. . . THE PROJECTIONIST is the sort of hit-and-miss, brilliant-one-minute\mediocre-the-next, "all over the map" mash-up that every Tom, Dick, and Harry is doing on the internet nowadays. Chunky Chuck McCann as the title character has an (on-screen) imagination filled with Nazis, war, Ku Kluxers, riots, science fiction horror, lynchings, assassinations, machine-gun fire, Busby Berkeley female kaleidoscopic formations, gang fights, dinosaurs, explosions, cavalry charges, burning dirigibles, concentration camp carnage, super heroes, arch villains, crackpot evangelists, and nude chicks on bearskin rugs. Adolph Hitler features most prominently. References to actual movies are everywhere--on projectionist Fred C. Dobbs' big screen at the Palace Theater, on his film poster-papered apartment walls, and on the marquees of the sidewalks he haunts while off-duty. His brain is filled with snippets from dozens of movies sampled here (director Harry Hurwitz sometimes needs to split the screen five ways to cram everything in). McCann as Dobbs "does" Humphrey Bogart, John Wayne, and James Stewart, among others. Did this obscure flick "inspire" Monty Python, Benny Hill, Laugh-In, That was the Week That Was, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and BE KIND, REWIND? Who is to know?
Review of The Projectionist
