Like Blu-ray and High Definition TV, 3D movies are being pushed as the next big technological leap that'll allow us to enjoy films just that little bit more. It'll change the face of film making forever, say studios and directors alike. You may have seen commercials on TV heralding 3D films as the 'must see' attraction of 2009: Coraline, Monsters Vs Aliens...Hell, even Miley Cyrus has done a 3D Hannah Montana movie already.
But what you may not be aware of is that 3D movies have been around almost as long as film itself. As early as the 1890's, inventors like William Friese-Greene were thinking about strapping two cameras side by side to create a three dimensional experience. The first 3D film to actually be shown to paying customers is often incorrectly named as Bwana Devil from 1952, when in fact 1922's The Power of Love predates it by three decades (though admittedly Bwana was the first colour 3D movie).
The 3D movies of today have many different ways of creating the 3D effect - Liquid Crystal Shutter glasses, Infinitec glasses, Linearly Polarized glasses to name a few - but the core idea has always been very simple. All you need are two separate images of the same thing set slightly apart, filmed with red and cyan filters and projected onto a screen which is viewed through red and blue tinted glasses.
This was the rather crude method that never really took off in the early stages of the 20th Century. The two projection booths needed and the glasses worn by the audience had to be perfectly in sync at all times, but perhaps inevitably a mixture of projection booth laziness and the high headache factor from the glasses saw the format die out, only to be resurrected in a slightly altered form every ten or twenty years down the line.
One of the names you probably associate with the 'old school' 3D movies is William Castle. Starring burgeoning 50's horror icon Vincent Price, House of Wax, Dangerous Mission, The Mad Magician and Son of Sinbad made him the 'King of 3D'. These were the first in a series of 3D horrors made by director William Castle that boasted the (at the time) unique addition of Stereoscopic sound (a precursor to 5.1 surround sound). Even The Three Stooges got in on 3D with Down The Hatch (1953).