Little Spools Go Round and Round

Have Yourself a Merry Little Blackhawk Christmas

Met a collector friend of forty years duration for lunch at Carolina Barbecue in Statesville where he opened his trunk to reveal an estate stash of Blackhawk 8mm recently got from a widow whose husband college-taught (history) and kept comedies for home relaxation, this before You Tube and other outlets giving ease of access we now enjoy. Mike had dumped his own projectors an eon back and so re-gifted the lot to me, a favor returned by my picking up the tab for Carolina’s chopped platter with slaw and hush puppies. 8mm is so far past that it seems a ten-year-old other than myself collected it, but still there is impulse to visit the family residence and fire up machines I keep in repair. Vinyl is back, turntables manufactured new, but projectors, 8, 16, 35mm? I figure they’re gone for keeps, as will be those who began collector lives with them. I’m sentimental for folks who came, went, and left behind reels they treasured, plus others who shared home view in dark-as-manageable space with jerry-rig music (if that) at war with jittery mechanism that drove the Pageant, Eumig, Bell and Howell, whatever money once bought so an enthusiast could entertain himself, and whoever submitted to the time-trip back.

Many households of adequate means kept equipment to show home movies, an only moving record of family life to be had in those days. Parents might bring home a Woody Woodpecker or Abbott-Costello from one or other camera department to further amuse kiddies, not realizing pernicious habit to come of one child out of thousands dove deep in a filmic well, never to resurface. Are disc buys nowadays as compulsive? I admit for me they are, but being so common, there’s less distinction for owning them, whereas being an only person within a hundred miles with an 8mm print of Laurel and Hardy in Habeas Corpus was heady stuff, even as too few knew or cared from L&H or Habeas Corpus. I took more-less casual receipt of this collection that clearly meant much to its owner, each reel housed in a metal can, hand-labeled, just as mine were once upon a dedicated time. I would have been over the moon had someone given me such a trove say, fifty years ago, so it’s important to view these films not only as I would have seen them then, but through eyes of a now-passed collector with whom I obviously had much in common. Movies so gotten are never just movies … they are windows back to our own lives and those who accumulated them before us. It’s well and good to already have an 8mm print of The Pawnshop --- now I have this collector’s print of The Pawnshop, and who knows but what some of love and positive energy he lent it might bless me and whoever these reels move on to once I’m gone.

Blackhawk Sold Stills Like This As Well As Chaplin-Mutual Shorts on 8mm

These Are Disappearing Fast, Folks

His taste was good, four Chaplin Mutuals, six Sennetts, three Keatons (including an abridged The General), plus nine Laurel-Hardys. And yes, he had Habeas Corpus. It was for me to thread samples up and absorb the vibes. Why bother with such cloudy relics when I can have much of same content on stunningly realized Blu-Ray? Because, as stated, 8mm is magic, each a talisman where released from genie cans. It’s renewing vow to a way of watching that will not be back, for good reason perhaps, as learned in a last reunion with machines, cords, lamps, all elderly and not disposed to be awoke in our century. 2019 is late to replace a burnt bulb they haven’t manufactured since our nation’s bicentennial, but what else to do when Chaplin’s The Adventurer goes dark part-way in and leaves me to wonder if my Elmo Super 8 sound projector would illuminate screens again? Will anyone on Ebay have that particular bulb? Thank heaven a few did, so utter obsolescence is at least delayed, even as reason whispers that some day an end will come, and be final. There, of course, is a same boat any 8mm collector occupies as dwindling stock and our own advancing age propels us toward a wall that reads “No More Replacement Parts.”

One-Time Bargain For a Dollar, Thanks to Portal Publications

Most every collector got ‘round to Chaplin Mutuals. There were twelve, and none were duds. Could any other hundred-year-old comedy group claim that? Blackhawk kept upgrading its Mutual line, first from better pre-print, then music tracks. I watched The Adventurer up to bulb-blow, tried estimating how many times I had seen it till then. Enough to memorize every movement for sure. The breakdown harked to days when mishap was commonplace. Home exhibition was a tough climb then. Some little something seemed always to go wrong, and yet the struggle was worth it. A less patient voice whispers “Why bother?” as I search closets, then auctions, for a fresh (fresh?!?) bulb. That’s on top of dissembling the lamp house sans instruction, hard task for someone not tech-proficient. I will finish The Adventurer, still threaded up and holding its position, if/when the Elmo re-lights. For meantime, stills shown here must suffice, courtesy Blackhawk in 1970, a set of six got for $2.29, some of images blown-up from film frames, but they would do. Portal Publications also did a repro one-sheet, yours for a dollar, “virtually worthless today,” says one poster expert, but how can anything be worthless that rouses such sentiment?

The Eumig 8mm Model I Once Struggled Mightily With, and From Time To Time Still Do

I parked the Elmo and dragged out my Eiki Dual 8 sound projector. This was the model of my youth, a chatter-box surprisingly heavy to host such a small gauge, and not at first receptive to my attempt at threading Two Tars. Seems I forgot procedure for switch to Super 8 from Standard, being change of sprocket wheels and film gate assembly. Again came realization that my fingers are not nimble or steady as once they were, a humbling whenever 8mm is revisited. Despite quitting the format in 1972, tricks of the Eumig pushed ways back into memory, so Two Tars ran from start to finish, gears and lamp operative. Are reliable 8mm projectors an impossible dream? Maybe not. There are dealers who make a business of keeping the format afloat. “All functions in excellent working order,” says one, “New belt has been installed and has been fully serviced and lubricated.” Surely such dedication will preserve 8mm. Think about this: There are those who restore wax cylinders and the means to play them. Where preservationists are so committed, surely finesse of a 60/70’s projector would be comparative child’s work.

"Spoil Your Suit"? Just What Did They Mean By That?

Daylight is the natural enemy of 8mm. Did collecting encourage vampirism? I tried Two Tars during early afternoon, a bleach-out despite shades drawn. Add this to focus wavering and frame line drifting. Still … I’ve not enjoyed Two Tars so much since the last time it flashed before me on 8mm. Blackhawk intro titles said it was the best of all Laurel-Hardy silent shorts. Maybe so, if car carnage is your thing. But face it: Not being there in 1928 when this was new, fresh, maybe revolutionary (was there ever before such tit-for-tat destruction?) means we won’t know, can’t know, what impact Two Tars had when new. You could say that about them all, but where is comedy so concentrated in its assault upon funny bones, especially auditoria filled with them? I don’t laugh at it, of course, being alone in rooms won’t inspire that, but each gesture, movement, burst of mayhem, is stuff of joy. What we seek in watching again and again are these things. Bittersweet coda to the former owner whose collection I fell heir to: The widow said he used to run these reels and laugh himself silly, tried sharing them with their young son, to no reaction whatever. The boy could not care less. We’ve all been down such slippery sharing road. Is this truly a passion one must find for his/herself?