Southbank a go-go! Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965), BFI Scala Season/SCALA!!! Blu-ray out now!

I will never gush about Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!... But I think it’s the least objectionable of Meyer’s films…

Danny Peary, Cult Movies 3 (1988)

You don’t have to believe it honey, just act it! Now let’s move.

Varla, Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)

 

John Waters described this film as not just the greatest film ever made but also the greatest film that will ever be made and in this demimonde of hyperbole and Mondo-trash aesthetic who can deny it, Mr Peary aside. For tonight at the BFI felt like an evening at the Scala in the mid-80s or rather, felt like the people sitting in NFT1 wanted an evening to have felt at the Scala in the classic era. There were quite a few of us who were there first time round and a truck load of people who weren’t even born but it matters not, this was the spirit of purely cinematic enjoyment we were here to capture and it was just what Mr Waters and Mr Meyer especially would have wanted.

Most spectacularly of all, Virginie Selavy, who had dressed as Tura Satana’s character Varla, for her groovy introduction, was then joined by two other women, dressed as Rosie and Billie, to give a go-go dance to the film’s theme music against some pop art projection. It was far out, and, as someone who first heard the theme on The Cramps live album, Smell of Female (1983), complete with Lux Interior’s brief precis of the film, it felt like the completion of a circle… Post punk weirdos from The Cramps to The B52s have given credence to Meyer’s film and now felt like the turn of mod feminists.

Virginie Selavy and friends kick things of!

I can get a little queasy watching Meyer’s work, but as Selavy said, this was someone with a vision and who had quite some experience having filmed the Normandy landings. He wanted to create escapist cinema and to give the people what he thought they wanted. His film co-scripted with Roger Ebert – yes, that Roger Ebert! – Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (1970) was a bigger budget effort to translate his ideas of fast-paced, well-endowed camp onto a more colourful screen but maybe he was better in the black and white of this more “restrained” period with Motorpsycho (1965) and this film.

He favoured single takes where possible driven by budget and perhaps the documentary and industrial film background. He was aided by Satana who was a woman of many talents and choreographed her fight scenes and did all her own stunts. She’s a dynamic presence and sets the tone for the others, Haji as Rosie and Lori Williams as Billie to follow. The three of them are dancers at a strip club – the Pussycat Club was mentioned – on a weekend vacation driving masculine sports cars in a masculine way. Varla has a 1964 Porsche 356 C Coupé [T6], Billie a 1959 MG A 1600 Mk 1 and Rosie a Triumph TR3 A… if the cars are what you’re looking at, in fact you’re probably distracted enough not to notice them sometimes.

Lori Williams,Tura Satana and Haji (birthname Barbarella Catton)

 

The opening is at breakneck pace as the titles, supposedly filmed at the Pussycat Club, Sepulveda Boulevard, Van Nuys, see the girls heading out on an adventure, driving their cars far too quickly out to the flats of the Mojave Desert in California, scene of many a western and the closing segment of Erich von Stroheim’s monumentally brutal silent epic, Greed. If he’s watching on somewhere, I’m sure he’s smiling…

 

There’s tension between the women, as Billie more careless than the rest is challenged by Rosie who has a clear eye for Varla, their leader. These are the rapacious new breed of sexualised “violence” as described in the introductory narration from John Furlong “… encased and contained within the supple skin of woman, whose auspices bear the unmistakable smell of female… Handle with care and don’t drop your guard… women operating alone and in packs…”

It hardly makes sense but we soon find out the salacious truth as a couple arrive in a 1963 MG B. Bikini-clad Linda (Susan Bernard) and boyfriend Tommy (Ray Barlow) are there for time trials but Varla challenges him to a race and, cheats to win leading to a fight in which she uses her martial arts to not only beat him she breaks his back – “…far too stiff in this heat, he’s had a bad accident!” They take off with witness Linda drugged and unconscious.

Porche, MG and Triumph!

A lot happens at a gas station as their cars are filled by a distracted attendant (Mickey Foxx) who provides some odd comedic moments as well as setting up the rest of the film as he tells of an old man (Stuart Lancaster) who hoards thousands of dollars on his remote homestead with one hulk of a son called – cringe - the Vegetable (Dennis Busch) and another, Kirk (Paul Trinka) who looks and acts as if he’s just walked into the wrong movie.

 

Now the girls have two tasks, a) to get away and b) to steal the money but they’re up against an older equally rapacious violence in the form of the abusive old man and his “damaged” son who has almost superhuman strength and is easily triggered. So, it’s survival of the fittest for the rest of the film, but, Meyer always has his almost quaint sense of morality there to counter and excuse the exploitation.

It's the highest quality trash and stylish with potential redemption in the agency the women have and the greater evil they must ultimately face even though it is an excuse to bring out some heroic qualities. Luckily the BFI audience are all more than capable of contextualising this film and recognising the witty script, crisp narrative and overall dynamism. Still, there was a feeling of guilty pleasure… which is so very “Scala” isn’t it?

Male pride about to come before a fall.

The season of the Scala’s greatest hits, Scala: Sex, drugs and rock and roll cinema, runs at BFI Southbank throughout January and also online with selected films on BFI Player!

 

SCALA!!! Or the incredibly strange rise and fall of the world's wildest cinema and how it influenced a mixed-up generation of weirdos and misfits.

Jane Giles and Ali Catterall’s debut film is also released on 22^nd January on BFI Blu-ray, BFI Player Subscription Exclusive, iTunes and Amazon Prime.

 

In addition to their astonishing film there’s a tonne of special features:

• Audio commentary by directors Jane Giles and Ali Catterall
• Scala Interviews (2022, 60 mins): previously unseen bonus footage shot for the film
• Scala (1990, 35 mins): a portrait of the cinema made for Cable London
• Scala Cinema (1992, 4 mins): student film shot at the Scala
• Shorts shown at the Scala (1989-1991, 60 mins): a selection of short films seen at the cinema:
• Relax (Christopher Newby), 
• Flames of Passion (Richard Kwietniowski), and 
• Coping with Cupid (Viv Albertine, yes, her from The Slits!)
• Animations by Osbert Parker (2022-2023, 4 mins total)
• Cartoons by Viz artist Davey Jones (2022, 3 mins)
• BFI London Film Festival introduction featuring cast, crew and audience participation (2023, 13 mins)
• Scala Programmes 1978-1993 (2023, 12 mins): a closer look at 15 editions – the Scala’s graphic design was a key part of the brand and reflected the spirit of the whole enterprise!
• Cabinet of Curiosities (2023, 18 mins): a guided tour of ephemera, photos and clippings from the Scala archive
• Trailer
• An illustrated booklet with an introductory essay and Director’s Statement from co-directors Jane Giles and Ali Catterall; Scala Spirit 1993-2023 – former Scala programmers select the films they would have programmed following its closure; an essay by film director and animator Osbert Parker; notes on the special features and credits. 

The booklet is only available with the first pressing so please be quick and order your copy today via the BFI Shop in person or online!

 

The Scala Spirit must live on as we forge forward in ’24…

X-rated... SCALA!!! (2023), BFI and on general release

Imagine a world without digital media, a world in which a few people may have had VHS, Betamax or Video2000 video recorders and in which, if you wanted to see a specific film after it’s general release had concluded, you had to wait and hope that it would turn up on TV. What if very few of the films you liked or had heard about from books, or the niche-cultural NME, Time Out or Sight and Sound, were suitable for television either because of their subject matter or perceived worthiness? This was the world of the mid-1970s and it is so far removed from today’s streaming, downloading and digital home media, that many under the age of say 40 might struggle to understand.

 

SCALA!! Or to give its full title of, SCALA!!! Or, the incredibly strange rise and fall of the world’s wildest cinema and how it influenced a mixed-up generation of weirdos and misfits… sets out to explain how we lived in those dampened times, gathering in venues with sticky carpets, rumbling inner city traffic and an audience some of whom were there for the cheap accommodation all-nighters would provide – and I knew a few who would sleep there on trips to the capital.

 Kings Cross 1981: Alan Gregory, manager,Jayne Pilling, programmer and Stephen Woolley (Photo David Babsky)

 

Stephen Woolley founded The Scala in 1978 in order to programme films outside the mainstream; the forgotten or the forbidden and material even the BFI wouldn’t touch. There was a growing interest in obscure, quirky and classic cinema pre-dating the Scala, and grindhouse, sleazy and arthouse porn in the seventies and Woolley, Jayne Pilling, Helen de Witt and Jane Giles may not have been the only ones observing this but, kids… they put the show on right here! 

These were the films the NME (which I devoured every week as my teenage training for the counterculture I expected to find down south) covered and celebrated, the works of John Walters, Russ Meyer, Derek Jarman, young David Lynch and other emerging outsiders. The venue also screened classics such as King Kong, and the likes of Laurel and Hardy or days devoted to The Saint or The Avengers, stylish sixties. It was part of that cultural re-evaluation inspired by punk and new wave and there were outposts across the country linked together by the NME and others; Eric’s club in Liverpool would screen Enter the Dragon before gigs, and more – membership there was also 50p a year, I think?

 

The Scala opened in 1978 in Tottenham Street in a 350-seat cinema that had been built in the basement of an office building, Scala House which replaced a rather splendid theatre… such is progress. The newly formed Channel Four Television moved into the building forcing the Scala Cinema to relocate to the circle of the former King's Cross Cinema in July 1981.

 

Lemmy in The Decline of Western Civilisation, as usual...

This is where I first started to go to the Scala but, I must confess, not quite in the way that some of those interviewed for this documentary did. I remember one especially good double bill with Penelope Spheeris’ jaw-dropping The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years (1988) supporting the mighty Talking Heads in Stop Making Sense (1984), still the greatest concert film ever made and the perfect balance to the dinosaur world depicted in “The Metal Years” but this is the art of programming and the team at the Scala were masters of it.

 

The Scala felt like the biggest cinematic jukebox in London and whilst they revelled, as do some of the talking heads in the film, in its cult, “outsider” status, most of the films shown there were not being shown anywhere else or, in many cases, not before the Scala had shown that prints were available. Being a student at the start of the 80s, we watched so many films that were not doubt inspired by the Scala and then brought to the sticky-carpeted, quirky, independent Penultimate Picture Palace off Cowley Road in Oxford. That’s where we saw Walerian Borowczyk’s Immoral Tales (1973) on a double bill with La Bête (1975), exactly as seen at the Scala, along with so many others including classics like Blondes Have More Fun all on 35mm... imagine that?!

 

Co-directed by Jane Giles a Programme Director for many years, and Ali Catterall, who credits the venue with turning him into a film critic, the film features contributions from the people who worked at the Scala as well as those who were there simply to watch the films, or to get a late-night drink and, possibly more in the darkness of the auditoriums’ upper rows… Actor/writer Ralph Brown (you know, Danny the Dealer in Withnail) worked in the bar and has some high quality tales to tell as does DJ Mark Moore, Gay’s the Word bookshop manager Jim MacSweeney, Adam Buxton, Caroline Catz and others. There’s a glint in everyone’s eyes about the moments and the extremes that sometimes occurred.

 

Ralph Brown rages against the machines

Stewart Lee’s story about Thunderclap! (1975) stands out when a man who had wandered in not knowing what to expect and, after gradually realising the way the film was going – multiple sexual encounters, hardcore and probably illegal – turned to the audience and asked them what they were watching and why. As Stewart says, you don’t get this in the multiplex…

 

Barry Adamson, who I first saw playing bass for Magazine at Eric’s in 1978, provides a suitably dynamic score, influenced by sixties beats, surf guitars, and the cinematic references he’s so adept at. He too was a Scala regular and in addiction to his many scores, the musical vibrancy of these films is reflected in his solo albums like Moss Side Story (1989) and Oedipus Schmoedipus (1996) – containing the swaggering brilliance of The Big Bamboozle! – which are designed as soundtracks for imaginary films.

 

Scala!!! Celebrates its influence on these creators and the cineastes, but more than anything else it marks the spirit of enquiry that made us all seek out the films and the spirit of this place that, ultimately, was all things to all people. Café, monkey house, venue, meeting place, hotel… inspiration.

 

You can experience/re-experience the Scala for yourself this month as the BFI is not only showing the documentary itself from 5^th January but also a number of the films that it championed including Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, Pink Narcissus, Pink Flamingos, La Bête and, amazingly Thundercrack! – not for the easily offended as the programme notes (I wonder if Ricky Gervais will come along?).

Long live The Scala spirit!!!

 

Details of the BFI’s season of films screened by the Scala are to be found here.

Scala!!! screenings on the Southbank and elsewhere can befound here.

 

It’s not the same as the old A3 printed schedules, which were a work of art in themselves from Mike Leedham and Patricia McGrath of 2D design but things have moved on in some respects. I may have some in the loft, excuse me while I get the ladder…

The Scala Programme for January 1986, a real mix with three silent GW Pabst films on 8th - Secrets of a Soul hasn't been screened in decades by the way! - zombies, Woody Allen, Hitchcock, classic gay marathon, Madonna, Letter to Brezhnev and Stop Making Sense. 

Scala Programme, January 1986, Taken from Scala Cinema 1978-1993 by Jane Giles