Interview by Greg Carlson

My good friend Tucker Lucas works in media production for H2M in Fargo, North Dakota and is an ensemble member of Theatre B.

Greg Carlson: What is your collecting philosophy?

Tucker Lucas: I’ve been thinking a lot about this the past several months, as my collecting in general has spiked up again. I suspect this might be true for many people looking for ways to cope with the pandemic. The things that I collect and the things that I like to keep near me are things that I find precious in some way. Objects that I like and that I appreciate for aesthetic or emotional value — things that bring me back to a time and place.

When I look at my collection, the things that I’m acquiring right now are things I would have been interested in collecting when I was ten. Comic books are the primary choice, but also movies and old video games that I played as a kid.

GC: Didn’t your dad get you started with comics?

TL: I collect specific comic books that remind me of the ones I was given by my dad when I was five and wanted to learn how to read. He gave me all his old comics from the 70s, mostly Bronze Age Marvel stuff. “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “Captain America,” “Power Man and Iron Fist,” and some Westerns. I became obsessed with that type of object. I imprinted on the design of Marvel comics from the 70s. The smell of the yellowed paper. They bring out so many emotions that I like having them around.

GC: For every collector, there is an element of curation. As long as I have known you, things in your collection come and go. For other collectors, and I am in this group, once something comes in, it never leaves.

TL: It really depends on the item. I adopted that rule about four years ago when my comic book collection was getting out of control. I was buying huge amounts of comics every week. You could get them so inexpensively, I thought, “Why not?”

As the numbers grew, I realized I wasn’t getting what I wanted from collecting. I was hoarding. I thought about it and realized I did not care about so many of these comics. I realized what I really cared about and did a massive purge. At the peak, I was hanging on to about 4000 comic books and now I have around 1700. It felt great to let go. When I look at my comics now, I know that everything on the shelf is special to me. If I take anything off the shelf, I can tell you why it’s there and why I have it.

GC: Beyond the prominence of comics, movies, and video games, do you keep anything else?

TL: Trading cards and some books. Only in the past year have I concentrated on movies.For the longest time, I did not care much for keeping physical media.

GC: What changed?

TL: I never really collected physical copies of movies as a kid. I had some, but they weren’t really given a place on my shelf. It took me not caring about physical media for a long time before I developed an appreciation for having the object.

An analogy would be this: I wasn’t into collecting vinyl records even though I have always kept music in some format, usually just digital files. When we worked together on “A Perfect Record,” the short documentary about collector Dean Sime, I could see how much he was getting out of record collecting. Similar to what I get out of comic collecting. Even down to the look of spines on the shelf and the beautiful artwork.

Now, when I listen to “OK Computer,” I take the time to put it on the turntable. It’s an intentional experience.

GC: Like Dean says, the process of listening to a record is very tactile.

TL: Right. Now everything is digital and online — and that’s the world I have been living in. My experience of consuming media is like hooking my brain up to a firehose. There is so much of it, I can’t really appreciate it. By hunting down physical media, I can reestablish a relationship with these older movies that I love.

When I decided this past year to collect movies, I recognized a big pitfall. You can go to a thrift store and find ultra cheap VHS and DVD and even Blu-ray. Once again, there was a danger of hoarding. So instead, I wanted to give a present to ten-year-old me. My first goal of movie collecting is superhero content — any and every movie and TV show, both animated and live action.

The reason I want to do this is from a memory. Around 1994, my dad and I were getting into his car in front of his house. It was summer. He turns on the radio. I hear the DJ say, “Rumors of an X-Men movie in the works.” And I remember saying out loud to my dad, “That’s not gonna happen.” Little did I know that the future would be an embarrassment of riches for superhero movies.

So now I am building the shelf of that content.

GC: You recently said something about collecting the same title on multiple formats.

TL: Yeah. I wasn’t sure I would like it, but I do. To me, certain aspects of curation are an absolute blast. One is the hunt. Looking for and finding a treasure. Two is creating the display. Putting it up and making it look a certain way.

For a long time, that was why I didn’t collect movies. I think most movie packaging is pretty horrible, pretty ugly. A lot of garbage design.

GC: DVD gets my vote for the worst packaging mess. From the Amaray/keep case to the snapper cases and the digipaks and super jewel cases, they were all far too bulky. If you want to preserve lots of content in a small space, DVD misses the mark.

TL: I’m not sure Blu-ray learned many lessons from DVD. It is not just the plastic case, it’s the design of the artwork. I just pulled my Blu-ray copy of “The Avengers” and it pales in comparison to the cover art of any comic in my collection. I can just randomly take a comic off the shelf and the cover is going to be gorgeous — here is “Uncanny X-Men” 260. This is fantastic. It’s a Jim Lee cover. It’s an image of Dazzler’s stalker. Kind of two-tone pink in the color scheme. Absolutely beautiful cover.

So to make a long story longer, collecting the same title in multiple movie formats makes the display more interesting to me. I have “X-Men” on VHS and DVD and Blu-ray. If they had released “X-Men” on LaserDisc I would have picked it up. At some point I would buy the 4K.

GC: Even the spine of a VHS conveys more information than any of the disc formats. I love the thumbnail squares featuring characters from the movie. I agree with your argument that most major studio covers are lacking. Some labels care. Vinegar Syndrome’s 4K release of “The Beastmaster” in the fancy magnet-clasp box is one example. The “Citizen Kane” 70th anniversary set is very nice. Criterion’s Showa era Godzilla set. Of course then you have the problem of all these different shapes and sizes to contend with. Maddening for the perfectionist. But you like the different shapes next to each other!

TL: Yes. I also have all the players ready to go for every format I own. I am still an analog video nerd, because that’s how I first got into video. I love my professional-grade CRT monitor paired with a really nice VCR. It is poison to the eyes if you try to watch analog content on a 4K television. Absolute nonsense. But if you stick with the tech designed for the format, it will look fantastic.

The reality is that there are titles that will only be available on a given format. My favorite edition of “Blade Runner” is the director’s cut on DVD. Not the Blu-ray. To my eyes, the DVD version plays back with a more dreamlike quality at that lower resolution.

GC: What movies in your collection are particularly prized by you?

TL: Superhero movies may be the primary collecting focus but they are not the only movies I have. I enjoy collecting animation across formats. Disney Black Diamond clamshells are fun. I have a copy of “King Kong vs. Godzilla” that was given to me by my good buddy Mikey Sunram. It’s an import from Japan. It contains the original theatrical cut with English subtitles. I can’t read the text on the cover except for the word Godzilla. I grew up with the American cut. As a kid, you didn’t know that more than one version existed.

When I met Mikey and he found out I liked Godzilla, he gave me this VHS tape as a gift. When I put it in, it rocked my world. It was like watching a brand new movie. I will cherish this tape as long as it lasts. When I look at it, I think of enjoying Godzilla as a kid. And I also think of my friendship with Mikey.

GC: I love those connections we all make.

TL: My comics make me think of my dad and my friend Matt Burkolder. He gave me the original run of “Watchmen.” He also gave me the first fifteen issues of “Wolverine” volume two. It’s illustrated by my favorite comic artist, John Buscema. It was one of the last things Matthew gave to me before he passed away. So even if there is some monetary value, it cannot compete with the emotional value.

GC: Was there a movie that got you excited about film and filmmaking?

TL: It was my first visit to a shoot. I was a kid when the Blenders made a music video at Ben Franklin Junior High, where my dad taught. Before that, I had no concept of what making movies looked like. So now I saw camera people and makeup artists and there were multiple takes of different shots. Blew my mind. Around the same time, I started playing with the VHS camcorder at home.

The structure of moviemaking is similar to comic books. Essentially sequential art. And montage. And creating illusion.

GC: Like storyboards come to life.

TL: I grabbed on right away. Our next door neighbors were the Boswells. And I was friends with Ryan. Ryan’s dad Paul was a huge movie fan. In the basement of their house was a massive wall covered with VHS tapes. This man was a movie lover. He had the Universal monster movies. I watched “Creature from the Black Lagoon” for the first time at the Boswell house.

I remember telling Ryan’s dad I wanted to be a moviemaker. And he said, “You want to make movies? Let me show you something.” And he grabbed a sheet of paper, and he wrote out the concept of the wide shot, the medium shot, and the close-up. I thought, “This is what I’m seeing!” It was the first time cinematic language was deconstructed for me. And that was when I became absolutely hooked.

GC: What did you see in the theater that changed the game for you?

TL: “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” landed at a prime age for me. The cartoon was out and I was already obsessed. I remember sitting in the theater — packed house, kids sitting in the aisles, just shoved in everywhere. The lights go down and the crowd is insane. It was surreal and it transported me. The closest I have come to that feeling was watching “Avengers: Endgame.”

The effects by Jim Henson’s Creature Shop were so good. Even now I think they hold up. As a kid, it was completely real. Completely real. And there are scenes in that movie that I still play in my head. I paid close attention to the framing. There is a part where April gets jumped by the Foot Soldiers and Raphael defeats this group in three moves. The fight takes ten seconds, maybe not even. It is a cool moment, the way it is edited together. Intense and really neat and as a kid I thought it was the most amazing thing ever.

I can remember every single frame of that movie, I have watched it so many times. I keep it on every format. I owned it on Blu-ray before I had a Blu-ray player.

Interview by Greg Carlson

Alicia Coombs is an archivist and the head of business affairs for the American Genre Film Archive in Austin, Texas. Outside of watching and collecting movies, she likes to drink coffee, read about cults, and turn down plans so she can hang out with her cats instead.

Greg Carlson: How did you get into movies?

Alicia Coombs: I was raised to love movies. There are a lot of collectors in my family. My uncle, who I am really close to, is a collector. The beginning of my collection started with hand-me-downs. My family and I are indoor people — we’re not going on many ski trips.

When we went to the video store, my mom would look through everything and pick stuff out. She does not care who directed the movie. She does not really care about the movie’s history. She just likes movies. So she might select anything — which led to some unexpected choices, maybe not always the best choices, but then there would also be gems. I loved discovering movies with her.

GC: What was your electrifying early viewing experience?

AC:  My mom rented a large pile of movies and David Lynch’s “Lost Highway” was one of them. I was in junior high at the time, about thirteen or so. She started the movie and almost immediately went, “Uh, no.” But after she went to bed, I put it back on. A mind-blowing movie experience.

GC: I love it. Did you have sources outside your family for discovering films?

AC: I read Spin magazine. In one issue, around the time I saw “Lost Highway,” there was an article about Doris Wishman that just fascinated me. I had no access to her movies then. They were adult titles and not available to me. But I was obsessed. I would go to school and try to talk about Doris Wishman. The kids at the lunch table didn’t care.

GC: My first Doris Wishman experience was courtesy of Jonathan Ross and “The Incredibly Strange Film Show.” The series was on really late, but every week I would stay up to watch it and most of the time I remembered to record to VHS. 

AC: My love of Doris Wishman is going to come full circle, and I can tell you that fans of hers are going to be happy in the near future.

GC: Yes! That is especially good news. What is your go-to Wishman?

AC: I like the black and white ones the most. The roughie period of exploitation is my favorite. “Bad Girls Go to Hell” is at or near the top of the list. “Indecent Desires” is great. I like telling people about “Indecent Desires” a little bit more, because “Bad Girls Go to Hell” has such a dark theme that it might not be for everyone.

“Indecent Desires” still has a dark theme, but it also has a blonde voodoo doll that our psychotic main character utilizes for nefarious purposes. “Indecent Desires” heightens the weird, which Wishman is so good at.

GC: Where did you acquire films when you were getting started?

AC: When I started collecting with my uncle, Suncoast was the main place. And they had more than just mainstream content for sale. I remember the Redemption Films titles, Jean Rollin films. So instead of going to the mall for more common adolescent purposes, I was searching for something new, something I hadn’t heard of, at Suncoast.

GC: What movies did you really want to have on your shelf?

AC: When I discovered Something Weird my collection really started. You could order online, and the catalog was so deep. I was too late for the VHS era, but the Image DVDs were so lovingly packaged. Triple features and great blurbs. You felt like you could have the whole drive-in experience with all the bonus shorts and trailers and all that good stuff.

GC: Another great episode of “The Incredibly Strange Film Show” featured Herschell Gordon Lewis. My friend Matt and I immediately tried to track down as many of his films as we could. We watched “Blood Feast” so many times I lost count. And the Something Weird compilation samplers were so much fun. I still quote lines from them. I am so glad that AGFA has a collaboration with Something Weird.

AC: Doris Wishman was the starting point on my journey to AGFA. I’m from Maine, and there’s a really great record store chain in northern New England called Bull Moose Music. Pretty soon, all my collecting was happening at Bull Moose. There was a wall of films and you would just go along the wall, discovering.

I had a DVD of “A Night to Dismember” and I read every word on the packaging. I would devour those booklets. I realized that the “A Night to Dismember” DVD was made by a Maine company. I was like, “Why and how is there a DVD company in Maine?” I tried to call them up and ask for a job, like any fresh-out-of-college person does. The response was “Two people work here. We don’t have anything for you.” [laughs]

GC: From Maine to Texas.

AC: I’m in Austin now where AGFA is based. I knew the guys who work at AGFA through the cinema scene and Alamo Drafthouse. I used to be a projectionist in high school and college. I also worked in film and television production in Austin. That’s what first led me to Texas. When I had time between gigs, I would offer to volunteer, since I had film handling experience. I found my way to accounting for film and TV, and it turned out that AGFA needed a full-time person to do that.

The Something Weird connection is special, since Something Weird is so critical to what AGFA does. We get to work closely with Lisa Petrucci. We have purchased some of their prints. We license some of their titles. It is a continuing collaboration. For AGFA’s own home video line, we love to help continue the Something Weird brand as well.

GC: How does working in a film archive intersect with or inform your own personal collection?

AC: The spirit is similar in that you really want to make sure these movies are available and accessible. You want them to be preserved. You want them to exist. People understand physical media. We want things to be ours. I don’t want streaming. That’s the worst! With streaming, a movie could just come and go.

Updating formats is part of collecting because you want something to last as long as possible in the best quality. Working in an archive affords the same sense of discovery experienced by the collector: saving things and protecting titles and making them available. AGFA’s mission is not just to save these movies but to make them available for people to see.

GC: How do you organize your personal collection?

AC: My husband and I collect together. And we also have a cinema at home. We bought our house because it had a big shed out back that we transformed into a cinema. We do have a spreadsheet for the Blu-rays, which currently number about 1500. But the spreadsheet does not have the collections and box sets broken out by separate titles.

I am not sure how many DVDs there are, since we don’t display most of the DVDs. There are some things, like TV series and seasonal stuff, that we set aside, especially if we don’t need regular access. VHS is a newer passion. We don’t have a huge amount — yet.

GC: Do you upgrade favorite titles to different formats?

AC: I’ve definitely purchased certain titles on multiple formats. For example, we’ve kept both DVD versions of “Lost Highway.” I think the reason is that one of them is pan and scan, which is awful, but the transfer is a little more visible than the image on the other DVD. Obviously, it is designed to be a visually dark movie.

So David Lynch gets repurchased.  John Waters. It is so awesome those films are being reissued by Criterion. Some things are a joy to buy multiple times.

GC: How much time do you spend revisiting favorites versus seeking out something you’ve never seen before?

AC: Usually I will choose something I’ve never seen before. Certainly if I have people over, that is when I’m more likely to revisit favorites. Some movies are comforting. I relate to some movies seasonally. “All That Heaven Allows” is a Christmas movie. I’ll be watching that one again this year.

GC: What is your favorite genre?

AC: I love horror. Psychological or supernatural horror especially. I love a lot of cult and exploitation. Russ Meyer. Doris Wishman. Where camp and exploitation meet is my favorite zone.

GC: Since you mentioned supernatural horror, and because you have a “Possession” tattoo, I have to ask what is special to you about that film.

AC: In 2012, when I moved to Austin and attended repertory screenings, it was really a new world — experiencing movies with other people as opposed to purchasing movies and watching them on my own. “Possession” was screening at that time and was brand new to me. Movies can be so impactful on the big screen. “Possession” was spectacular in a way that very few films had been. It had been a few years since I had a transcendent movie experience. So there was that.

I’m also into film poster art and Basha’s Medusa image — which is so closely associated with the film — is so beautiful, and I like her work specifically. I love that the image kind of relates to the movie, but a lot of the Polish film poster art is very much its own thing. Sort of a reference to the movie. I liked the connections between all those things. That image stuck with me, and I thought about it for a couple of years — yes, I really do want this.

GC: The tattoo is just spectacular.

AC: Thanks. I’m hoping to get Basha’s poster image for “Twins of Evil” on my other arm. It’s another evocative symbol that I like, along with the movie. For that one, the movie might be secondary to the image, but there’s still a relationship between the two.

GC: How does AGFA determine what to preserve and release?

AC: A lot of the content comes out of the physical archive, which was collected by Tim League of Alamo Drafthouse. We have about 3000 prints, and there are so many different things. There was a period of discovering what exactly was here. By the time I joined the team there weren’t really any more mysteries.

There were years where there were “reel one” parties. You’d grab the first reels of several different films from the archive to see what you might have. If something stood out, you’d come back the next night to watch the whole feature.

Rights are always an issue. Along with Something Weird, we’re connected to Bleeding Skull, so lots of shot-on-video stuff is discovered through Joe Ziemba, the director of AGFA. We focus on films owned directly by the filmmaker. As long as they have materials, we can work with them and get things released.

GC: What are some must-have AGFA releases?

AC: My favorite is “The Films of Sarah Jacobson.” It’s a slightly different area for us. She was a 90s underground filmmaker who made her work when she was very young. Unfortunately, she is no longer with us. She was mentored by George Kuchar in San Francisco. The disc has a short, “I Was a Teenage Serial Killer,” and the feature “Mary Jane’s Not a Virgin Anymore.”

They both explore coming of age themes and feminist themes. Jacobson would probably hate to be called a punk or a riot grrrl or any sort of label like that. But to give you an idea, the films have an underground sensibility. And she’s working adjacent to genre, doing horror and B-movie stuff. She incorporates flights of fancy and scenes of melodrama. Incredible films.

Another title I love is our most recent, “She Mob.” It’s a shot-in-Texas roughie about a gang of female prison escapees kidnapping a gigolo for ransom. I love a movie where the lead is the villain, and Big Shim makes this one a true standout of 60s sexploitation. Introducing this film at Fantastic Fest with Lisa Petrucci was a real high point for me.

GC: What is the best item in your personal collection?

AC: It is so hard to pick one item. I have a VHS tape of “Two Small Bodies,” which I found at Vulcan Video here in Austin. The marketing is pretty standard erotic thriller stuff. And that’s a genre I poke around in. I didn’t know anything about it when I first put it in the player. For one thing, it’s a Beth B. film. I knew her earlier video works. But I had not known about her feature film works, and certainly not this one.

“Two Small Bodies” is based on a play, so it’s really just two actors, Fred Ward and Suzy Amis. The dialogue is on another plane. It’s just a thousand times weirder than what you would expect when you pop in something you think is a made-for-cable erotic thriller. It is a movie I tell everyone about. If I could, I would keep it in a purse and carry it around with me to push on people because I bring it up so often.

GC: I need to go watch it right now.

AC: I did speak to Beth B. and “Two Small Bodies” has been purchased by a label, so a Blu-ray could be available sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I’ve got my VHS copy.

Interview by Greg Carlson

Rob Dunkelberger works in telecommunications and lives in Hopkins, Minnesota with his wife Micky and their dog MayBea. They currently have one child remaining with them in the nest.

Rob’s theatre reviews can be read at www.thestagesofmn.com. With live events mostly dark, he has found more time to watch and talk about his first love, movies. Rob is occasionally a guest on the podcast “The Movie Show with Joel & Ryan.”

Greg Carlson: My earliest memory of you is that you were a huge cinephile who loved to talk about and watch movies. Is that a lifelong thing for you?

Rob Dunkelberger: It started very early for me. My dad loved movies and he would always introduce me to new things. Younger generations might claim to have issues with black and white films, but I never did because he showed me those films when I was quite young. I tried to continue that with my own kids as well.

GC: Do you maintain a regular schedule of family movie watching?

RD: Not anymore, now that they’re older. When they were younger and I had some control, anyplace that was showing some Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin, we would go. We had it all at home as well! I introduced them early on to silent film, black and white films, all sorts.

As my son Alex has gotten older, he’s gotten very interested in film and for quite some time we did a twice a year event called the Kicked Out of the House Film Festival. Either we would get kicked out of the house or we’d kick the others out of the house. We would program ten films to watch over a weekend. I would select things he hadn’t seen that I thought he should. I would develop themes some years. We designed programs and everything.

GC: Was there a certain film that left a big impression on Alex?

RD: I took him to see “The Seventh Seal” at the Trylon Cinema when he was pretty young, maybe twelve or thirteen. And he always mentions that as a moment that opened his eyes. That screening was a big influence for him.

GC: Have you collected on all formats since VHS?

RD: Yes. I started with VHS when I was in high school and then in college I got the LaserDisc bug — and that took over my life!

GC: Did you keep all your LaserDiscs?

RD: I didn’t. I still have a few. When DVD came out, I transitioned to the new format. There were some places around Minneapolis that would buy LaserDiscs. For me, it’s always about the best picture quality I can get. So when I could upgrade to a DVD that featured a better image than my LaserDisc, I was fine letting the LaserDisc go. Now that I’m older, I wish I’d held on to a lot more of them. I had the Star Wars trilogy box set, the big black one. Wish I still had that.

GC: Some collectors don’t care about picture quality at all. For me, certain filmmakers will always get the upgrade when a new and improved transfer arrives. Are there movies you have collected on every format?

RD: Absolutely. Anything by Kenneth Branagh. “Henry V” I’ve owned on VHS, LaserDisc, DVD, Blu-ray.

GC: Branagh is not the most frequently-chosen auteur among movie nerds. What is it about him that you like so much?

RD: “Henry V” was the first Branagh that I saw. I didn’t see it in the theatre — it was on VHS, and it might have been widescreen, but I can’t remember for sure. I had already developed an affinity for Shakespeare, and Branagh’s film really opened up that interest for me.

The way Branagh has of speaking the language so that even if you don’t know what all the words mean, you hear what is being said and it sounds beautiful. Like the best possible way to say anything. The entire last third of the movie, with the St. Crispin’s Day Speech, the battle and the tracking shot after the battle, through the wooing of Kate — there’s not a misstep in that entire section of the film.

GC: How often do you rewatch “Henry V” these days?

RD: I rewatch the last third of the film more often than I watch the entire film! It’s one of those movies if I’m feeling down or if I just have a little bit of time or I just want to feel revitalized, I will put on the last section. It is a go-to.

So Branagh is one I upgrade along the way. Others would be Wes Anderson, Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock, and Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin — I have bought those films so many times.

GC: With Ted, we were spoiled. Did we realize at the time how lucky we were to see all that content projected on film with live pipe organ scores for every single one? Pretty special. Pretty rare.

RD: You would not trade that experience for anything.

GC: Do you have a favorite Keaton?

RD: Probably “The General” or “Our Hospitality.”

GC: It’s so hard to choose.

RD: It is. Have you read the book “A Thousand Cuts” by Dennis Bartok and Jeff Joseph?

GC: No.

RD: It’s about 16mm film collectors and how they save film. It will make you think of Ted with every page. It’s also this cautionary tale. Most of these collectors are dying off. And if there is nobody there to continue on or to care enough about it, what will become of it? I look around my shelves and think, “What have I done to my family?”

GC: How do you organize your movie collection?

RD: A lot of genre sections. But then I like breakout sections. I have all my Criterion Collection titles together and sorted by spine number.

GC: Spine number instead of alphabetical. Bold.

RD: What’s frustrating is that my second largest single section is 3D films, something I am very passionate about. There’s a 3D Criterion, but I just can’t bring myself to move it from the Criterion section. So it’s a missing gap in one section.

GC: How do you decide what takes precedence?

RD: Criterion is the defining factor for placement. For example, I’ll have all the regularly-issued Alfred Hitchcock films in a section together, but I don’t take out the Criterion Hitchcock titles. It has gotten easier to live with over the last few years, but it used to drive me nuts.

GC: Do you acquire new titles every month?

RD: Yes. I seek out Criterion, 3D and classic cinema. I follow Glenn Erickson’s CineSavant site and frequently get recommendations there.

GC: I want to hear more about your interest in 3D.

RD: It started when I was a kid. I could stare at my View-Masters for hours. I recently acquired some old reels, including “Batman” 66.

GC: I had the big orange View-Master canister featuring DC superheroes. The color in the Batcave photography from the 66 series was without equal.

RD: Yes! I think it was Dynamite or Boys’ Life that would include a poster and a pair of blue and red glasses every now and again. I was just fascinated with the interdimensional effect. When 3D came back to theatres in the 1980s, I saw “Starchaser: The Legend of Orin” and thought it was really spectacular. I also saw “Jaws 3D” in the theatre. Novel at the time.

Those showings of “Revenge of the Creature” and “Gorilla at Large” on TV, they never worked well at all. I’m not that interested in seeing 3D films in the theatre, but when I saw “Hugo,” I thought, “Now I have to buy a 3D-equipped television, because I can only watch ‘Hugo’ in 3D.”

GC: Wow.

RD: I love that film. It was my favorite title from that year. It hit all my sweet spots: silent film history, Scorsese, 3D — and I was sold on the idea of having 3D at home. Now I would argue that my set at home is way better than what I can see in the theatre. In the theatre, 3D sometimes works pretty good and other times not so much.

GC: What are the good 3D discs for home presentation?

RD: I like “House of Wax” with Vincent Price. “Dial M for Murder” is fun. There’s a weird little title called “Thunder and the House of Magic” that is a beautiful one to show, especially to kids. For me, it isn’t about what’s popping out at you, it’s about the depth going back. That’s what I find impressive.

GC: Does your set require certain glasses?

RD: It’s just the passive glasses. No batteries, no sync. I feel like it’s the format that was perfected, right as they stopped production. Got it down and abandoned it. So I live in dread that my TV will break and my collection of about 300 3D movies will be useless.

GC: Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I don’t want you to become the Henry Bemis of 3D movie collectors.