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Doom Town (July 3, 1953)

Ted Okuda writes - The first 3-D documentary, Doom Town was made by independent producer Lee Savin, who was intrigued by the atomic-bomb tests at Yucca Flats in Nevada.

Filming began March 17, 1953. Photographed with the Dunning Three-Dimensional Process, it captured the devastating effects of an atomic blast. Doom Town was written by screenwriter-director-author Gerald Schnitzer, whose credits included scripts for Bela Lugosi (The Corpse Vanishes, Bowery at Midnight) and The Bowery Boys. Schnitzer also created several acclaimed TV commercials for Kodak (“Kodak Moment”), Chevrolet, and Clairol. Doom Town was sneak-previewed on April 30 at the Paramount Theater in Hollywood and opened in Los Angeles on July 2 with The Maze and Lippert’s 3-D short, College Capers.

The next day it opened at the Telenews theaters in San Francisco and Oakland. After these bookings, it was mysteriously pulled from circulation.

Although the project was approved by proper channels, the anti-atomic testing stance was hardly a message the government wanted to promote. Was Doom Town suppressed? Nobody seems to know but the movie disappeared without a trace in July 1953. It was lost for decades until the negatives, slated to be junked, were discovered and salvaged by the 3-D Film Archive in 1985. The separate reel with the color atomic bomb shots was missing; a recreation was done in 2003 by Peter Kuran, using actual 3-D atomic bomb footage. The original “multi-sound” has been recreated by Greg Kintz. Years ahead of its time,

Doom Town is a prescient social statement and an excellent example of 3-D filmmaking.

Contributed by Greg Lynch - dimensional1@bigpond.com