2nd March 2009

I was rummaging around in my dad’s loft the other day, looking for a slide projector and a book on plumbing. And amidst all the boxes of books, videos, slide projectors, back issues of Empire and travel brochures for the American Mid-West, I found something I’d been looking for about sixteen years. Sometimes I thought they’d been thrown away but deep down I knew they were still up there, somewhere.

Back in late December 1986, I was in London for a day of filmgoing and casual disposal of Christmas money, invariably spent on soundtrack LPs. I usually bought a copy of What’s On In London (it being cheaper than Time Out) and, as I still do, planned an itinerary for three or four movies and a convenient train home. On this occasion there probably wasn’t much in the West End but I did spot a listing for a double bill of Night Of The Living Dead and Dawn Of The Dead: two films I’d never managed to see. So I went to the Scala in Kings Cross.

They gave away their monthly programmes on a single sheet of A2: wonderfully designed, eye-scorchingly colourful, lovingly produced documents that looked as though they were put together with scissors and a Pritt Stick. On the back were capsule reviews for every movie and the price list: 50p annual membership, and tickets a staggering £2.90 (£1.90 mats, UB40, students).

Obviously the Scala was a major discovery that had somehow eluded me for several years (they’d apparently been in Kings Cross since July 1981). Given that they were next to my railway station, how had I managed to walk blindly past them every fortnight? How could I have missed these flyers? In the event I joined up immediately, watched the Romero films, took the January 1987 programme home and ultimately acquired every programme until they closed in June 1993.

And that bag of Scala programmes is what I’d been looking for as an eye-catching piece of interior decor for the walls in my flat. Something with not just nostalgia value, but something I can change every month. Happily, the days and dates for 1987 are the same as for 2009 so I can pin up that February’s as if it were current.

And such memories. I see, for example, that the major booking for February 1987 was a week’s engagement of Lamberto Bava’s Demons, coupled each day with a different Argento feature. I took the week off work so I could experience his Animal Trilogy and Tenebrae (still one of my favourite two Dario movies), but unaccountably passed on Suspiria, Inferno and Creepers. In March I caught a Lucio Fulci Splatter Triple and that probably sealed my cinemagoing fate. And in August there was the first of the Shock Around The Clock events: the day boasted Hellraiser, Street Trash and The Lamp (largely forgotten teens-in-a-mall nonsense shown at three in the morning, which I’d love to see again) and cost a massive £10 for the whole session.

I saw movies by John Woo, Alan Rudolph, Jorg Buttgereit (I still have an autographed VHS of Nekromantik that I won in the raffle), Ken Russell, Pete Walker, Sergio Leone and Martin Scorsese. I remember an eye-popping double bill of Cafe Flesh (post-apocalypse hardcore) and Thundercrack (black-and-white weirdo hardcore that goes on for more than two hours). A whole slew of films rejected by (or never submitted to) the BBFC but allowed by Camden Council: Salo, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Driller Killer. Countless martial arts comedies and Heroic Bloodshed thrillers. The Monster From Piedras Blancas, Beneath the Valley of the Ultravixens and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. And on film prints as well: sometimes in pristine condition but sometimes scratchy, jumpy and with the Rice Krispie explosion at the reel changes, that you don’t get with digital. I suppose it’s the equivalent of a music lover’s preference for well-worn vinyl over the clean but soulless sound of a CD.

But it will, of course, also remind me on a daily basis that I never used the place a fraction as much as I should have. If those gorgeous programmes were works of art, the actual films being screened make me angry with myself for not attending on a near-nightly basis. (Okay, I was working for British Telecom at the time so my days were not my own, but even so....). A random selection from May 1988 includes anything and everything: from The Terminator to Hairspray, American Gigolo to Diamonds Are Forever, Easy Rider to Repo Man. Doubles and triples of Manga, John Waters, Almodovar, zombies, Nazis, Liz Taylor, Woody Allen, German expressionism, nuns and De Niro. If that cinema was operating today, there’s no way you could crowbar me out of there.

But it isn’t: they closed in 1993 with a two-day festival of Hong Kong action movies in the presence of Chow Yun-Fat. I was one of the last people out of the last film screened on their last day. A variety of factors conspired against them: council rates, the increase in home video, and their unaccountable screenings of A Clockwork Orange which led to a court case. Very sad. Watching the House of Whipcord DVD in the comfort of your own lounge isn’t the same as trekking into London and seeing it in 16mm on a massive screen through the worst sound system imaginable, with a pot of inedible ice cream and the smell of unidentifiable soup wafting through from the upstairs hall. I miss the Scala.

Until the next time.

Richard.