Nancy Young
Smell - o - Vision
"In the 1950s, Hans Laube, a Swiss professor of osmics (the study of smells) discovered how to reproduce odors in a movie theater. The invention-which came to be known as Smell-O-Vision!-was introduced in the 1960 film Scent of Mystery.
Did Smell-O-Vision! make olfactory sense? It worked like this: tiny plastic hidden tubes under your seat pumped out smells like garlic, pipe smoke, and shoe-shine wax from a centralized "smell brain."
Like Aldous Huxley's "feelies" in Brave New World, Smell-O-Vision! promised its audience a total immersion in movie illusion. Newspaper advertisements equated its significance to The Jazz Singer: "First They Moved (1895)! Then They Talked (1927)! Now They Smell!"
Apparently critics did not agree. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times, dismissed the "novel stimulation" as "bunk." Time magazine warned: "Customers will probably agree that the smell they liked best was the one they got during intermission: fresh air."
Laube's technique for sending out synchronized blasts of odor to match the action on screen elicit pinched noses from audiences as well. Word of mouth quickly spread and Scent of Mystery was unceremoniously yanked.
Twenty of Laube's "smell brains" had been ordered. Now they were junked. Many years later, the film was re-released under the title Holiday in Spain without the faintest trace of odor (as was "The Tale of Old Whiff," the odor-filled cartoon which accompanied Scent of Mystery).
A brief "smellies" revival occurred in 1981 when schlockmestier John Waters paid homage to Smell-O-Vision! with scratch-and-sniff "Odorama" cards for his clbuttic Polyester. Theater-goers were instructed to release the hidden smells at specially-chosen moments. People familiar with Water's oeuvre understood the filmmaker's dubious motives (think Pink Flamingos); fortunately, the worst smell was dirty socks."
