I was only working for a few months when a splice (wet splice in those days before splicing tape, which are two film thickness high) that had one edge come loose and was sticking up -- the edge caught on the "stripper" -- a piece of metal that is positioned close to the sprocket drives. This metal's function it is to prevent film from wrapping around the drive and bending it. It caught on the stripper, but didn't make any kind of a sound that would tell me that something bad was happening. The show just kept going and then about ten minutes into the reel, I for some reason that I can't recall now, I opened the takeup magazine to find, to my horror, that the film was winding neatly on the take-up reel -- in two pieces -- about 4 or 5 minutes of the reel was sliced right down the middle into two strips. Talk about a horrible feeling in the pit of your stomach! The only thing I could do was slice out the damage and ask for a replacement reel, but it certainly was a sobering and humbling experience.

I agree that the show should have been checked, especially since it was built in a hurry. Every time I walked by the auditorium showing that film for the next week and looked out the port glass, I felt sick too. This was, as John H. stated, the worst damage I have seen done on a new print. That is, until I chaged theaters to one where their "projectionist" (read: usher/concession/box person) did that weekly...

I'm under the impression that drafts for review just don't tend to happen in modern journalism; perhaps I'm overly jaded.