[3] It was the first Columbia Pictures film released in 3-D. Steve Rawley is serving a 10-year prison sentence for a Christmas Eve factory robbery that netted $130,000 which he hid somewhere.

Steve's release is imminent, but members of his old gang - Lefty, Arnie and Cookie - show up at the facility and kidnap him.

It has been a year since Steve checked his package in, so the pair who run the concession tell him it would have long ago been thrown away.

He asks to look in back for himself and he finds the box, ostensibly candy he had won at a game in the park, with the money inside.

The unexpected success of the previous year's Bwana Devil in 3-D by United Artists sparked other studios to release their own 3-D films.

Although Warner Brothers touted House of Wax as "the first feature produced by a major studio in 3-D", Man in the Dark actually premiered two days earlier.

He wrote, "Columbia's first stereoscopic film—a conspicuously low-grade melodrama ... called Man in the Dark, ... must be viewed through polaroid glasses to be seen for any effect whatsoever, is a thoroughly unspectacular affair.

"[5] More recently, critic Elliott Stein, writing for The Village Voice, discussed the effects used in the film: "This seems to be the 3-D flick that most exploits the short-lived medium.

An endless array of stuff comes whiffling at your face—a lit cigar, a repulsive spider, scissors, forceps, fists, falling bodies, and a roller coaster.