3D The Mad Magician (1954) - Hoping for a 3-D Blu-Ray release. (1 Viewer)

[Mike Ballew]

"Why have one, when you can have two at twice the price?"

Sold!

 

[Bob Furmanek]

It cost around $3K for the left/right 35mm prints of MM that I acquired circa 1995, and they needed extensive work (around 50 tedious hours on an editing bench) syncing up for projection.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

And knowing Sony's QC standards, you can have a very reasonable facsimile for $29.95 US. Ain't technology great?

 

[Bob Furmanek]

And if they've mastered properly, you don't have to worry about riding the framing from shot to shot!

 

[GregK]

This purchase is a no-brainer. Was ordered as soon as it became available.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

It cost around $3K for the left/right 35mm prints of MM that I acquired circa 1995, and they needed extensive work (around 50 tedious hours on an editing bench) syncing up for projection.

Yikes!

I saw it projected from 35mm circa 2010 at the Film Forum - the print I saw looked nearly pristine. I wonder if Sony had struck new prints at some point between your discovery and that event?

Very excited to be purchasing this. I saw Mad Magician and House Of Wax on the same day as an unofficial double feature, with Spooks, and that was one of my favorite moviegoing experiences ever. It'll be nice to be able to recreate it at home at last.

 

[Bob Furmanek]

Yes, Sony struck new left/right prints of their nine Golden Age 3-D features in 2003.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

And if they've mastered properly, you don't have to worry about riding the framing from shot to shot!

Don't remind me!

 

[RolandL]

As probably expected, the number one seller at Screen Archives.

 

[Ronald Epstein]

Just had the opportunity to view THE MAD MAGICIAN and its two included Stooge shorts.

It will take me an additional day to put together a review.

I can tell you this....

Sony has done an outstanding job with all three prints. This is probably the best looking classic archive release to date. That includes Warner's past efforts.

Outstanding quality all around.

 

[Charles Smith]

Oh man. Can't wait.

 

[TJPC]

Do these Blu rays become available on Amazon?

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Do these Blu rays become available on Amazon?

A third party seller might choose to buy a copy from Twilight Time and sell it at a profit (scalping), but the discs are meant to be exclusives of Twilight Time and Screen Archives - those are the two websites to buy it from.

 

[TJPC]

The problem I have is that most other websites will not mail to a P.O. Box for some reason. It is prohibitively expensive to get anything mailed from US to Canada (often the postage is double the price of the item), so we rent a US post office box and order everything we want through Amazon, which seems to have no trouble mailing to us.

 

[Rob W]

The problem I have is that most other websites will not mail to a P.O. Box for some reason. It is prohibitively expensive to get anything mailed from US to Canada (often the postage is double the price of the item), so we rent a US post office box and order everything we want through Amazon, which seems to have no trouble mailing to us.

I have three discs that shipped this week from Twilight Time's website to Toronto and postage was $12.95

 

[revgen]

Do these Blu rays become available on Amazon?

Screen Archives sells some of their TT stock on Amazon.

You can visit their Amazon storefront here.

 

[Interdimensional]

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[revgen]

I just finished watching The Mad Magician and the Three Stooges shorts.

To put it simply, The Mad Magician is the son of House of Wax. The producer, writer, DP, and leading star of House of Wax are all involved in this production. But this film was made for Columbia, which means it's not nearly as lavish a production.

This time they work with director John Braham, who's resume of directing Victorian era noir and horror films like The Lodger (1944), The Undying Monster (1942), and Hangover Square (1945), make him a natural to direct this film.

What is striking about The Mad Magician is it's composition. In almost every scene, there are either people or objects occupying the foreground, middle ground, and background of the picture. Hitchcock did quite a bit of this in Dial M For Murder in order to make the sets of a filmed stage play look a bit less dull in 3-D, but John Braham and DP Burt Glennon take this practice to another level. I can only imagine the amount of time and effort that went into making each scene look like a viewmaster reel frame. The only time when these shots or scenes lack this compositional detail is when Vincent Price is standing in front of a curtain on a stage. The noticeable lack of three-dimensional space during these curtain scenes stands out quite a bit.

It's not just the composition of objects in space that's fascinating but also the use of light and shadow. In the scene where Vincent Price, disguised as Ross Ormond, meets Eva Gabor in the Prentiss' House, Price's body is in the foreground with a shadow covering his face and Gabor's face is bathed in light behind him. This use of shadow and light is a beautifully executed foreshadowing device.

The scene I described above is one of many different framing and lighting techniques that make The Mad Magician a bit more unique than it's predecessor.

On the other hand, the Three Stooges shorts are almost a complete 180 degree opposite of The Mad Magician. Instead of carefully crafted scenes, we have madcap panic and chaos. Pies, Flying Bats, Skeletons, Eyepokes, Flamethrowers, and various other objects are thrusted at the camera with with plenty of rhyme, but very little reason.

I've seen these shorts before, but they still made me laugh anyway. They are a perfect compliment to the main feature since The Mad Magician only runs 72 minutes, and the shorts' comedic nature is perfectly suitable entertainment after watching a horror film.

 

[RolandL]

They were paired with various 3D titles - see below for Pardon My Backfire.

 

[RolandL]

These are some of the titles that were shown with Spooks: