Decades before Hollywood shlockmeisters rolled out their gimmicky spectacles in the mid-'50s, Nazi filmmakers made 3-D propaganda films using their own versions of the format.
Stored in an obscure corner of Berlin's Federal Archives, two black-and-white shorts shot in 1936 were discovered by Australian director Philippe Mora as he researched a project on Third Reich cinema.
Mora told Variety the 3-D Nazi movies, evidently filmed with a prism in front of two lenses, "were made ... for Goebbels' propaganda ministry and referred to as raum film -- or space film -- which may be why no one ever realized since that they were 3-D."
The half-hour films include a musical, So Real You Can Touch It, featuring close-ups of sizzling bratwurst. Six Girls Roll Into Weekend follows a group of Nazi starlets.
"The quality of the films is fantastic," Mora said. "The Nazis were obsessed with recording everything and every single image was controlled -- it was all part of how they gained control of the country and its people."
Mora, who believes there are more Nazi 3-D films waiting to be unearthed, is already digging into his next project: a 3-D biopic about Salvador Dali.
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