the abbreviated reign of “neon” leon spinks

OOPS 102
But despite Laube’s years of laborious effort, on opening night
Smell-O-Vision didn’t work as intended. According to Variety, moviego-
ers in the balcony complained that the aromas reached them a few seconds
after the action on the screen, and were accompanied by a distracting hissing
sound. Crowther, the New York Times critic, complained that the aromas
were too faint, so that “patrons sit there sniffling and snuffling like a
lot of bird dogs, trying hard to catch the scent.” He caustically suggested
that Todd Jr. pump laughing gas into the audience instead, since the fi lm’s
acting and script seemed to him nearly as sparse as the aromas.
Despite the care Laube had taken in designing his system, the audience
apparently was still afflicted with the same olfactory fatigue that
had doomed AromaRama—though, perhaps because of the delivery
method, they perceived it as an absence rather than excess. As Todd recalled
years later in an interview with Roy Frumkes of Films in Review
magazine, Todd Jr.’s press agent, Bill Doll, finally suggested that the
Smell-O-Vision pump be reversed after each scent. “It sucked air back so
that there was no overhang on the previous smell,” Todd Jr. explained to
Frumkes. “Otherwise it just sort of drifted in between smells. It wasn’t
overpowering, but just enough not to make the clearest delineation.” With
that small adjustment, Todd claimed, Smell-O-Vision worked just fi ne.
But it was too late. Negative reviews and word of mouth had already
doomed the film to oblivion. (Quipped comedian Henny Youngman:
“I didn’t understand the film—I had a cold.”) Todd Jr. shelved plans
for installing Smell-O-Vision in one hundred theaters around the world,
and the film eventually was rereleased as Holiday in Spain, minus the
odors. As a British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, noted, “the fi lm acquired
a baffling, almost surreal quality, since there was no reason why,
for example, a loaf of bread should be lifted from the oven and thrust into
the camera for what seemed to be an unconscionably long time.”
With the failure of Scent, Laube, Smell-O-Vision’s inventor, quietly
disappeared. Todd Jr.’s Hollywood career similarly petered out. He
announced plans to make two more films—a sci- fi picture, The Creature