Sideshow shocker… The Show (1927), Tod Browning

 

"… one of the most bizarre productions to emerge from silent cinema."

Alfred Eaker, Tod Browning Retrospective (2016)

The recent release of Criterion’s Tod Browning's Sideshow Shockers set spurred me into finally catching up with this feature which reunites the winning team from The Big Parade, Renée Adorée and John Gilbert. The Show is not on the set and was released just before The Unknown (1927) which is featured in the restored version, along with The Mystic (1925) and Freaks (1932), arguably his most famous film after Dracula (1931).

 

All three are delicious treats on their own but The Show could easily have been the fourth film on the set, meeting, as it does, some of the key criteria for classic Browning films. It’s set in a circus, has a set of unusual characters and performers and an evil bad man who will stop at no extreme to a) win the girl and b) eliminate the opposition in as contrived a way as possible. On top of this there is the usual exotica and elements of the uncanny which may or may not be true.

 

Why was Browning so obsessed with these outsider tales? Well, he did run away to join the circus leaving his comfortable middle-class family before completing high school aged just 16 in 1896. Wikipedia has Browning’s birth year as 1889 but it was 1880 according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, not to mention Wiki’s own maths which has him working 13 years in the circus as a roustabout, a sideshow "spieler", clown and a live burial act which he was billed as "The Living Hypnotic Corpse" before moving to films aged 29 in 1909.

Renée Adorée and John Gilbert

So many early filmmakers represented the American, and British, theatrical tradition but here was a man steeped in Carny Culture and whom was used to the milling crowds and on-site appeals for attention of the “barker”, the finest salesman at the greatest show on earth which as he worked through the 1910s was undoubtedly film. He made a number of gritty films with Lon Chaney and Priscilla Dean as the twenties progressed and then, with Chaney otherwise engaged with Eleanor Boardman and Billy Haines in Tell it to the Marines (1927), he made The Show with the ultimate leading man, John Gilbert with Adorée on board for the heavy dramatic lifting and Lionel Barrymore for the pure spite and evil. It’s a very odd film that does indeed anticipate the subsequent Browning/Cheney classic, The Unknown and so, consider this an aperitif if you are in any doubt about purchasing the box set!

 

Our story begins in exotic Budapest, at The Palace of Illusions carnival run by a ruthless man known as The Greek (Lionel Barrymore) who has a side line in murder and extortion. He’s not the only one as handsome Cock Robin (Gilbert) is busy trying to romance Lena (Gertrude Short) the daughter of Driskai, a wealthy sheep merchant, in order to erm, fleece her. Robin is indeed the cock of the walk and is friendly with many of the women in the circus and in the general location.

 

You’re hired as freaks… not vampires!

 

He has an emotional connection to Salome (Renée Adorée) but she is involved with The Greek and therefore out of bounds. This doesn’t stop her shoeing off female interest in Robin and, as above, inadvertently foreshadowing two of Tod Browning’s best known future successes in the process, although the vampires in question are of the Theda Bara kind and not Bela Lugosi. Salome doesn’t like Robin’s womanising but she can’t do much about it: these circus folk are edgy and he's a cad.

Madame Web: Edna Tichenor unblinking.

But they're also darned strange as we meet some Browning surrealist sideshow treats including The Living Hand of Cleopatra!, ZELA the half lady! - "Believe me, boys... there's no cold feet here to bother you!" - and NEPTUNA, the Queen of the Mermaids!. Then there's ARACHNIDA! The Human Spider played by the striking Edna Tichenor (who also featured in Browning's lost classic, London After Midnight (1927)) who "...eats flies on week days... and butterflies on Sundays!" What influence the director had on popular culture you can only guess but these ideas, drawn from the carnival tradition would fuel horror and fantasy media for decades to come: film, pulp fiction and, of course, comic books.

They do, however, put on a heck of a show, the highlight of which is a re-enactment of the biblical story of Salome, complete with the dance of the seven veils (clearly not performed by Renée Adorée, the dancer having her back to camera?) with Robin playing John the Baptist and some complex trickery involved to give the impression of his head being sliced off by sword and then handed on a plate to Salome. I don’t know about you, but this looks dangerous to me… but that’s the circus and not even the audience are safe after a man is bitten by a poisonous lizard.

 

You little fool! He’s only after your money, get out of here!

 

Renée Adorée, the silent era's Olivia Coleman?

That’s not the evening’s only death though as Driskai gets murdered leaving Robin’s little deception becomes crueller than he ever intended, culminating in Salome disabusing his young target of his sincerity. She runs off sobbing in great distress leaving him with her money… making him look potentially guilty, is there anything that can make him realise the error of his ways? But finding a conscience is the least of his worries as The Greek decides it’s time to stop Cock Robin stealing Salome and devises a cunning plan that could see him losing his head… 

 

Barrymore is evil and Gilbert convincingly laddish but it’s Adorée who takes the plaudits for her emotional warmth and eyes forever on the brink of welling over. She’s like a silent Olivia Coleman and who knows what she could have gone on to achieve in the talkies had she not died at just 35 in 1933 after contracting tuberculosis a few years earlier. She came from circus stock herself and performed as an acrobat, dancer and bareback rider throughout Europe before her big break into acting.

Based on Charles Tenney Jackson's novel The Day of Souls (1910), The Show is every bit as offbeat as The Unknown. It has plenty of Browning weirdness including a lizard supposedly more poisonous than a snake and which kills one of the customers. Such things happen at the circus and there’ll be worse to come for visitors to Tod’s Extraordinary World of Adventures!

 

Jack the lad...

There’s a new Blu-ray due out from Redwood Creek – a 4k transfer from a 16mm copy - and also a nice crisp Warner Archives DVD which you can still pick up from eBay. Essential items for your Tod shelf alongside that new Criterion set!

Sideshow Note: One notable sidenote in a life full of them was Browning crashing his car into a train whilst inebriated in 1915. He suffered serious injury but another passenger, the great Elmer Booth – star of Griffith’s famously close-up Musketeer of Pig Alley, was killed instantly. What Booth might have gone on to achieve we can only guess but Tod survived to film another day and who knows how this brush with mortality and the guilt he carried, impacted his creative choices going forward. His films always look at the more uncomfortable aspects of our lives… even amongst the freakery and showmanship.

 

 

Masters of cinema… Pandora’s Box (1929), Eureka Blu-ray Box Set

Brooks reminds me of the scene in “Citizen Kane” where Everett Sloane, as Kane’s aging business manager, recalls a girl in a white dress whom he saw in his youth when he was crossing over to Jersey on a ferry. They never met or spoke. “I only saw her for one second,” he says, “and she didn’t see me at all—but I’ll bet a month hasn’t gone by since that I haven’t thought of that girl.”

Kenneth Tynan, The Girl in the Black Helmet, New Yorker 1979

 

I hired Louise Brooks because she's very sure of herself, she's very analytical, she's very feminine - but she's damn good and sure she's going to do what she wants to do. I could use her today.  She was way ahead of her time.  And she's a rebel. I like her, you know. I like rebels. I like people you can look at and you remember who they are.

Howard Hawks, 1967

 

It doesn’t really matter whether this is one of the greatest films of the silent era, how great the uncanny Louise Brooks is in it or what number it is in the hot 100 Sight and Sound Poll, Pandora’s Box is the main reason I started to take an interest in the old medium after buying a DVD in a second-hand shop in Bristol’s Park Street one lunchtime in 2003. Amazingly, that has been the only version of the film available on home media in the UK over all this time even though the film was restored a number of years back in the US.

 

It’s fair to say that this 1080 HD presentation from the definitive 2k restoration has been a long time coming and it is the archive release of 2023 as proved by Silent London’s Poll for the year and the sheer impact it has made to my Brooks’ shelf – the sexiest boxset of the year, superb art, matt laminate and just a transcendent artefact! I keep on glancing over at it to make sure that it does exist… dreams do come true but do they always remain so?

 

Louise Brooks

I can fawn all day over this but objectively speaking, this is exactly what this film, GW Pabst and Louise Brooks deserve. The film has never looked better on digital media and this is also the longest print available – longer than my old DVD and most copies I’ve seen projected. It’s not much longer but there are a number of restored title cards that flesh out the anxious closing scenes and which suggest different possibilities.

 

Pamela Hutchinson’s commentary builds on her successful BFI book on the film and she provides superbly detailed context and explanation of the performers and the film. She highlights the circularities of the film, how it begins during Hannukah and ends at Christmas, the similarities in Lulu’s posing with her father/pimp and her killer, Jack, even the transactional relationship between the young woman and her metre man at the start and her father… money changing hands based on services supplied.

 

Hutchinson provides some shocking details of Frank Wedekind’s sexual mores and his relationships with under-age sex workers and his plays were an extension of his sexuality, here certainly in the free spirit – Earth Spirit was the first Lulu play, followed by Pandora’s Box both intended to show a society founded on greed and desire. Frank’s agenda was there from his first major play, Spring Awakening (1891) – also made into a film in 1924 and 1929 directed by Richard Oswald and staring Ita Rina… surely an Earth Spirit/Lulu in an alternate Pabst timeline - which featured, deep breath… masturbation, homoeroticism, suicide, as well as abortion and so naturally caused a scandal and, naturally, founded the writer’s reputation.

 

Pamela’s deep dives during the commentary are worth the price of admission alone. In his study Dr Ludwig Schön (Fritz Kortner) has just had a confrontation with Lulu and his son Alwa (Francis Lederer) which, of course he loses as Lulu-Louise arches her back, cocks her head and huffs away after staring him out yet again. He’s outgunned and, oddly, asks Alwa to pass him the K volume of their encyclopaedia. Pamela intuits that he’s looking for the definition of Kinder, Küche, Kirche, a German phrase dating from the late Nineteenth Century describing a woman’s role as children, kitchen, church. Boy, have you picked the wrong girl Ludwig…

 

Louise is so natural as Lulu… and it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role – even Ita Rina, let alone Brigitte Helm Pabst’s original choice and as fate would have it he saw Brooks in Howard Hawkes’ A Girl in Every Port (1928). He made numerous offers to Paramount but it was only after Brooks fell out with the CEO B. P. Schulberg, who was trying to strong arm her on terms for the new talkies, and threatened to walk when he mentioned the chance to work in Germany. No idea who Pabst was and speaking no German, Brooksie was more than happy to be anywhere but here and left. It was an extraordinary confluence of circumstance especially given how things turned out, admittedly over time, as film historian Imogen Sara Smith says in her booklet essay:

 

Later in life, (Brooks) expressed amazement at how Pabst could have somehow sensed that she was Lulu – at least, his version of Lulu. This perfect fusion of actor and role set off a cinematic supernova, but an oddly delayed one: a time bomb with a fuse of more than twenty years.

 

As Hawks realised, Brooks was something new, something futuristic - a time-traveller he could well recognise four decades later; independent, intelligent, a person of agency even if she didn’t always know where she would end up. Far more than Henri Langlois’ Face of the Century but an embodiment of something far deeper. She’s herself but she’s also her character, her self-depreciation doesn’t get over the fact that she could act and in these perfect circumstances of Pabst, Berlin and Pandora she was magnificent.

But maybe I should mention more about the first of those elements. Pabst directs so well here and the film is technically so strong with editing and atmosphere that make the most of ever player. Günther Krampf’s cinematography picks out points of light in such a controlled way, he enables Pabst’s mood and psychological objectives to radiate from the screen in ways that epitomise the state of the silent art close to the turning point of the talkies. Krampf worked with pretty much everyone and has been described as the "phantom of film history" by historians Bergfelder and Cargnelli*. Art direction from Andrej Andrejew and Gottlieb Hesch provides the context – in the German way – for Pabst’s emotional narrative with huge dark spaces mixed with striking intimate corners that trap and release the players’ expressiveness.

 

Pabst takes the play – which I’ve only seen once, with Joanne Whalley at the Almeida Theatre, a version called Lulu directed by Ian McDiarmid – in different and more political directions. Obviously he’s able to produce a more psychological take through film, so much pleasing technique capturing thought and action, but he’s also making Lulu more of a victim of capitalism than her own “nature”. As ground-breaking lesbian love interest Countess Augusta Geschwitz (Alice Roberts) says to the prosecutor at Lulu’s trial, “… do you know what would become of your wife had she spent the nights of her childhood in cafes and cabarets?”

 

The film is packed with such meaning and here I’m barely scratching the surface but for me, Pabst gives Lulu’s life and death more weight than was originally designed. Luckily you can still get the Limited-Edition boxset on the Eureka site with plentiful guides and extras to help you navigate the sense and circumstance but, I would act quickly as just 3000 are available!

These very special features include:

• Hardbound case featuring artwork by Tony Stella
• 1080p HD presentation on Blu-ray from a definitive 2K digital restoration
• Optional English subtitles
• Orchestral Score by Peer Raben
• New audio commentary by critic Pamela Hutchinson
• New visual appreciation by author and critic Kat Ellinger
• New video essay by David Cairns
• New video essay by Fiona Watson
• Plus: A 60-page booklet featuring new writing on the film by critics:
•                 Alexandra Heller Nicholas,
•                 Imogen Sara Smith, and
•                 Richard Combs
•                 Archival stills and imagery

 

It’s the most stunning release and what this film deserves. As one of the most re-watchable films in history, this is your destiny.

 

When Siouxsie and the Banshees released their long-awaited debut album in 1978, John Peel famously played the whole thing and then announced “that’s the one boys and girls, that’s the one…” And so it is that this aged post-punk can tell you all what you know already that this new Eureka release is indeed The One, boys, girls and everybody with an interest on this planet and beyond.

 

* In Destination London: German-speaking emigrés and British cinema, 1925-1950 (2008), Berghahn Books

 

High hopes… Stranded (1927), Edward Lorusso Kickstarter

 

I’m a sucker for a film about film and whilst many might think of Show People I go back to Eleanor Boardman in Souls for Sale (1923) and also the lost film Merton of the Movies (1924) the source novel for which, by Harry Leon Wilson, thankfully survives along with a few plates showing the film’s stars, Glenn Hunter and Viola Dana (born Virginia Flugrath). The novel allows your mind to run wild with the ideas of Merton sleeping out on the set hoping for his big break, the film craze was in full flight and people did indeed make desperate attempts to make it big against all the odds.

 

This film, transferred in lovely 2k from the Library of Congress’ 35mm copy, is Edward Lorusso’s 25^th Kickstarter project and it was once again successful enabling Ed to enlist David Drazin to provide a lively jazz-aged new score for this delightful slice of life story. The story came from Anita Loos, who was a big enough draw at tis point to get mentioned on the promotional material, assisted by Frances Guihan with witty titles from West Indian writer Wyndham Gittens. Loos’ next film project was the first production of her novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928).

 

The star here is one Leonie Flugrath, aka Shirley Mason who is the younger sister of the aforementioned Viola and bears more than a passing resemblance as you’d expect. I’d say she was more of a classically good-looking star and with a “leading lady” persona that lacks Viola’s intensity and spunk. I have seen more of Viola and she’s a more rounded actor but then who knows what else young Shirley had in the tank.

Shirley Mason and the Godlike Genius that was Gale Henry!

Here she’s very sweet and sympathetic as Sally Simpson, a young woman in a small town who has reached a crisis point in her life, stranded between her love for Johnny Nash (William Collier Jr.) and her dreams of “making it” in Hollywood. Johnny can offer her security as well as love and yet she wants to try her hand at fame, eve though she’s very little preparation for this endeavour… The American Dream is a bit vague but that doesn’t stop her mother played by the great Florence Turner – yes, "The Vitagraph Girl" who spent time in Britain making Daisy Doodad's Dial (1914) and others.

 

Despite protests from Grandmother (Lucy Beaumont) and falling out with Johnny – who, not unreasonably, suggests that acting training as well as talent may be necessary – Sally duly heads off West, with a young boy sent by Johnny to hand over chocolates and an apology note, just missing his mark. Sally is on her own and Johnny doesn’t know if she got his peace offering or not.

 

In Hollywood Sally gets an early break and meets up with a host of extras earning $5 a day. One of the older heads, Lucille Lareaux played by the marvellous Gale Henry, knows the ropes and tries to advise the younger woman as well as to set expectations but when she does engineer a big chance for Sally she completely blows it… she just can’t act and it’s painful to watch.

 

So, unlike Show People et al, Stranded is dealing with the downside of Hollywood and it’s now not so much will Sally make it but will she manage to avoid the salacious scheming of Grant Payne (John Miljan) a self-styled friend of the stars and man in the know who trues to seduce the young woman with great promises…

 

Directed by Phil Rosen, the story races along and Shirley Mason makes for a winsome leading lady just as John Miljan excels at the evil. It’s the kind of film that would please cinema goers at the time and a reminder of the nature of so much cinema during this high-volume period. As the saying goes: they can’t all be classics… but in its way, Stranded is, a classic example.

 

Very few of Mason’s films survive and it’s to Mr Lorusso’s credit that he’s made this one available as well as Shirley’s The Apple Tree Girl (1917) and The Awakening of Ruth (1917) along with two of Viola Dana’s films. In addition to working on a number of Marion Davies films, Ed’s also written the definitive book on her cinematic works which I can highly recommend.

 

I’ve said it before, “blessed are the Kickstarters” but everything is driven by curious and determined characters like this and I commend Mr Larusso’s ongoing efforts just as I back his next project, The Enchanted Cottage (1924) – details here! The funding stage is completed but if you missed that it should be available later through Grapevine Video.

 

Mary Pickford, J. Farrell MacDonald and John Harvey

There’s an added bonus of a delightful and very rare short film, The Lighthouse Keeper (1911), directed by Thomas H. Ince and staring young Mary Pickford as Polly, a young woman caught in a tug of love between honest Tom Atkins (John Harvey) and the no-good Bert Duncan (William E. Shay) who tries to get his revenge after the two are married. Unluckily for him, Polly’s steadfast father, Nat (J. Farrell MacDonald), won’t let his lighthouse be used to doom his daughter and son-in-law.

 

As with Stranded, this was transferred from a Library of Congress print and has its original tints, some new (?) title cards and some cracking shots of the raging sea. Ed Lorusso provides the music this time and it’s a job thoroughly well done! 

Ed’s films have been broadcast on TCM and screened elsewhere. Grapevine Video have also made some available on home media which is what I hope will happen in this case: Shirley Mason and her co-stars deserve to be recalled and their skills appreciated anew by the silent film curious and around the world. We just can’t get enough of new old stuff!

Florence Turner

Would you trust this man? 

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