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Films shown on board

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#1 · (Edited)
Remember how on some ships the R/O would double as projectionist and show films to his shipmates.

Films I remember seeing from the 60s are: How To Murder Your Wife; Guns At Batasi, Morituri; Hot Enough For June; Two Weeks In Another Town; The Cincinnati Kid; The Seventh Dawn and The Professionals.

When changing reels there would be catcalls if you took too long about it All the reels would have to be re-wound afterwards.

I visited cinemas in the following places.
USA; Canada; Antwerp; Aden, Colombo; Calcutta, Panama; New Zealand and Australia.

But spent lots of my pre-MN youth at the Plaza cinema in Blaydon.
 
#2 · (Edited)
We got to show the films in the officers and crew bars and cater for the off watch lads too......I saw True Grit 12 times......I know every word of the script when I watch it now.

The golden rule was never to swap films with Russian ships......they had a reputation of scarpering with them.

I broke the rule every time.....no problems at all.

The old "confessions of a ……….." films were very popular with the Eastern Bloc...…...I sent the same two back to a Russian freighter in Basra a number of times on request.

Before she sailed I was invited onboard...… a great experience even if the booze was a bit "different".
 
#3 · (Edited)
On one ship we had the James Bond film "From Russia With Love" aboard for several months before we could change it. After the first couple of showings, only the reel containing the fight between the two gypsy girls was ever shown again - at least every day.
 
#4 · (Edited)
I was only on one ship that had films, or 1 film in this case. It was the Andes and the solitary film was Goldfinger, shown in the pig every night.
By the end of week 1, everybody knew every word of the dialogue by heart.
I can still hear the sound of all hands yelling "PUSSY" at the top if their voice(Jester)
 
#5 ·
Sea Containers had a couple of ships ferrying coal into Dover. Since each would be transiting the busy Dover Straits daily and would be in port every other day, it was decided by MIMCo to ask the owners for their permission to install and early Predictor ARPA on board one of the ships during its development. This was duly granted and for several months while the equipment was on trial, development engineers from Chelmsford visited Dover each time the ship docked, to examine the equipment and obtain user-reports.

Those engineers found their visits to be a life-enhancing experience. It was the first time many of them had seen hard-porno films anywhere, let alone being projected in the mess-room of a ship while breakfast was being served.
 
#8 ·
"Black Christmas", and of course, "Butch Cassidy...etc." Two of my favourites. The former was really creepy, even when I'd shown it a couple of times. Never seen it on TV, but always hoping..

Film showings and mail arrivals. Both highlights of life at sea. Downside: lugging heavy Walport boxes along wharves and up and down other ships' gangways for exchange. But all so much better than TV though, or videos. Neither had the same effect of a kind of magic that films had.
 
#9 ·
Remember how on some ships the R/O would double as projectionist and show films to his shipmates.

Films I remember seeing from the 60s are: How To Murder Your Wife; Guns At Batasi, Morituri; Hot Enough For June; Two Weeks In Another Town and The Professionals.

When changing reels there would be catcalls if you took too long about it All the reels would have to be re-wound afterwards.

I visited cinemas in the following places.
USA; Canada; Antwerp; Aden, Colombo; Calcutta, Panama; New Zealand and Australia.


spent lots of my pre-MN youth at the Plaza in Blaydon.
First trip cadet, we had the job of setting up and showing film. Saturday night, but not a problem as projector was on bar ….and we were behind it! Got very good at opening fridge door silently or during noisy part of movie. 3rd reel often went wrong though!
Dannic
 
#13 ·
Once had an RO from a Russian tanker in the Gulf ask if we wanted to swap films. OK I said, he asked what films we had and I told him we had a couple of Jame Bond films and a western. He left saying he didn't the James Bond films because the Russians always lose!
 
#15 ·
I exchanged with quite a few Russian ships......though they only had their own Russian films to offer which were useless to us....... they were housed in metal cases much like Jerry cans.
I doubt most of the crews had much grasp of English so they must have been "short of a treat"
to bother watching.
In Basra when I was invited on board the Soviet ship.... I was given a tour of the ship..... met many of the appreciative crew (male and female) and ended up in the choffs cabin until a head appeared around the door....... the "doctor", the choff informed me.
Shortly after I was back on the quayside having been escorted ashore by an apologetic bunch of sailor men/women..... all carrying bottles of Cuban rum for me.

The power of the Commisar.
 
#16 ·
In 1969/70 on RFA Tideflow on Beira patrol we loaned our RNFC films to the local
Portuguese frigate in exchange for wine.
All went well until some rotten sod somehow let the MOD know what was going on and we had a sharp signal from Harold Wilson saying "this dubious practice must stop immediately!" As you can imagine, it didn't.
 
#20 ·
Onboard RFA Wave Chief in the Falklands early seventies a Polish fish factory ship was most appreciative of a James Bond RNFC film. I think it was “From Russia with Love”. Fish was received in turn and the film was returned. The Upland Goose was the handover location. I often wonder what the commissar onboard the factory ship thought about it.
 
#21 ·
Films in th RFA

ALL,
In the RFA the RNFC supplied the films.
Comments on the film concerning the type of films on the Log sheets from exchange of films with RN.
:- Any Western " A short range gunnery Drama"
Cartoons " Mickey-Ducks"
I seem to remember they were paid for........
Yours aye,
slick
 
#23 ·
Brought back a few memories. Getting a box of films already seen and they all seemed to have Fred McMurray in them. Like n.liddell I showed a film to an Indian crew once and once only. There was a short to start with, can.t remember what, but in it was a scene of someone contaminating a pot of paint with earth or the like. Someone shouted hey Cassab and all hell let loose, fists and knives and the projector went flying so that was the end of that.
 
#24 ·
In Brocklebanks we also had Walport movies ; mostly very good . We had a bar in the lounge of all the ships and on movie night we used to rate the films by :pints : of draught tennants .. A really good film would get a say 3 pint rating ; where as a lousy movie would be a 5 pinter . The better the movie the less beer consumed . When it came to replays often a few of the wags would ask for the 5 pinter as opposed to a good movie .
 
#26 ·
Saturday Night Movies

I do recall, but on Bankline they came out with Walport video cassettes, endless watching of football games as we got 15 at a time and stuck with those for a month. Once I left Bankline I used to as Lecky do the movies every Saturday night on several foreign flag vessels. As usual I had to go through each reel before hand and repair and splice the film as they got damaged in the sprocket drive of the projectors. Most were 3 reelers however Bridge to Far was a 4 reeler. When we got into a port we see whether we could do a temp swap with other ships and binge watch as official exchange wasnt always possible. One tale was when I was on a drillship off Spain and crew were all from Barcelona. Well someone brought back the set of Fawlty Towers, and you can imagine reaction when the bit about Manuel being from Barcelona came up, initial outrage and finally they decided he was from some other place and was only a migrant to Barcelona
 
#27 ·
NZSco / FSNco I found 2/RO job was to show the movies. Billy Budd became a staple and I must have shown it dozens of times.
My first trip, on the NZ coast the top movie was South Pacific and every girl you took out wanted to see it. I must have seen it a couple of dozen times.
 
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