Every few years, 3D comes back in vogue. This 1981 film led a new wave of movies with enhanced depth and mostly stuff coming, well, at ya Dr. Tongue-style that included Parasite, Friday the 13th Part III, Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone and Treasure of the Four Crowns, which comes from the same people who made this movie.

It came about when Xerox salesmen Gene Quintano and Lupo took their office supply company into filmmaking, along with actor Tony Anthony, who had appeared in plenty of Italian Westerns like the increasingly, err, strange series of The Stranger films.

Filmed in a process called both SuperVision and WonderVision, the real star of this movie isn't the acting or the story, but the very in your face 3-D effects. Even the actors joked about that, with Anthony saying, "You wouldn't make Citizen Kane in 3-D. This is escapism. This is The Perils of Pauline. It's a laugh. It's enjoyment."

They went so far as to have one of the film's producers, Gene Quintano, play the film's villain Pike Thompson. In 1981, he told The Washington Post that he appeared in the movie "mostly as a matter of economics. Tony is the star and he's very good but this is not an actor's film. I mean, Robert Redford is not going to be sweating it out. The real star is supposed to be the 3-D." He would go on to write King Solomon's Mines for Cannon, as well as Police Academy 3: Back in Training and Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol, as well as writing and directing Honeymoon Academy and National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon Part 1, two films that I missed out on during our week of Police Academy movies. Also, if he ever comes to Pittsburgh, he could probably get a beer at any bar for free just by telling them he wrote Sudden Death, which along with Night of the Living Dead and Striking Distance form pretty much the holy trinity of movies made here (you can also claim that Flashdance, Slap Shot, Dawn of the Dead, Creepshow, Martin, RoboCop, The Silence of the Lambs or Kingpin and could be on this list, but never Stigmata, which was actually filmed mostly in Vancouver. Also, ironically given Anthony's quote, the original The Perils of Pauline was shot in Yinzer Country.). Man, I went off on a tangent.

Filmways bought this movie and it ended up becoming a minor success, easily using up the 90,000 3-D glasses they thought they'd need. 1981 was a big year for that company, as they bought out AIP and released The Fan, Blade Runner, Halloween II and Ragtime.

Bank robber H.H. Hart (Anthony) loses his wife (Victoria Abril, who would one day be in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down!) to kidnappers on the day of his wedding in a scene that feels like it had to have influenced Kill Bill. She ends up being sold as a prostitute to the evil Pike Thompson (Quintano) and our hero has to rescue her. That's pretty much the whole story, but you're really here, like we already said, to see stuff fly out of the screen and the film's strange monochromatic style mixed with bursts of color.

Anthony and director Ferdinando Baldi had also worked together on Blindman - an Italian Western ripoff of Zatoichi - and the incredibly weird Get Mean.

If you listen carefully, during the bat attack scene, some of the screams have been recycled from Argento's Inferno.

Anyways, like everyone has told you, this movie is really just about fun and not the idea that it's going to change your world. If you want to see darts, snakes, guns, beans, rats, spears, hands, spiders, a bowling ball, bats, gun barrels, swords, cowboys, a yo-yo, a pinwheel, gold coins, apple peels, flaming arrows and a baby's ass come at you, well, this would be the movie you are looking for.

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.

Coming to view this, you can't help but think this was Tarantino's inspiration for KILL BILL, or more like, KILL BILL 2. We can only wish, we were watching that movie instead of this. From the cool, great action filled cover, it's 3D version, which would be more wort, it's watch, Comin' At Ya, comes up short. If I had seen, it, in the 80's, I would of had a different opinion of it, and I wish I had. What was frightening and disappointing, was this, was typically what I expected from this, and I got it.A 6 out of 10 movie. Poster cover 10/10 though. There are some cool moments, the highlight being the smart credit opening scene, and the implied 3D moments, but I terribly got what I expected from this. If you brush that aside, and accept it for the originality and photography color/black and white, repeat, it is a nice little Saturday arvo watch. Gene Quintano, makes a great likeable hero, and our fat busty villain, makes a great memorable villain, while Victoria April, is just great as always, throwing some nice sexiness into her role. There are some Sin City moments, as in it's photography, and those bullets ripping through flesh, blood spouting moments, are memorably impactful, but this film just come up short, on a many stops. I can't believe how real those bats looked, especially when you can faintly see the strings. Still a definite watch with great respectful performances. I would like to see more stuff with Quintano in it. We even have some familiar music to Kill Bill in this one.