Out.”

HOT HEIR (aka The Great Balloon Chase) in 3D was shot in Summer/Fall of 1982

The Owensby company was used next to do “Reuben, Reuben.”

HIT THE ROAD RUNNING in 3D was shot early 1983

The Owensby company was used next to do “A Breed Apart” in the Spring of 1983, and during the shoot for this film production began on the next 3D film.

TALES OF THE THIRD DIMENSION in 3D was shot in Spring/Summer of 1983

The next Owensby film was “Brother Dave Gardner: Live and in Concert.”

CHAIN GANG in 3D was shot in the late Summer and the entire Fall of 1983

The Owensby company was used next to do “New Girl (on Campus”) in the Spring of 1984.

HYPERSPACE (aka Gremloids) was the 6th and final 3D film and shot in the Summer of 1984

Six more movies would be shot with the Owensby company with “The Abyss” the 33rd & final production in 1988
 

Interdimensional

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aPhil said:
Since we worked on many of the films at Earl Owensby Studios, Worth Keeter and I put together a list of the 33 feature films shot between Nov 1973 and the final film in 1988.

We did this a couple months ago just so we could keep it clear in our heads,
and since you asked about the production dates for the 3D films:

ROTTWEILER (aka Dogs of Hell) in 3D was shot in the Summer/Fall of 1981
The Owensby company was used next to do “Last Plane Out.”
HOT HEIR (aka The Great Balloon Chase) in 3D was shot in Summer/Fall of 1982
The Owensby company was used next to do “Reuben, Reuben.”
HIT THE ROAD RUNNING in 3D was shot early 1983
The Owensby company was used next to do “A Breed Apart” in the Spring of 1983, and during the shoot for this film production began on the next 3D film.
TALES OF THE THIRD DIMENSION in 3D was shot in Spring/Summer of 1983
The next Owensby film was “Brother Dave Gardner: Live and in Concert.”
CHAIN GANG in 3D was shot in the late Summer and the entire Fall of 1983
The Owensby company was used next to do “New Girl (on Campus”) in the Spring of 1984.
HYPERSPACE (aka Gremloids) was the 6th and final 3D film and shot in the Summer of 1984
Six more movies would be shot with the Owensby company with “The Abyss” the 33rd & final production in 1988

...seems strange to stop at The Abyss. One would've thought that could've been the start of bigger and better things.


Interesting to see Owensby had three 3-D productions in one year, I suppose 1983 was about the peak of the 80s revival.
 
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Worth Keeter
I directed most of the EO 3D films. They were anything but cranked out. We usually had a 5 week schedule on our 2D films, we scheduled the first 3D, Rottweiler, for 8 to compensate for 3D. We went way over that. The lenses were very slow (T6.5) and the fastest film available was Fugi 250 ASA that we could only buy from Japan at the time. Many scenes had to be reshot as they were too dark. We were shooting black dogs at night. We shot for several weeks with only one lens as the others had not been built yet. It was approx. 35 - 40 mm. We cut holes in walls to accommodate the focal length. Our DP left about halfway through for other projects and I shot the rest of the film myself with tremendous help from our gaffer, Dennis Woods, and first AC Rodger Painter. We finished with a very small crew.


Our original DP, Irl Dixon, returned for Hot Heir which we shot in about 10 weeks as I recall. By that time we had more lenses and more powerful lighting and more daylight scenes..


By Hit The Road Running we got down to 8 weeks. More experience and more daylight. That's about the schedule on Tales of the Third Dimension. Chain Gang was a little longer, finished again with a small crew.
 

StephenDH

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Hi Worth,

do you know if any of the 3D elements still exist? Has anyone kept track of them or have they changed hands over the years?
 

Mike Ballew

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This discussion calls to mind an incident from my childhood in Greenville, South Carolina.


In the Spring of 1982, our local NBC affiliate, WFBC-TV, began airing mysterious come-ons for a 3-D movie they were going to broadcast on July 23rd. The commercials, vague though they were, were supremely tantalizing to 11-year-old me and all my friends. You saw these ads ten times a day if you saw them once, but there was never any mention of the title of the feature to be shown. All anyone knew was that Channel 4 would be showing a 3-D movie on television in late July, that you could get two pairs of 3-D glasses for 99 cents down at Fast Faire, and that WFBC would reveal the title of the flick a few weeks prior to broadcast, so be on the lookout.


An older friend of mine, Ray, worked up the brass to call WFBC-TV and ask point blank, “What is the 3-D movie going to be about?”


Whoever answered told him, “It’s something to do with hot air balloons.”


Hmm.


That answer was made even more baffling to us when WFBC announced that the feature for July 23rd would be Revenge of the Creature (1955), a film we were already reasonably familiar with from Shock Theater (on WLOS-TV) and Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine. (Nevertheless, we were all jonesing for Creature in 3-D. Most of my friends acquired ten or more pairs of 3-D glasses apiece, we were so excited. But that broadcast is another story.)


We had no idea, any of us, that Hot Heir was filming in our neck of the woods, probably at Freedom Weekend Aloft, the annual hot air balloon festival that was such a key feature of our summers in upstate South Carolina in those days.
 

Interdimensional

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Worth Keeter said:
I directed most of the EO 3D films. They were anything but cranked out. We usually had a 5 week schedule on our 2D films, we scheduled the first 3D, Rottweiler, for 8 to compensate for 3D. We went way over that. The lenses were very slow (T6.5) and the fastest film available was Fugi 250 ASA that we could only buy from Japan at the time. Many scenes had to be reshot as they were too dark. We were shooting black dogs at night. We shot for several weeks with only one lens as the others had not been built yet. It was approx. 35 - 40 mm. We cut holes in walls to accommodate the focal length. Our DP left about halfway through for other projects and I shot the rest of the film myself with tremendous help from our gaffer, Dennis Woods, and first AC Rodger Painter. We finished with a very small crew.

Our original DP, Irl Dixon, returned for Hot Heir which we shot in about 10 weeks as I recall. By that time we had more lenses and more powerful lighting and more daylight scenes..

By Hit The Road Running we got down to 8 weeks. More experience and more daylight. That's about the schedule on Tales of the Third Dimension. Chain Gang was a little longer, finished again with a small crew.

- fascinating, that's pretty much what I was hoping to understand about how you all managed to do it ... so by 'Hit the Road Running' you were essentially able to 'hit the road running'.

Using the term 'cranked out', I didn't mean to imply that any lack of care was taken, just that the studio seemed to be unusually prolific during that period. The makers of 'Comin at Ya' managed to produce just one follow-up 3-D film during that period. Owensby must've had a well-organized operation.

Interesting variety in choice of subject matter between the various films, to go from one to the next like that. These days it's been getting so that, for the most part 3-D films fall into certain proven categories, like franchise/superhero movies and animation.

Owensby seems to have been more willing to try a range of different types of things with no established 3-D precident. Without having seen these in 3-D, I can sort of envision how they might lend themselves to the format in different ways. Were any of them conceived specifically for 3-D, or was it a case of evaluating existing scripts for 3-D potential?
 
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Earl had an abhorrence to using any name actors. Of these films his sales pitch to investors was "3D is the star". I never sought the opportunities for 3D gimmick shots as they always seemed awkward and stopped the pace, but I did use every opportunity to show off 3D in terms of depth and putting the viewer in the picture. The two most effective films to me were Hot Heir with the aerial shots of the hot air balloons, and Hit The Road Running for the high speed chases and POV's from inside the cars.
 

Bob Furmanek

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Worth, are you aware of any 3-D showings? I know that a few of them played in LA in the early 90's at the Vagabond, and I did see a test screening of TALES in New York in 1984.


But I've searched through every possible source and cannot find any bookings for the films in 3-D. It seems that Mr. Owensby had a very difficult time securing distribution. It took quite a while for ROTTWEILER to get released and that only played a few venues.
 
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Hi Bob, I'm not aware of any at this time. I remember the screenings at the Vagabond, and there was a Dogs of Hell screening in LA a while back, but I think Chris Condon had a hand in these and he is no longer with us. Rottweiler was distributed region by region, but with little advertising and generally very poor projection.
 

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