Entertainment

If the 70s were all about dark grit and grain, the 80s were all colourful style and slick cleanness. A boom in technology and the popularisation of IMAX (short for Image-MAXimum) during the 80s, resulted in revived interest of 3D cinema.

Coupling this with the commercial drive of film sequels and the increasingly epic budgets, studios had moved away from the independent film boom of the 60s-70s with all of their ‘Easy Riders’ and were now preoccupied with easy money instead. The introduction of home video on VHS and Betamax represented another attack against cinema that needed to be addressed.

Horror sequels have always been a safe bet, and now they had a gimmick that kept the audience young and firmly sat on lucrative cinema seats. ‘Jaws 3D’ (1983), ‘Friday the 13th Part III’ (1982) and ‘Amityville 3D’ (1983) came out in quick succession. Had more enduring films been screened, it may have become more than just a quick attention-grabber.

Cardboard 3D glasses gave the impression that knives, sharks and other horrors were actually penetrating the screen. The images didn’t hold up well on video, but the 3D glasses themselves sparked somewhat of a fashion revolution. Decades later, DVD finally solved that problem by releasing some films with 3D glasses in the package.