User Reviews

Exploitational short is aimed purely at showing how 3D looked in 1941 via a Pete Smith Specialty short from MGM. Without the necessary glasses, it looks terrible.

Showing it on a cable channel like TCM and forcing a viewer to watch it without 3D glasses is more of an insult than anything else. It's an utter waste of time.

The thin plot has the narrator beckoned to a haunted house by his Aunt Tilly, and what follows is a series of typical happenings aimed at demonstrating how things look when they're tossed at the camera--namely, spiders, broomsticks, cauldrons of boiling water, wooden planks, etc., all while the narrator is telling us what to expect. We even get a couple of things tossed at us by the Frankenstein monster.

I would imagine that even with 3D glasses, this is a silly exercise in demonstrating the fascination with dimensional images. Today, it's a gimmick that is being given new life by current films and not likely to last unless the scripts themselves are a big improvement with substance over schlock and gimmicks.

"Third Dimensional Murder" (aka "Murder in 3-D") is one of the shorts that Hollywood used to make to precede movies back in the day. This one is about a man who gets summoned to a castle which turns out to be the domain of all manner of scary things. I just saw it on TV and didn't have anaglyph glasses, so it looked a little odd, but that doesn't matter. It's a fun short, and the perfect movie to watch in October. I suspect that the witch with the spider looked pretty freaky in 3D, and the log must have made people jump.

The only movie that I saw in 3D in the theater was Steven Spielberg's "Adventures of Tintin". I wonder if any commercial movie will do it again.

I own a super 8mm film of this movie and its in 3-D..Very cool movie for 3-D. The open frames are flat, but as u go along the 3D kicks in..

"The opening shot of "Third Dimensional Murder" is a photo-realistic painting, in 2-D colour, showing a female moviegoer holding the cardboard gizmo properly. Now the movie starts. Pete Smith does his usual narration, in his sarcastic nasal tones. The plot makes no sense: something about the (unseen) narrator going to investigate a murder at a haunted house. The unconvincing monsters keep chucking objects at us. The 3-D cameras were set up with a very narrow parallax; if you watch this thing with standard 3-D eyeglasses you'll end up cross-eyed. The "gags" aren't funny, and the flying objects are too predictable ... at least from our modern standpoint. Let's give this movie some slack for being an early experiment ... not only in 3-D technology but in 3-D storytelling."

Hard to believe some one else saw this.

I Also have a super 8 copy of this film. There is a 16mm copy on e-bay now as I type... Yes I thought the 3-D was a little off or something, but I see by these other comments, you have to hold the glasses farther from your face. I just had to get back from the screen really far before it looked right, then it was pretty cool. Yes the film is not that good, but the 3-D is fun and it is very early for 3-D so it's historic. I hope some one will put out a sequential DVD of this and some of the other short subjects that were made. How bought you guys who ran the 3-D fest in California a couple years ago? Get some of these new prints you had made on Seq DVD!

A 3-D short with some annoying narrator going into a haunted house and meeting Frankenstein (twice), a witch, a skeleton, an archer, an Indian and assorted other "madmen".

The movie is constantly throwing things at you for the effect--but it's pointless if u see it in 2-D (like I did).

It is interesting to see they had 3-D technology back in 1941 but this short is just silly.

And narrator Pete Smith is SO annoying.

Worth a look just for its curiosity value. I really wish TCM could show this in 3-D but they can't. A 3.

"Third Dimensional Murder" is one of the very early 3-D films, made well before the 3-D fad of the 1950s. It's worth a look ... IF you can manage to see it in 3-D (as I did, thanks to Film Forum in New York City), but you'll need the appropriate viewing apparatus ... which has a much shorter 3-D parallax than the standard 3-D eyeglasses of 1950s drive-in fame.

"Third Dimensional Murder" was released on the Loew's circuit in the days when a trip to the movies usually meant two features, plus a bunch of short subjects. For this double-feature show, moviegoers were given a short cardboard rectangle with a thumb notch on one side and two panes of coloured cellophane: one blue, one red. The ushers in every Loew's cinema were instructed to warn the audience members not to touch the coloured panes with their fingers, and to keep the gadget handy until the 3-D short started. Instead of being worn over the bridge of the nose, this gadget was meant to be held up in one hand and peeked through (like a lorgnette or a pair of opera glasses). I'm left-handed, so I was annoyed (but not surprised) to discover that this gizmo only works properly when held in the viewer's RIGHT hand.

The opening shot of "Third Dimensional Murder" is in 2-D colour, showing a blonde bit-part actress holding the cardboard gizmo properly. Now the movie starts. Pete Smith does his usual narration, in his sarcastic nasal tones. The plot makes no sense: something about the narrator going to investigate a murder at a house full of monsters. We get glimpses of a man in a trilby hat stumbling through the haunted house: he's apparently the narrator, but we never see his face clearly. The unconvincing monsters keep chucking objects at us. The 3-D cameras were set up with a very narrow parallax; if you watch this thing with standard 3-D eyeglasses you'll end up cross-eyed. The "gags" aren't funny, and the flying objects are too predictable ... at least from our modern standpoint. Let's give this movie some slack for being an early experiment ... not only in 3-D technology but in 3-D storytelling.

SPOILERS HERE. The "pay-off" gag is weak and unfunny, but at least it's unexpected. The narrator gets killed, but he carries on narrating. In the very last shot of the movie, he turns into a talking skeleton. At least the 3-D view through his rib cage looks interesting. "Third Dimensional Murder" has some slight historical interest, but that's all.

Third Dimensional Murder (1941) 3-D version

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Extremely fun Pete Smith short has him serving as narrator as a man walks into a creepy old house, which is full of monstrous things including a zombie, an evil witch with a pet spider and Frankenstein's monster. I've now seen this film in both 2-D and 3-D and I must admit that it doesn't matter which one you view. The 3-D effects here don't work too well with the exception of two scenes. One is when there's a car wreck and a branch comes towards the camera. The other is the scene where the witch has a stick with a spider on it and moves the thing towards the camera. Outside of these two scenes the 3-D effects really aren't too special even though the entire film goes for them. The ending has Frankenstein's monster throwing stuff down at the camera but none of these shots worked too well. As for the film, I think it's great fun no matter which version you watch. I'm sure horror buffs will get a bigger kick out of it due to the supernatural elements and Frankenstein buffs will get a kick out of the monster here, which seems to be spoofing Karloff's turn in Son of Frankenstein. The monster also gets the same look and sweater.