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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Parents miffed after UK cinema shows slasher movie to kids by mistake
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 10-24-2012 09:20 AM
quote: Daily Mail
Screaming children flee cinema in terror after bungling staff show Paranormal Activity instead of Madagascar 3
Children as young as five at Saturday screening at Cineworld in Nottingham
Instead of comedy cartoon, projectionists put on terrifying horror movie
Parents said children had been 'terrified' and 'scarred for life'
Staff have apologised and offered full refund and complimentary tickets
Parents have told how their children were left 'scarred for life' after cinema staff put on a horror film instead of a cartoon comedy.
There was panic in a Saturday-morning screening when 15-rated supernatural thriller Paranormal Activity 4 started playing instead of PG family movie Madagascar 3.
Youngsters reacted in horror as a 'flashback' scene from the original Paranormal Activity showed a bloodied corpse being hurled at the camera.
Around 25 families at the Cineworld cinema in Nottingham scrambled for the exits with their crying children - some as young as five - when the film started.
Natasha Lewis, 32, had taken her eight-year-old son Dylan to see the film.
The full-time mother, from Bulwell, Nottinghamshire, said: 'Dylan wanted to see the new Madagascar film as he's seen the others and they're his favourite. He was really looking forward to it.
'We sat down and it was meant to start at 10am, but it took until 10.30am for the lights to go down and for the trailers to start.
'They started playing the movie and I thought - this doesn't look right. And then I recognised the opening sequence as a flashback to the first movie, which I saw a couple of years ago.
'It opens on the most terrifying scene in the first film - where a body shoots full pelt towards the camera.
'It's enough to make grown men jump, so you can imagine the terror in these young faces.
'Everybody just scrambled for the exits, all you could hear were children crying and screaming. Everyone was very upset.
'I've watched a few horror films in my time but the Paranormal Activity films are the scariest since the Exorcist.
'It was only about two minutes worth of the film but it was enough to scar them for life.
'There were parents and kids in there, including some children who were younger than Dylan.
'The cinema needs to check the film before sending everyone in so they don't make this mistake again.
A spokeswoman for Cineworld said: 'We have investigated the incident and can confirm that this was a technical error with the projector and apologise sincerely to the families.
'All customers who were affected by the incident were offered refunds and complimentary tickets.
'We also invited customers to watch the screening of Madagascar 3 half an hour later.
'We take matters such as this very seriously and are currently working with technicians to ensure this does not happen again.'
I'm guessing that they had multiple DCPs loaded into that screen's server and just clicked on the wrong one.
Something similar happened to me in the mid-90s, in a two screen arthouse/mainstream crossover venue.
We had 'Pulp Fiction' in screen 1 and 'The Lion King' in 2. For the Saturday matinee only, the manager wanted to move 'Lion King' into 1, as he was anticipating being able to fill the place and it had about 100 more seats. The way we worked was that the ad and trailer reel ran on a separate 2,000 foot reel (both screens had two projectors and a platter), so that it could also be screened before one-off art/rep shows (of which we usually did several over the course of a week).
So of course I moved 'The Lion King' over, but forgot to move its ad and trailer reel with it, with the result that I ran the 'Pulp Fiction' reel with 300 kids and their parents in the auditorium. They were treated to 18-certificate booze and condom ads, followed by a trailer for the re-release of 'Reservoir Dogs' and a French porn (oops, sorry, arthouse) movie. The queue of complaining parents was quite a sight to behold, though the kids didn't seem to mind!
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Randy Stankey
Film God
Posts: 6539
From: Erie, Pennsylvania
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 10-24-2012 10:14 AM
Been there! Done that! Bought the T-shirt!
Years ago, in 1997, a new assistant manager took over in the booth.
He got this great idea to show the bosses how good he was.
Instead of booth operators coming in at 11:00 a.m. to get ready for the first round of shows at 12:00 he decided that we would come in at 1:00 p.m. and he would start the first round of shows.
That way he could save a whole FOURTEEN hours of payroll in a week!
On the very first day his new policy was instituted, I walked into the booth at about 12:30. This manager came running up to me with his head in his hands. "Stankey! You gotta' come help me!"
In Theater #1, the first show of the day was supposed to be "Hercules" (the Disney cartoon) but, instead, he accidentally played "American Pie."
Imagine the fun that happened when a theater full of Moms and young kids were greeted by the opening scene of "American Pie" where the teenaged son gets caught spanking his monkey while watching scrambled porno movies on cable TV!
The manager went downstairs to refund a whole house full of irate Moms while I cut the film and started the right movie.
His little payroll saving scheme lasted exactly one day.
I know that he tried to issue rainchecks but a lot of these Moms were so pissed of that he had to give refunds. It probably ended up costing him more in refunds than he would have saved in payroll for a whole month.
To this day, I can't understand how he could have failed to notice that the trailers on the movie were for adult movies instead of kiddie shows. He must have, literally, pressed the start button and walked away.
At least, with videos, he could have stopped the show and started the correct program without so much fussing around.
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Leo Enticknap
Film God
Posts: 7474
From: Loma Linda, CA
Registered: Jul 2000
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posted 12-12-2012 04:30 PM
quote: Gavin Lewarne
i have played the second half of the wrong movie in our changeover days (doh!)
Sorry to veer slightly OT, but are you at the Plymouth Arts Centre? I was a student in Plymouth from 1992-95 and that is the only place there I can remember that ran changeovers.
Vaguely related to which, I once managed a variation on the starting the wrong movie theme in a changeover house: cleaned the projectors, and then laced up reels 1 and 2 on different projectors to the way round I normally did it, because the right hand projector was right next to the sound rack. On this print, the distributor's logo was SR and then the film itself was mono. So I thought I'd be a perfectionist and run reel 1 on the machine within arm's reach of the CP200, so that I could change the sound format after the logo. To reach the remote fader from the other projector you had to be very careful not to put your arm in front of the lens, and I didn't trust myself. Of course in the 15 minutes or so between lacing up and showtime I forgot that I'd swapped my normal projector sequence, and started the show with reel 2. The movie was The Magnificent Ambersons, and the reel 1-2 changeover happens right in the middle of that amazing, long tracking crane shot on the dance floor in the homecoming party scene (in many ways a dry run for the even more spectacular one in Touch of Evil). So there was no way of finessing my way out of that one. They only saw about 10 seconds of it before I recovered from the shock, though...
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