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This story was told to me by a projectionist (now retired).

Projection booth washrooms, in those days, featured a relatviely small sink (with an inevitable slow-running tap), O.K. for washing one's hands, but far too small to fit an electric kettle into for making coffee. Projectionists, being a rather inventive lot, solved the problem with a small piece of garden hose clamped to the side of the sink. One simply fit the upper end of the hose under the tap, and the bottom end into the kettle on the floor.

Just as he was involved in this proceedure, the reel-end alarm rang. He made the change-over, and, being ship-out night, secured the band around the reel. His attention diverted, he left the theatre at the end of the show - and forgot about the tap.

At 6:00 A.M., the next morning, the phone rang.
"DID YOU LEAVE A TAP RUNNING LAST NIGHT?" screamed the manager.
With a sinking feeling in his stomach, the projectionist replied that he did.
"WE'LL GET THE F**K DOWN HERE", the manager demanded.

The projectionist got dressed and drove to the theatre. As he turned right onto Lindsay's main street, his car spun around twice - on the ice. When the car came to rest, he looked up to see the entire street leading up to the theatre at the top of a hill, covered in ice.

Fortunately, not much property damage was done, but it was somewhat embarassing.

As I was spinning on a reel I heard a small electrical sparking sound and to my horror looked over to see both the take up and feed out platters for Othello slowly spin to a stop while the projector continued to run. Since the reel I was working on was still spinning I couldn't just drop everything and shut off the projector so I had to quickly stop the reel I was building up and then run over and turn off the projector before the brain wrap got too serious and more film ended up on the floor.

You would think that everything would be fine at that point, but it only got worse. One of the other projectionists came up to see what the problem was and having a "The Show Must Go On" attitude decided that we would restart the movie while I would manually spin both platters until he fixed the problem.

Being a "junior" projectionist at the time I said sure and proceeded to spin the platters. This was not an easy thing to do since the feed out platter was on the top and take up platter was on the bottom. I had to stand in kind of a hunched position and keep one eye on the feed out to avoid a brain wrap and another on the take up to keep tension on the film while spinning both platters at different speeds at the same time.

I continued to do this for about 20 minutes until the other projectionist finally figured out that the fuse had blown on the platter and he changed it. By the end I was truely exhausted and to this day I never work on a movie while another is running on the same platter system.

The thing you really have to guard against is the shrapnel. Make no mistake about it, the glass (loose term) can really fly and do some damage!

I know two people who have been standing next to an operating machine when bulbs have blown, one had the lamphouse door open. Neither was wearing protective gear and they weren't injured. This isn't to say safety masks/suits are not needed, only that it didn't happen in these cases.

But to allay any fears, the glass flies (which is dangerous enough), it makes a big noise and that's about it. Other than anti-xenon scare stories, I know of no instance where a projectile has been lauched. I would think there'd have to be a mortar or gun barrel around the bulb to develop enough force to snap a DC cable, launch an electrode, and penetrate heavy gauge steel.

I've destroyed xenon lamps outdoors in the dead of winter, and not heard anything but a faint "poof", which left the bulb in two or three big chunks. In the summer, it's a different story and they sound like gunshots, especially the 1K sizes. The smaller bulbs seem to make bigger pops.

Bulbs have went off, sitting on the shelf; and I've seen a bulb hit the floor and bounce.

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A projectionist at the big new fancy South Keys cinema in Ottawa had to change a bulb. He did it, closed the door to the lamphouse, and turned everything on to focus the bulb.

He forgot to take the plastic casing off the bulb.

He realized (by the smell, I assume) that things weren't right, shut everything down, and opened up the lamphouse to see what he'd done. The plastic casing was melted all over the place. He thought he could fix it and save the bulb, and started trying to pick all the plastic off. Would anyone like to guess what happened next? You got it, the bulb exploded.