When the film burned in the projector...

[Dave Pitts]

This is one of those movie-going experiences that was rare enough to be obsessively interesting to me, as a kid. Since we are leaving the era of celluloid film being shipped to theaters, I'm interested in remembering the experience. Two episodes stand out for me:
In Search of the Castaways -- a Disney film released around Christmas 1962, so I was eight. I was moderately interested in the story, but, just as the characters were traveling through the mountains (were they in some sort of carriage?), the projector bulb melted the film and the thing shuddered to a stop. Seeing the image burn and turn black was actually cooler than the film. Whatever had happened, the projectionist couldn't fix the problem, because we were sent home without seeing the ending. I don't remember if they gave us theater passes -- they probably did. I never saw the complete film until it ran on Disney's Sunday night TV show. Now, I'm tempted to look it up again.
The Threepenny Opera -- the Lotte Lenya version, from '31, which I was watching sometime in the 80s in a Manhattan revival house (could've been the wonderful Theater 80 St. Marks.) It's a film with a lot of verve and high style. Maybe a half hour in, the projector bulb burned the film and a loud moan went through the audience. The lights came up, everyone looked around, but after a few minutes the film resumed -- only to burn a second time. Again, the strange moan (a true sound of mourning), but again the film resumed. There was a nervous feeling in the house, because we all expected a third burning, but the second time was the charm, and it played to the end. This is another film I should see again. I remember how impressed I was with the lighting and the staging -- the interiors are packed with detail and fascinating to the eye.

[Brooksie]

My mother remembered this happening regularly at the theatre she used to visit near her grandfather's house. It was a semi-rural area, so perhaps the projectionists weren't up to much.

I had a taste of it myself in a film class once - there was a sharp intake of breath, because it was a borrowed print.

[sethb]

I ran a movie series in college in the 1970's, working with two 16mm B & H AutoLoaders (perhaps better known as AutoShredders).

I was working with rental prints from Films, Inc. and Swank Motion Pictures, and the prints were generally in pretty good shape. But once in a while I'd get a reel with a really clumsy cement splice or a bad tape splice that would cause the film to stick in the projection gate. And if you weren't right on top of things, the film would start to melt and burn pretty quickly (I was running on 1000 watt bulbs instead of the usual 750's because I was working with a long throw and a fairly wide screen, and needed lots of light to fill up that screen). Brand new prints could also be "sticky" and burn up in the gate unless they were properly lubricated with VitaFilm or something else before projection. Of course, it also helped if you kept those film gates and pressure plates clean!

But the consolation was that it was all safety film, so at least the entire reel (and possibly the projector as well as the projectionist) was not likely to go up in flames, which might have been the case with nitrate stock. SETH

[earlytalkiebuffRob]

Only time I recall this happening was at a Portsmouth Film Society showing of one of Satyajit Ray's films - THE ADVERSARY [1971] or COMPANY LIMITED [1972] on 16mm.

Of course one encounters other cock-ups a-plenty, particularly the print of THE MALTESE FALCON which broke about five times and the showing of IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE [1953] in a manner which resembled watching with Vaseline-smeared glasses. Should have walked out though recall one fellow making excuses for what was a total hash-up...

[Jason Holt]

As far as I can recall, this has only happened to me once. It was a Bruce Willis movie, "Mercury Rising". This was in April of 1998, when I was working for a movie theater and could see any movie for free. I remember essentially nothing about the movie, but I think it was about 2/3 of the way through when it stopped and burned. We had fired our projectionist months before as a cost-saving measure, so our seven projectors were being run by the assistant managers. That could have played a part in the mishap (I don't recall that happening while we had a professional projectionist), and might explain why the rest of the showing was cancelled. I never did see the rest of the movie, nor have I had the urge to do so. Judging by the reviews of the movie, it wasn't a big loss.

[Daniel Eagan]

Once tried to project a 16mm print of Putney Swope for a college film society. It just refused to go through the projector. I tore it, shredded it, burned it. My boss came into the booth to help, took a look at the tattered sprocket holes and flimsy splices and cancelled the show.

[Dave Pitts]

Putney Swope reminds me of theater showings where the film prints were of the direst quality.
Back around 1970, the Cleveland Art Museum showed For Whom the Bell Tolls. I attended with great excitement because Bell was, at that time, one of my all-time favorite novels (an opinion I've since revised.) The film was less than 30 years old at that point, but the print the museum got must have been an original exhibition print that had played every movie house in the 48 states. It was grainy, dirty, full of jumps, and with a woefully warbled soundtrack. As I remember, the print broke several times and was taped and resumed by the projectionist. There probably wasn't a single intact scene in the film -- every minute there'd be a line of dialogue broken up by a jump in the film. In spite of this, the final scenes at the bridge and the shootout on the bluff were a thrill to see.
I saw Viridiana at Oberlin College in one of the bleachiest prints I've ever seen. It was also a damaged print with jumps and blotches and murk, but the killer aspect was what the bleached-out condition meant to the...you got it, the subtitles. Sheer torture to try to read the dialogue, because any character who was wearing a white shirt would blot out the dialogue. You'd get words on the left and right and try to contextualize the middle. (Mike Myers satirized this kind of movie hell in one of his Austin Powers epics.) I should've walked out on the film, because it was unlikeable in the shape it was in (and it is a dialogue-heavy picture.) But I had driven 70 minutes to see it, so I stayed.