Awesome flick, starring Chuck McCann. In some ways, a very haphazard and unfocused mess, but also, obviously, an intense labor of love for the director, and maybe also for Chuck McCann, the kiddie-show star of our youth. Chuck is a projectionist at an old movie house (run by Rodney Dangerfield), who fantasizes that he is a superhero. The superhero segments, filmed in Fort Tryon park, it seems, are very amateurish and cheap, remind me of a super-8 superhero film my friends and I made when we were in 10th grade, in which I starred as some sort of superhero. But the director, a guy named Hurwitz, also interspersed hundreds of clips from old Hollywood movies--at one point, the screen was divided into five parts, with different segments of Hollywood films showing in each of the parts. (I guess no one was enforcing film copyrights in 1971.) The Projectionist opens with a segment from a Gerald McBoing Boing cartoon, which then goes off the reel, and contains a lot of news footage showing the awful events in the world, police beating demonstrators, KKK hanging blacks, etc. It also contains fake coming attractions: one for a film about our awful future in which men become the slaves of robots, and another for a film about our glorious future, in which we ascend to heaven on earth. And then there are the scenes of Chuck McCann walking through the streets of New York of 1971, including a stunning walk down seedy old 42nd Street (one of the marquees says "Save Free TV"--remember the campaign against pay TV becoming the norm?) and a visit to a magazine shop with racks full of girlie mags (racks full of racks?) and a photo from one of those mags, a naked girl on a rug, turns into a fantasy segment for Chuck McCann. The movie is nuts, total anarchy, gloriously unfocused and idiosyncratic, and wonderful, and ends with the film we're watching pulling out of the aperture, and the screen going white, then black. Then the lights in the theater go on.

A projectionist (Chuck McCann) fantasizes that he is a superhero named Captain Flash and his jerk of a boss (Rodney Dangerfield) is a villain named The Bat. This seemed like it would be a fun movie but it just didn't work for me. I'm not saying it isn't interesting but it's just not that entertaining. The Captain Flash segments are especially tedious. The film would have been better served focusing less on that and the tiresome clips and more on the somewhat interesting goings-on at the theater. Speaking of clips, I have no idea how the producers and distributors of this film were able to get away with using the wide variety of classic film clips they used. I'm going to assume they didn't pay for them as this was a very low budget movie. Even more puzzling than how they got away with it in 1971 is how they managed to get it on DVD in this sue-happy day and age.

When I played this movie on VHS and the first thing that appeared was the cartoon Gerald McBoing Boing's Symphony (which I reviewed here last year), I actually thought this short was going to be played in full before the feature. Instead, it turns out the title character whose name is the same as the person playing him, Chuck McCann, is playing it at the New York theatre he works at and has to fix it when it tears on the projector it's on. And so begins this fascinating film as we follow Chuck as he talks to one of the ushers, Harry (writer/director Harry Hurwitz), who gets shooed away by manager Renaldi (Rodney Dangerfield in his film debut) who warns Chuck not to communicate with his other employees on company time of which another one of those Chuck's friendly with is the candy man played by Jara Kohout. During some downtime, Chuck imagines-in silent black and white-he's superhero Captain Flash who has to defeat Dangerfield's The Bat from Kohout's Scientist and his daughter who's played by 60's leading lady Ina Balin. These sequences are quite hilarious what with the sound effects and physical movements. Ms. Balin is also in another dream sequence-also in silent black and white-with Chuck whenever he tells Harry about his dates with her. Since we never see her in the real-life color sequences, we don't know if she really exists here. Oh, and the Captain Flash music sounds like stock melodies from the '30s-'40s serials while the ones with just Chuck and Ina have the more Easy Listening '60s vibe. There's also some creatively amusing mix of various newsreel/classic feature/new footage meant to convey just how immersed in movie lore Chuck really is that provide some bizarre juxtapositions like when JFK's "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" seems to come out of Adolf Hitler's mouth! There's also a touching moment between Kohout and McCann when the latter asks about the former's experience in silent movies in his home country of Czechoslovakia as well as his escape from the Communist country during the intermission of a theatrical revue he performed in. McCann himself has one good scene by himself when he impersonates some of the famous movie stars like his idols Laurel & Hardy not to mention Rodney himself on another occasion! Oh, and while Dangerfield provides some lines that could have been funny if he delivered them in his stand-up voice, here they're just said in a solemn tone that only brought a slight smile on my face. When he's in the bw footage, however, his bug eyes can still highly amuse. And one more thing: if you're familiar with movie names from a certain era, then you could tell what year this movie was filmed in when titles like Barbarella and Star! appear on marquees though one more that's displayed is the one you're reading about right now...

"The Projectionist" is a witty, clever, creative fantasy that deserves a large underground following. The simple tale tells of Chuck McCann (played by, er, Chuck McCann) who is the projectionist at the local uniplex. His life is pretty uneventful, and most of his time is spent watching, quoting, and generally living deep, deep inside movies.His boring every day life gives way to wonderfully shot black and white fantasy sequences in which Chuck becomes Captain Flash, super superhero and all around nice guy, who must save the world from the Bat (Rodney Dangerfield) and his army of Nazi stock footage.The fantasy sequences look great, really capturing the look of a silent movie serial. The scenes mix real old movie footage with the new stuff seamlessly, looking fantastic. There is another fantasy sequence, in which Chuck tells about a women he met & fell in love with, also shot in black and white, that is sweet and very reminiscent of Woody Allen's "Stardust Memories".McCann is a wonderful talent, mixing impersonations, physical comedy, and a surprising tenderness that would almost be heart-breaking if the movie didn't remain upbeat. Rodney Dangerfield is superb also. He doubles as McCann's boss in the "real" world as well as the villainous Bat in Captain Flash's world. Dangerfield's character is a miserly control freak, and Dangerfield never breaks character to crack a joke or anything- he remains slimy and unlikable in a professional performance altogether missing from his starring roles (not to undermine the subtle nuances of "Meet Wally Sparks").My only complaint is that the color reality sequences don't live up to the day-dream scenes, but they too look great and gritty, a real great contrast to the fantasy scenes.I whole-heatedly endorse "The Projectionist" as a fine, entertaining art film disguised as a comedy that makes few mistakes in it's character study of a lonely, good natured man mired in pop culture.