Comin' at Ya! (1981)

Undescribable Perfection

Takes itself way too seriously

Good , But It Is Overrated By Some

Absolutely brilliant

I've seen the premiere screening of the new restored version of Ferdinando Baldi's 3D western classic yesterday at the Berlinale. The film is notorious for launching the 3D revival in the early 80's but mostly disappeared from public movie consciousness with the classic 3D format almost 30 years ago. Thanks to the current 3D craze it is now finally comin' at ya again. And what a fun movie! I must say, I've never seen the original version. That was way before my time, so I can't tell how the classic 3D techniques worked out on that one, or, what actually got changed, but the new digital 3D restoration is absolutely brilliant! Even if the new version may enhance the smoothness of the 3D projection, you still have to keep in mind that the 3D effects itself were conceived and shot like this 30 years ago. Though we may now have new projection techniques, the movie is still an old one. But it is great fun to see how much inventiveness the filmmakers put in the stereoscopic possibilities of filmmaking at their time.Unlike present 3D movies the 3D here is totally over the top and in your face. Baldi and Anthony used any possibilities they could think of to throw things at the camera, whether it made any sense in the story or not. It's 3D for the sake of 3D. The story is really just an excuse for having things moving right at the camera. "Comin' At Ya!" is as true to its title as you can possibly think of.Obviously very often the 3D is just to much. You have things moving so close to the camera that neither the camera nor you can still focus on them and may hurt your eyes if you try. But still the effect is very impressive, mostly because it's just there for the effect - a quality (if I may say so) that contemporary 3D movies completely lack. If you watch "Tron" or a Pixar movie in 3D or 2D, it's not much difference actually. A little more space here and there, but that's it. "Coming At Ya!" will only work in 3D. There's simply no other reason to watch this film. And that's what makes it so much fun.I won't repeat everything that the movie has coming at ya. Check the other reviews if you are curious. I just want to focus on some other aspects of the 3D in this movie that need some attention because Baldi and Anthony used some really neat tricks that modern 3D filmmakers could actually still learn from.One is the enhanced slowness of the film. Modern cinema is very speed intense - fast movements, fast camera, fast cutting. And speed doesn't go well with 3D. The eye can't follow and you easily get a headache. That's why contemporary 3D filmmakers pull the camera back a little in action scenes. They don't want to lose the speed, but they sacrifice a lot of 3D for that. "Comin' At Ya!" does the complete opposite. There's a lot of slow motion and very slow camera pans in the film that totally enhance the impact of the 3D experience. Watch out for the extremely beautiful slow camera movements, usually close to the ground to give even more depth, making the lovely western sets so plastic even "Avatar" can't compare.Slowness is essential to 3D, and we will probably (and hopefully) see a lot more of that in coming 3D productions. The ultra-kinetic fastness of contemporary blockbuster cinema is really not the right way to shoot in 3D. Having less to tell, like the almost non-existent plot in "Comin' At Ya!", obviously makes it a lot easier to take your time to immerse yourself in the 3D experience, what simply isn't possible with the totally over-scripted and over-dramatized Hollywood movies of today. Rarely I've seen a film that takes so much scenes an dialogue to tell so little story as "Tron Legacy". Or think of the endless talk-talk-talk in 3D animations like "Megaminds" and the Pixar stuff. I wish characters in modern Hollywood cinema, especially in the 3D films, could just shut up for a couple of minutes to let you experience. There is no dialogue in the first 15 minutes of "Coming At Ya!", and even later on you will mostly have weird sound effects, screaming and the beautiful music to accompany you while watching.Films need to strip down their stories, take their time to really indulge into the 3D environment (which from the modern 3D films only "Avatar" mostly succeeded at) and, most of all, get a little more obvious on the 3D spectacle. Why would you want to watch a 3D movie if not for the 3D? Of course, "Comin' At Ya!" is more of a phantom ride than a consistent movie. It has more in common with the first movie experiences around 1900 when you went to a movie for the spectacle and not for the story (which often simply didn't exist), than with modern storytelling-cinema. But it's so lively, so vivid and so entertaining through its use of the 3D effects - sometimes blatantly over the top, sometimes just unbelievably beautiful composed - that it's just pure fun to watch.I hope we will see more restored versions of classic 3D movies from the 50's to the 80's. "Comin' At Ya!" proves there is a lot to discover!

Imagine what a standard-issue Spaghetti western shoot'em up about revenge with sadistic dastards pitted against a savvy lone wolf hero who happens to be a crack shot and then add 3-D, and you've got the best adrenalin-laced western 3-D bloodbath with director Ferdinando Baldi's "Comin'At Ya" with "Stranger in Town" star Tony Anthony. This is one 3-D movie that lives up to its title. Baldi literally sticks virtually everything in your face during this 91-minute sagebrush showdown. This is 3-D as it should have been done for the get-go. Unfortunately, Rhino Video got their fumbling fingers this masterpiece of atmospheric frontier violence and botched it as a DVD. Originally, I saw this movie in Jackson, Mississippi, when it came out in 1981, and it was terrific! The plot was as lean as Tony Anthony. Basically, Anthony plays a version of his "Stranger' again, but this time his wardrobe has changed. Gone is the serape. He wears a dress coat, vest, and looks like a conventional hero in an American western. Mind you, things have changed considerably with the release of "Comin' At Ya" in Blu-ray 3-D with "a frame by frame digital conversion of the polarized over-and-under format of the original print, sourced from a brand new inter-negative into the MVC 3-D format and a new 5.1 surround sound" audio. The quoted words are straight off the Blu-ray case. If you are an avid 3-D fan, I believe this movie was made for you, and it looks terrific, aside from some of the degradation that time has imposed on the original print. Meantime, the new 3-D glasses are nothing like the original ones. The glass look exactly like those in contemporary movie theaters. Kind of like sunglasses. The 3-D "Comin' At Ya" effects looked great on my 65 inch television. Several people have said that Anthony put together a demo-reel of western scenes and showed how they wound look in 3-D. If this is was the case, then Tony Anthony was a pretty shrewd dude. Too bad it couldn't have supervise all the other 3-D movies that came out in the 1980s. Most of them sucked terribly! Lloyd Battista of "Treasure of the Four Crowns," Wolf Lowenthal of "Get Mean," Gene Quintaro of "Sudden Dead" wrote their screenplay from Tony Pettito's story. Tony Anthony wrote under the pseudonym of Tony Pettito. The narrative portion of this western is reminiscent in some ways of Ferdinando Baldni's "Blindman," except our hero retains his sight. Similarly, the villains, led by Pike (Gene Quintaro) and his obese brother Polk (hefty Richard Palacios of "Return of the Seven"), have amassed an army of six-gunners with an arrow-shooting Indian, and they raid towns on the American side of the border for lovely dames to sell for lots of loot in Mexico. The first mistake that these bastards make occurs when they interrupt a marriage in a church where H.H. Hart (Tony Anthony of "The Stranger" movies) is getting himself hitched to beautiful Abilene (Victoria Abril of "High Heels") and wound him and abduct her. Naturally, when Hart recovers from his wounds, he rides out to recover his bride. Meantime, Pike has rounded up two wagon loads of women and he has set up an auction to sell them to the highest bidders. You guessed it: Hart gatecrashes the party. Chaos ensues with gunfire galore.Ultimately everything boils down to a contest of wits and balls between Hart and Pike. No sooner than Hart thinks that he has rescued all the women than his plans to awry. He finds himself in a neck and neck fight for life with Poke, and Abilene finds herself back in Pike's hands. Although the pared-down to absolute essentials plot is basically worth only two stars, the captivating 3-D is worth four stars. Nothing gets in the way of the action, least of all any involved dialogue. Anybody that loves Spaghetti westerns, Tony Anthony movies, and 3-D actioneer will crave this oater.

This movie was released in 1981 and started the 3-D phase of the early 80s when a large amount of movies were put out in 3-D. This is a western about a good guy tracking down a bunch of bad guys who are holding his girlfriend hostage.I was "lucky" enough to see this in a theatre back in 1981. The 3-D actually wasn't that good--it only worked occasionally and it didn't disguise the fact that this movie was lousy. The plot is strictly by the numbers, nobody can act and it was dull. This was just made to show off 3-D--they shove EVERYTHING in your face. Bats, rats, guns, flaming arrows... and in one hysterically tasteless shot a baby's butt is lowered onto the camera! Some of the 3-D effects that work are fun...I confess I ducked a few times at the arrows. But it gets tiresome real quick when the 3-D is used nonstop and there's nothing else even remotely interesting to keep your attention. This would be ALMOST worth catching for the 3-D...but it really wasn't that good and I heard the version on video doesn't work at all. Also you get a splitting headache from the glasses.Pointless and boring with bad 3-D. Skip it.

I don't know what sad ending the reviewer was talking about, for the bad guy Gene Quintano got what he deserve in the end. Tony Anthony (American who made a name in Italy in the Spagetti western days) plays a tough guy who's is shot at his wedding day at the church and his wife is kidnapped by outlaws lead by Gene Qunitano and gang. He goes on a one man crusade (with a help of a old irish guy) to go after the bad guys. Baby's bottom, bats, guns, and other stuff pop out of the screen with an excellent 3-D effect. There is a bonus in the end, where we see the highlights including a firework and a little kid blowing bubbles for some strange reason to make use of the 3-D effect. Filmways pictures did a strange commerical for the film that showed no footage of the film. The film had an early performance by Victoria Abril.