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Cinema of Sin: London grindhouse the Scala Cinema returns in spirit
08.01.2011
02:54 pm
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Interesting article from The Guardian about “Scala Forever,” an ambitious 111-film tribute season to The Scala Cinema, London’s legendary, long-gone “grindhouse” movie theater. Twenty-six venues around the city will be participating in the seven-week festival.

Although the Scala was closed a long time ago and the building has been demolished, it stills hold fond memories for London film buffs of a certain age.

Like me. I remember it well and spent quite a few afternoons at the Scala Cinema, watching underground and foreign language films there when I was in my late teen years. I saw a split-screen projection of Andy Warhol’s Chelsea Girls. at the Scala. I saw Female Trouble for the first time there. Maîtresse with Gérard Depardieu. It’s also where I saw Curt McDowell’s then-notoriously difficult to see pan-sexual freak-out, Thundercrack.

I saw all kinds of great stuff there. To me, the Scala (and the old Brixton Ritzy) were like the greatest places I’d ever been to. In 1983-84, I positively gorged myself on all of these weird films I’d read about for years but had never had an opportunity to see. The thing is, reading this article, I have no memory of the Scala being a particularly sleazy place, just a well-run repertory cinema. I personally never saw any shenanigans there. Then again, I also can’t recall ever going there at night.

The Scala was founded by Stephen Woolley in 1979, originally at a venue on Tottenham Street in central London, and then two years later at its long-term home in King’s Cross. Woolley – who went on to found Palace Pictures and produce countless films – wanted to create a UK equivalent to the grindhouse venues of Los Angeles and San Francisco, with their eclectic, daily-changing menu of movies. The impressive building, which first opened in 1920, and its location in a neighbourhood then largely populated by prostitutes and drug addicts, added to the allure: the atmosphere was a world apart from that of the National Film Theatre.

“It was a thrilling experience,” says former programme manager Jane Giles, now head of film and video distribution at the British Film Institute. “Part of that thrill was that you walked out [of the station] into the badlands of King’s Cross. You then quite quickly found your way to this palatial building, like some sort of bonkers white castle that you see on the logo of Disney. Going up the marble staircase led you into this massive space. The rake was very steep, the seats bolt upright and I think you sat there for a moment with a sense of incredible anticipation. In addition, the auditorium was dark and, at times, illicit. There was a frisson. A lot of the films were quite explicit, so there was a sexuality about the place that was unusual in cinemas. It all added up to an incredibly potent combination.”

Stories surrounding those nights are legion: the dope-fiend projectionist who scratched a CND symbol into a Pearl & Dean army recruitment ad and got the reels in the wrong order at a horror festival; the antics at the gay-themed all-nighters. “We had to try to explain to Serena the cleaner why there were so many used latex gloves on the floor after a lesbian all-nighter,” says Giles. “I told her it was a fashion statement.”

The cinema’s biggest hits were underground classics such as Thundercrack and Cafe Flesh; John Waters’s 70s trash trilogy Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble and Desperate Living; and the work of sexploitation king Russ Meyer. These were films other venues simply would not screen; many of them will feature in the upcoming season.

Read more: Cinema of sin: London’s old Scala picturehouse (The Guardian)

Below, a scene from Curt McDowell’s Thundercrack, which is screening at the Horse Hospital as part of the Scala Forever festival on September 20. Once nearly impossible to see, now on YouTube!
 

 
Thank you Chris Campion!

Posted by Richard Metzger
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08.01.2011
02:54 pm
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