1966's "The Bubble" became the first American feature to be shot in 3-D (called Space Vision) since Universal's 1955 "Revenge of the Creature," from the same writer-director who made the very first 3-D feature "Bwana Devil" in 1952, Arch Oboler, veteran radio producer and creator of the chilling LIGHTS OUT (Canada did come out with "The Mask" in 1961). Unfortunately, suspense is definitely lacking in this misfire, a young couple and their aircraft pilot forced to set down in a curious land of discarded movie sets filled with people who behave like mindless robots, like the cab driver whose only line is repeated ad nauseam: "cab mister?" How the couple's baby can be born in an understaffed hospital of such automatons is beyond comprehension, and even worse, our three protagonists barely bat an eye at the strangeness around them. Eventually it dawns on these dimwits that this community is surrounded by a transparent bubble that allows no escape, and since they flew in from the sky they surmise that the dome was temporarily uncovered. Speculation is that the people are caged animals in some sort of extraterrestrial zoo where experimental specimens can be plucked away from some higher power. Bewildered viewers at the time found the unexplained circumstances infuriating, particularly in light of the incredibly misleading new moniker "Fantastic Invasion of Planet Earth" ("The Bubble" was, if anything, painfully accurate), no relation to Bill Rebane's 1972 cheesefest "Invasion from Inner Earth." No characters to identify with, no one behaving with any semblance of common sense, a multitude of drab props never letting the audience know that nothing is real, well it ain't "Strawberry Fields Forever," which at least packs plenty of drama into four minutes of listening pleasure over this overlong exercise in TV movie-style tedium (Oboler's plans for further 3-D endeavors wisely dissipated after this miserable failure).
Review of The Bubble
