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