Melting Film Effect
 | This page needs some cleaning up to be presentable. The page image is a dead YouTube link. A replacement example is needed. |
Sometimes, films can catch you off guard. And one way to do that is to make it look like the film has melted from the projector. This doesn't just happen in the films, this can happen on television, cartoons, heck, even webtoons! Just don't expect to be caught off guard if it's in a video or cartoon on the internet.
Compare Film Leader Gag.
Examples of Melting Film Effect include:
Film
- Monsters vs. Aliens begins with the Dreamworks Animation title melting away, revealing the real film beneath. Especially effective on 3-D.
- Halfway through The Muppet Movie, the film melts. It takes a few moments before the Swedish Chef has things going again.
- Happens on Gremlins 2: The New Batch, when the Gremlins appear to take over the theater projector.
- Happens during the reel changes in Grindhouse: Planet Terror.
- Happens in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie.
- Cinema Paradiso actually shows a film that's being projected melting on the screen, just before it disastrously catches fire. Of course we're talking about nitrate film here, pre-safety stock.
- Another in-universe example is seen in The Smallest Show on Earth, a film about a couple running a broken-down old cinema in the north of England.
- The 1966 film Persona directed by Ingmar Bergman might be the Trope Maker here (or, at least, the Trope Codifier).
- The 1971 cult film classic Two Lane Blacktop uses this trope to bring the movie to a disjointed end. The audience is placed in the back seat of a souped-up 55 Chevy in a drag race at a track, looking forward over the shoulder of the driver (James Taylor). Just before the car accelerates down the track the sound drops out and as the car picks up speed the film slows until it starts to melt through and then the screen goes to black. The audience never sees the end of the last race.
Live-Action TV
- Happens in the Animated Credits Opening of The Great Race.
- Happened on M*A*S*H during a film night, when they were trying to watch My Darling Clementine. They had a sing-along and impression contest while Klinger tried to fix it.
Music
- Lady Gaga's video for "Alejandro".
Web Original
- The beginning of the Unskippable intro sequence.
- Only in the archives, the more recent ones just have the Escapist's logo.