Original subtitles

(Cathi Unsworth) It's always a bit like a dream.

The stickiness of the floor, the smell of fags.

God, those days when you could smoke and drink.

The glamour of the people that you might see there.

That late-night weird feeling

of maybe a few substances were involved,

keeping you awake.

That excitement of being part of a secret world.

The screen's stained with beer,

the whole place shakes when the Tubes run,

the sound system's crap, but we love it.

Mark Moore at the Scala.

(Upbeat instrumental music plays)

Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.

Where there is error, may we bring truth.

(Sirens wail)

Gentlemen of the press, get ready,

cos you are about to witness

the biggest news event of the year.

Say hello to my little friend!

(Groans)

(Engine roars)

I'm walking here!

I did take Divine to see a Bergman movie on acid,

and he... and when she ripped her face off in Hour of the Wolf,

he said, "I'm never ever doing this again.

I'm only seeing Elizabeth Taylor movies."

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

(Fans screaming)

(Slow-tempo instrumental music plays)

The first time I discovered the Scala must have been 1979.

I think I was 14, 15.

I was a juvenile punk rocker. (Laughs)

And I lived in North Finchley,

and my father had remarried, so I couldn't live with him,

so he put us in a bed and breakfast, um, uh...

and gave us money for Kentucky Fried Chicken to fend for ourselves.

And I would spend the money on going to the movies.

I had this mate, Simon Gargette, who was really on the ball,

like, "We have to go and see this band called Joy Division."

And he said, "We have to go and see this new film called Eraserhead."

♪ In heaven

♪ Everything is fine

♪ In heaven

♪ Everything... ♪

I was first in line for tickets for Eraserhead. I'm first in the queue.

I'm not gonna muck about. And I couldn't wait.

I'd heard about this film and I was on it, and it blew my mind.

♪ You got your good things... ♪

(Peter Strickland) Beginning of February, I just saw Eraserhead is on

at this place called the Scala.

Where it was made zero difference to me.

That was just...

I came in, completely, um... unwitting.

And then... then I saw this cinema,

and the whole experience was as much about the cinema as the film.

That's what caught me by surprise.

The film, I was expecting it to be something powerful,

but not the place where I saw it.

(Menacing music plays)

It was just another world.

So a lot of the punters who went to the Scala,

especially the punters who went to the original Tottenham Street Scala,

were quite nihilistic, you know, as we all were,

and they liked the dark side of things.

And Eraserhead was certainly dark and kind of ghastly.

(Rasps)

Oh, you are sick.

It was like a real nightmare kind of world.

The chicken, you know, that was still moving

after it was cooked and everything, you know.

The girl with the cheeks and all that.

And all those uncomfortable looks.

A friend took me to see Eraserhead,

and I was completely freaked out by it.

And I was so freaked out by this... this thing,

this thing that kept... kept, like, you know, palpitating and...

And my friend could see me growing visibly upset and disturbed,

and she said, "We'd better leave now, because this thing's gonna grow up."

- (Sobs) - She'll be all right in a minute.

Sitting there in the Scala watching David Lynch's Eraserhead

was just mind-blowing.

It just set the blueprint for the kind of films that I wanted to see.

Certain cinemas showed certain types of films.

The Scala did all of it.

They just went, "We're doing all of that.

And we're also gonna add these fucked-up films as well.

We're gonna add these pornographic, banned,

but actually really interesting films."

There was no way of seeing all of these films

you read about in history books or had heard about.

So it was that sense of discovering things

and being able to do that on a big screen.

One of the things we really specialised in was tracking down prints

of movies that hadn't been seen for years

or that we'd never actually managed to be able to see.

We were just so much more eclectic.

We tried to put in as much and as varied a programme of music as we could

in terms of the film things that we showed.

But it became an essential element to making the Scala

a little bit different from other repertory cinemas.

I had recognised early on, through my exposure to punk,

that music was a way of reinvigorating ideas

and, uh, introducing young people to political notions

that they may have thought were a bit boring, a bit hippyish,

a bit not very, not really for them.

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

And we also had this fabulous jukebox.

(Mark Moore) They had all these amazing things on, like Joy Division

and a bit of rock and roll,

Magazine.

There was a sort of, like, collection of us

that was sort of all about the, you know, this...

the idea of being, you know, subversive

and a subterranean scene, which

people would talk more and more about the Scala.

"You should go to the Scala. Scala's like... It's really going on there."

(Upbeat instrumental music plays)

(Mark Moore) People would go there en masse from gigs and clubs.

Punks and Post-punks and New Romantics and all kinds of people.

It became another place, really,

to sort of see yourself through the community.

I always think of that Paul Schrader script, Taxi Driver.

"All the animals come out at night.

Whores, dopers, queens, pussies, junkies, venal scum."

And I was like, "Yeah, that was us!"

Uh, you know, plus rent boys and, uh, wannabe pop stars

and, uh, just people who didn't wanna go to bed on Saturday night, you know.

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

So, I'm behind the coffee bar, it's kind of quiet,

it's about 2:30 to 3 o'clock in the morning,

but that was when things could get interesting.

So, anyway, this kid comes through the door, and he comes...

He's got long hair, right, and his hair is combed up

to a point about two feet above his head and gelled.

And it was like I'd never seen anything like it in my life.

And to come in the door, he actually had to go like that, like...

And then he was in.

He's actually got painted-on eyebrows as well, and he's kind of like...

He's dressed up, like, he's properly dressed up.

He's sitting with his mates who are also dressed up.

Normally you'd think they're dressed up,

but they look pale in comparison to this kid who's, like, extraordinary.

He comes over to the coffee bar and I'm like, "All right?"

He goes, "What you got to drink?"

I said, "I've got coffee or tea. I've got some juices and this, that."

He goes, "I'll have a nice cup of tea, please."

I was like, "All right."

So I makes him a cup of tea, gives it to him, and he goes over.

About ten minutes later, I can hear him singing.

♪ Didn't we have a lovely time the day we went to Bangor ♪

He sang the whole song in the coffee bar.

He was like a proper weirdo.

About three months later, I'm looking at Top of the Pops

and there he is at number one with Culture Club,

singing Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?

He was a regular down there. I didn't know who he was.

And I never saw him looking like that again.

And the beauty of the Scala was, you know,

when you tried to get into X-rated movies aged 14,

you normally got turned away.

At the Scala, they didn't care how old you were. They let you in.

So you were seeing all these amazing movies

like Pasolini's Salò, 120 Days of Sodom.

You were seeing, I don't know, Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

All these things you'd dreamed about seeing but never could.

And sometimes you didn't have enough money to get in,

so you'd cobble the money together for one person to pay to get in,

which would normally be me, cos I looked kind of young and innocent,

go downstairs and there'd be a little door

which led to the outside basement bit with the stairs going up.

So you could open that door and everyone would sneak in

and then just run through into the cinema.

And, of course, you know, I got caught loads of times.

I would be, like, physically evicted.

I was branded a troublemaker by Steve Woolley.

I was banned for... I think it was a couple of weeks.

I'd turn up, and eventually everyone just begged that the ban was lifted on me,

and Steve Woolley lifted the ban on me.

So, yeah, I was a bit of a Scala teenage troublemaker.

We'd pick nights to go,

like, we'd go en masse, maybe 30 or 40 of us,

to see Jubilee by Derek Jarman, the punk film.

You know, and we'd be quite rowdy, you know.

People got really impatient during the Elizabethan scenes

which they thought was really boring and too Shakespearean.

Where is God?

Is God dead?

And now we watch it and we love those scenes.

But I think at the time all the punks hated those bits.

♪ Rule Britannia, Britannia

♪ Britannia, Britannia

♪ Ooh, ooh ♪

Yeah, I got into Derek Jarman because of that film,

and of course I went back to the Scala to see Sebastiane,

which, um, I'd never seen such a homoerotic film,

and that was a great thing to see at that age, you know,

when you're discovering your way

and just about to start going to gay clubs

and things like that, so that was fantastic,

and Derek Jarman soon, quite rightly, became a hero.

Late 1979 throughout 1980, um... it was a period of change in fashion.

Punk was on the way out. New Romantic was beginning.

I remember, you know, seeing people dressed as pirates,

seeing people with knee breeches.

(Princess Julia) Spandau Ballet were a bunch of boys

that sort of became the sort of house band

at the Blitz club, which was, um, the spiritual home

of the New Romantic scene that I was part of.

They wanted to do a showcase, they'd done a whole body of work,

and the chosen venue was the Scala.

And it was quite sort of an occasion.

Walking into the Scala,

they'd backlit the stage,

so the whole thing looked very atmospheric.

It was a real sort of moment, actually.

I think it really set the scene.

It really set a sort of exciting,

um, and creative landscape

of art, music, fashion, style,

which actually, you know, carried on throughout the '80s.

So it was a landmark gig.

(Mark Moore) I went to loads of gigs at Scala in Tottenham Street.

I think the first one I probably saw was

Throbbing Gristle, Leather Nun, Monte Cazazza.

And there was this rumour going around that Genesis P-Orridge and co

had... had, uh, got this, um, positive-ion generator,

which was the opposite of the usual negative-ion generator

which made you feel good.

This actually made you feel bad.

(Echoing voice) Make it feel uncomfortable.

Make it feel uncomfortable.

(Mark Moore) And I remember going to see The Mysterons

with 23 Skidoo playing.

And, um, I think it was the lead singer of The Mysterons,

he grabbed hold of the mic stand

and he just froze and no one knew what was going on.

He was actually being electrocuted live on stage.

The drummer got up, kicked the mic stand away,

and then he went to another mic and he went,

"That was a shocking experience", and then collapsed on the floor.

And everyone was just, like, open-mouthed, like,

"Yep, we're at the Scala. That's the sort of thing that happens."

(Laughs)

(Fast-paced instrumental music plays)

(Car horn beeps)

(Nick Kent) This is where the Scala comes into it.

It's all to do with Bowie and the rise of Bowie

and the fact that Bowie's management was a guy called Tony Defries.

The Scala gigs were Defries's, um, fig leaf

to both Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.

The Lou Reed gig wasn't very good.

He kind of misread his audience.

For a start, he came on and he was festooned in rhinestones.

He looked like... He looked like a professional ice skater.

He was so nervous, man.

And then the next night, there were The Stooges.

They weren't nervous at all.

Because they were a gang, they came in mob-handed.

The glitterati turned out for the Lou Reed.

The misfits turned out for The Stooges.

If Fellini had made a film in the late '60s

and there'd been this completely weird nightclub scene

where some strange group had played just strange music,

that would have been that concert.

There was nothing like that music.

But what was outstanding was Iggy.

He'd worked out these special moves that he could do with the mic stand

where he could, like, throw the mic stand forward and dive on the stand

and do a somersault while the... while the stand was in mid-air

and then land in the audience,

and then crawl around on his belly like... like an iguana.

He literally defied the laws of gravity.

Most of the audience were around the exit doors

and they were terrified.

They were not ready for this.

But to me, it changed my life.

I was 20 at the time, and I said, "Well, this is the way to do it.

You just go out there and you just throw yourself at the world.

You just throw yourself at the fucking world."

(Bird chirping)

(Narrator) You are seated on the side of a hill, looking towards a clearing.

In the light of early dawn, the forest awakens to a new day.

Hold your breath,

lest you disturb the alert creatures of this exotic world.

(King Kong roars)

When the Scala Cinema moved from Tottenham Street up to King's Cross,

they were in a building called the Primatarium.

It had been called that. It was now called the Scala Cinema.

But people still called it the Monkey House.

And the first film they showed at the Monkey House was King Kong.

(Roars)

(Rings)

(Woman) Hello, Scala.

Yes, on the 22nd we're showing Fritz the Cat and Popeye cartoons.

The 27th? We're showing Mondo Trasho and Hairspray.

King's Cross was rough as fuck. It was almost, like, medieval down there.

So to go down there for an evening to go to the cinema

was a bit of... a bit of an adventure, really.

Phew! Gray's Inn Road. Boy!

(Laughs)

Bad memories swooping down like bats out of hell.

(Paul Putner) In the middle of all these penny arcades

and ladies of the night plying their trade,

there was this wonderful piece of architecture.

There was just the little turret. It was almost like a belfry.

You could imagine bats flying around it, so...

Yeah, that really was appealing to me, being a horror fan.

I thought, "Ah, yeah, that's what it's all about."

(Adam Buxton) I turn up in King's Cross. It's already a bit frightening.

It was a hot day. I'd overdressed. So this is summer 1985, I think.

I'm wearing skinny black jeans,

big black boots,

probably a big long coat that was way too hot.

So I met Joe, we go in,

and already it's just different to your average chain cinema.

(Menacing instrumental music plays)

It's these marble floors and it's this quite grand building

that looks a bit like an embassy,

um, that's fallen out of use.

Maybe there's been a disaster in the world.

You know, look around King's Cross in 1985, that's a little bit what it seemed like.

And out of the ashes of civilisation,

these guys have decided to set up a cinema.

"Let's set up a cinema in the old abandoned embassy

from Before Times.

And the survivors and the mutants and the others

can all gather together to watch entertainments

from the Old World."

(Screeching and overlapping voices)

So that's what it felt like.

Another world, you know, pushing through the, um, cultural closet

and entering left-field Narnia.

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

(Douglas Hart) So, yeah, at the time the three of us in the Mary Chain,

we used to dress head to toe in leather.

There were other cinemas that would show films during the day and at night,

like the Everyman and the NFT, incredible places,

but when we all turned up there, the three of us dressed in leather,

it didn't... we slightly felt a little bit uncomfortable, to be honest.

But when we came to the Scala, there was just something about it that...

That was not an issue. We seemed to belong. It was very welcoming in that sense.

You saw other people dressed even weirder than us, which was incredible.

Just what is it that you want to do?

We wanna be free to ride our machines without being hassled by the man.

- (Murmuring) - And we wanna get loaded.

The Scala, where outsiders and freaks belonged and you felt welcome.

We'd walk down Pentonville Road and get outside the Scala,

and all of us were welcome and were able to come in, you know,

which, you know, really wasn't the case in the West End.

You know, you had Eddie with all his sort of Rasta hair and stuff

and his huge hat.

You had Reece, who was also a Dread, and Trevor was a Dread, and there was, you know...

The way we looked then, you know, sort of, um, Post-punk,

and a group like us would not... we didn't fit the type

to get into the clubs in the West End, you know, at all.

We were very different. We looked different.

And we celebrated that difference.

We liked to look like that and we met people who looked similar to us there,

and that's what was really exciting, you know, for us.

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

(Adam Buxton) The thing about the Scala was that you had to be a member.

There we go. I've still got it.

It's like the Tufty Club.

(Adam Buxton) I never quite understood how it worked,

but Joe explained it to me as being a kind of loophole

which enabled them to show stuff that they really shouldn't be showing.

(Laughs)

Welcome to Café Flesh.

(Rhythmic instrumental music continues)

Lord have mercy!

Oh, yes. Wonderful. Scala.

The fold-out poster which would be up on the wall

with everything circled that you wanted to go and see.

Everyone I knew had one of these in their kitchen.

I always had one in my kitchen.

It was very exciting to see what the next one was gonna be.

(Fast-paced instrumental music plays)

Actually, I'm quite surprised how... This is '86.

How early...

the... if you like, the chaos had set in to the programme,

compared to when I started it, you know.

If you look at this, this is a good example.

I haven't seen this for so long.

The eyes in the middle.

The way the image just runs over things and so on.

I mean, if you compare that to this.

This is the first one I did, um...

when it switched over to the sizes,

and I was still in that graphic-design mode of,

"It's gotta be straight. It's gotta be accurate. It's gotta register and, you know..."

That's what you do as a graphic designer 99% of the time.

You don't, you know, get high on acid and start doing this.

So my vain attempt as a designer to try and keep it all nice and neat

just gradually went out the...

No matter how hard you tried,

there was always something when you got it back

that was slightly off-register.

So I think over time we just said,

"We'll just go for it", you know, and it just...

And then it was almost like once you opened the stable door, everyone went, "Wah!"

They were great.

You could pore over them. You could look at 'em, the ads.

Everybody had 'em on their refrigerator or hanging up in their kitchen.

I miss that. I miss advertising.

I miss, uh, paper.

I miss posters. I miss wild posting.

We used to go out and paste stuff up illegally, hang stuff up.

I miss all that. That was effective advertising too.

I'm still for giving out handbills on the street.

People don't even know what they are.

If you hand 'em something, they're afraid of you.

- I just loved the smell of it as well. - Yeah, oh, I loved the...

- The smell of it was just... - You told me you never did drugs.

And there you were sniffing the Scala programmes, eh?

Well, they're a substitute for drugs. Why not?

These posters and this... this text

is from a sort of prelapsarian "before the fall" kind of time, whereby...

This, the Scala, the Scala programme, this was a Garden of Eden.

Weirdly, of innocence,

even though it's covered in women on all fours

with swastikas drawn on their heads,

and, um, and a little shocking clip from The Beast there,

where you and I both know what she's looking at.

(Screams)

This kind of programme is difficult for a Catholic girl.

(Laughs)

My mother would... Oh, if my mother had known.

Anyway, so, yeah, it's a great one.

It's a... It's a very naughty one.

And the Scala was very naughty.

Oh, my God, I wish the Scala existed, though.

I mean, honestly, I could do this almost every day.

I'm not sure I could do a whole week of the Lonesome Cowboys,

but, you know...

(♪ "Pearl & Dean Theme")

(Adam Buxton) And so we went in and it was very dark.

I don't remember there being any usherettes and torches or anything like that.

It was like, "Off you go. Good luck."

And the other weird thing that I recall

was that there was never a point at which the lights were up.

It seemed as if there was always something showing,

and either you were coming in at the end of the last film

or the other one had just started or whatever.

But it was never like, "Well, that's the end of the last house,

and, OK, staff, let's tidy everything up and get ready for the next performance."

It smelled weird, and it was cold.

And there was no carpeting. Everything was just concrete.

Quite sticky, the floors.

Kind of feel your way through the gloom,

shuffle along a row of seats, sit down.

My recollection was, mid-'80s, they were not comfortable seats.

They felt, uh... I would say wood.

I love... love the fact that the filmmakers

who are organising this, um, documentary

have managed to get one of the original Scala chairs,

which is as uncomfortable as I remember it from when I used to go to the Scala.

And I dread to think what I'm sitting in.

(Adam Buxton) The next thing I was aware of was a rumbling sound,

as if the whole place was gonna collapse.

And I looked around and I was like,

"What's happening? There's a... Something's happening."

And Joe said, "It's the Underground. We're right next to King's Cross.

It's the trains going underneath."

I was like, "Wow. Is that cool?

Or is that just bad?"

I thought the Scala was a kind of wonderworld, actually.

I didn't really know where to look first.

It looks like you're coming into this secret castle, this secret world.

And, of course, all the way up the winding staircases

you could just come across fabulous-looking people.

♪ The bats have left the bell tower

♪ The victims have been bled

♪ Red velvet lines the black box

♪ Bela Lugosi's dead... ♪

You would feel like, "Gosh, I could actually be part of this world.

I could make something from this world I could take into my life

and make something of it."

Trying to be cool, you know.

You've got various members of Everything But The Girl sat round,

and you're sort of thinking,

"OK, blend in, blend in. Keep it together."

And, um, then I remember, at one point,

something brushing past my legs.

And I was thinking, "What is that?"

I think we always have to start with the Scala cats,

who I was very fond of.

Huston more than Roy, cos Roy was pretty aloof.

(Cat meows)

Huston would sit on my lap on an all-nighter for most of the evening,

unless I got up to do something or to sort someone out.

And something always happened with the audiences

some time in the small hours

where some of them became the characters they were watching.

They sort of began to embody the film that they were seeing

and... or become... or think they were really in it.

So I had got up, maybe just to go get myself another coffee,

so Huston got up and went for a walk.

(Mellow instrumental music plays)

And he decided to walk through the rows, looking for another lap to sit on.

And startling every single fucker in the row,

which then set off this Mexican wave of panic and fear along the row

which then spilled back and forth,

because people were screaming simply because other people were screaming.

By 'eck, where's the door?

The "Her" and the cats are like people to us.

Mrs Reeve.

We love the Scala. We call her "Her",

"Her" because we love her. She's... She's...

We look to her as like a person.

I mean, you're sat in your... you sit in your seat

and you're sort of transfixed, aren't you?

Especially when he's running about with a wretched, um, chainsaw.

Um... Or, um... That's one of them.

Well, we like all that, because, well, I find it entertaining.

And then we like chasing up the streets after one another, you know? Um...

I love to see these cars go over hills. Um...

Up in the air, you know, flying sort of thing.

We like all that. I don't see there's any harm in it at all.

I mean, I don't go out of here wanting to, um, chainsaw somebody.

The Scala programme was very diverse,

and I, uh... I loved all the different images of it.

Obviously there were loads of horror, but there were lots of images of sexy men.

Um, the first time I saw Montgomery Clift on a large screen, you know...

It was just breathtaking to see him in Red River,

and then A Place in the Sun and From Here to Eternity.

Just that face, and the quality of his acting,

but also to know that he was one of us.

Several films I saw here changed my life.

I first saw Genet's short film Un Chant d'amour here,

and that, again, became a hugely important film to me.

I was obsessed with that film.

The scene where he's blowing the smoke through the wall

into the other prisoner's mouth

is one of the most erotic things I've ever seen to this day.

It's more sexy than any gay porn I've ever watched.

It was so difficult to find that material.

You couldn't really, you know, walk into Blockbuster and rent it.

What I remember is not so much the people that felt they belonged here in this audience

as the people that had kind of just turned up,

perhaps to shelter, or not really knowing what they'd come to.

I remember being in a screening of the Kuchar brothers' Thundercrack!

which is a very extreme film.

I don't even know if I would watch it now, to be honest.

But there was an old man there sitting near the balcony

who, as it became more and more bizarre and obscene,

kept standing up, turning round and addressing the rest of the room,

asking us why we were there and what was wrong with us.

And yet he would then sit down and continue watching it.

You know, you don't get that, um, in a multiplex.

You'd never forget a night out at the Scala.

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

You could sit with your back to the screen and see something just as enjoyable

because of all the eccentrics and the freaks

and the cats

and all the mayhem that would sometimes happen in there.

This place just felt really wrong. It felt like anything could happen.

But you knew that someone involved in the process

really cared about what they put on, right?

And so it's almost like the building itself had recommended these films to you.

(Announcer) Ladies and gentlemen, go, go for a wild, wild ride with the Watusi Cats.

But beware, the sweetest kittens have the sharpest claws.

For your own safety, see Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

(JoAnne Sellar) On Mondays, which were a slow day at the Scala,

me and my co-programmer, Mark Valen, decide

what could we do on Mondays to spice it up a bit

and get people to come out on a Monday?

So we decided we'd have Blue Mondays.

Blue Mondays meant we'd show some riskier fare.

They showed what would have been normally sexploitation.

They found the auteur version of sexploitation

in Russ Meyer and some other directors, and you could go see them.

I would never go to a sex cinema in Soho on my own

but I was happy to go to the Scala on my own

and just sit for hours and watch something.

It felt very, you know, safe to be there.

(Announcer) For an incredible evening's entertainment,

a film so totally satisfying,

see Russ Meyer's Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

One of the things I found the most perverse

was being asked to put on an ice-cream tray

and carry the ice-cream tray into the double bill of a Russ Meyer

or a double bill of some sexploitation

and sell ice creams to the punters.

That was bizarre.

And having felt myself to be a radical feminist, it felt most peculiar.

But it was fun, and I enjoyed how perverse that was.

(In Serbo-Croatian)

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

(JoAnne Sellar) On this particular day we were showing Looking for Mr Goodbar,

and the usher came and said

that there was somebody who had been slumped over.

They didn't know what was happening.

So I went to the back of the cinema,

and this person was at the back of the cinema,

and the usher and me...

So, the person was slumped over but the usher and me...

...managed to pick the person up

and pull them into... drag them back into my office...

I don't like how I did this, but...

...which wasn't very far, cos the door opened,

and laid him down but he was very stiff.

He was still, like, warm but kind of stiff.

And I called the ambulance and I said,

"I think I have a dead body in my office."

So the ambulance came and everything.

And I think the police came with the ambulance. I can't remember.

But unfortunately this guy had passed of a heart attack.

I remember, like, when they arrived,

there was a huge, huge, um...

We had a huge billboard

from Evil Dead up in the foyer.

And that...

You couldn't miss it. It was massive.

And they were like, "Oh, showing one of those video nasties?

Was that the reason?"

And I was like, "No, we weren't.

We were showing Looking for Mr Goodbar actually."

And then... it was Thundercrack! time.

It's impossible to discuss the history of the Scala Cinema

without mentioning a film called Thundercrack!

(Adam Buxton) Thundercrack! was a film that they showed quite a lot at the Scala.

It would roll around every few weeks.

It was a sort of Rocky Horror Picture Show kind of premise.

Teenagers get stranded, it's raining, they come to a creepy house,

they go inside looking for shelter, and then porn.

You just saw much more than you would normally see.

I was only 15.

The worst I'd seen was some boobs in Porky's or I don't know what.

It was extreme, and I remember thinking,

"This is too much. I shouldn't really be watching this."

(David McGillivray) It was screened at the Scala constantly,

probably from the day the cinema opened right to the time it closed.

And the legend was that there was only ever one print of Thundercrack!

here at the Scala

and it was run until eventually it fell apart.

(Menacing instrumental music plays)

(Ali Kayley) One of the things we were aware of at the Scala

was you were getting rare prints,

prints that were often in really bad condition,

because that was the only way that that film could get on the screen.

I have always maintained that the Scala was willing to show

any length of celluloid that had half a dozen intact sprocket holes.

So, because of that, the films tended to break.

(Ali Kayley) Occasionally, you'd get the thing

where the film would get stuck and start to burn through,

and then on the screen, through the little window, you'd see,

"Oh, my God. The film, the image is going."

The screen would go white

and we had to wait for the projectionist to repair it.

But even worse, even more terrifying,

was when the film jammed in the gate

and then the lamp would burn through the celluloid

and then we would see it on screen.

It was catching fire.

You know, that opening... Ah! That was absolutely petrifying.

Oh, it gives off an orange cloud of light

that just flows right out over the sea.

And your projectionist, the projectionist at the Scala

who put reels on round the wrong way cos he was on acid one day,

not one person realised that actually they'd been shown in the wrong order

and they thought it was an avant-garde masterpiece.

(Paul Putner) The Scala also had things like the meetings

of the Laurel and Hardy Appreciation Society.

If you are in a cinema packed full of Laurel and Hardy fans,

and just comedy fans in general,

watching Stan and Ollie on the big screen, there's nothing like it.

And I went to see my first Laurel and Hardy film

on the big screen at the Scala.

Seeing Oliver Hardy do a double take,

looking to camera, you know, the kind of...

(As Hardy) "Mm! Why don't you do something to help me? Mm!"

And to see that on a big screen...

(As Laurel) "Well, I didn't know!"

...is wonderful. I can't recommend it enough.

(Kim Newman) I'm standing outside the Scala Cinema,

which is officially the scariest place in North London.

It was the site in 1987 of the first Shock Around the Clock film festival,

which was kind of like the Woodstock for the bizarro generation.

I actually got the name Shock Around the Clock

from a Freemans catalogue,

where Lulu literally was on an advert saying,

"If you want to frock around the clock, do Freemans catalogue."

And I thought, "Shock Around the Clock."

- I want to hear him confess himself. - (Woman sobs)

(Alan Jones) So that was where the idea came from.

When I look back, I think it was really funny

that the two people who looked sort of like the nastiest people in London

put this festival on.

And Stefan was a miserable old bastard, really.

I had a terrible reputation as being one of the rudest people ever.

I mean, you know, that was my... my punk ethic anyway.

But I really was quite nasty to people. I didn't suffer fools gladly at all.

(Laughs) Hey, hey. Hey, Bill. (Splutters)

I mean, I did notice

that Stefan used to sort of actually step over the line often with people.

He used to get quite threatening.

People had suggested that it may turn out badly.

At the first Shock Around the Clock, I had the chain from the Scala's doors

around my... over my leather jacket for self-defence purposes.

Wah!

(Ricky Baker) We've built up here a situation

where the crowds now look at the Scala and say,

"Scala, kung fu. Kung fu, Scala."

(Cheering)

Most of the crowd in there are from Scotland, Ireland, Manchester, Liverpool.

The atmosphere in there has been so, so loud and so noisy

that some people say it's a good job the films are subtitled

because they would never ever hear if it was in the English language.

(Audience member blows whistle)

(Audience members shouting and whooping)

A lot of the people who came were closet kung-fu movie fans.

Their family didn't really enjoy it, they didn't have any friends,

but coming here created a union of such a mixed...

a mixed bunch of characters you probably wouldn't socialise with

but you could talk about movies on the same plane as them.

One guy had come from Scotland,

and I think he said he had to row a boat.

(Paul Putner) This place, it just had a kind of... a whiff of leopardskin.

Yeah, a bit more psychobilly.

The Return of the Living Dead was premiered here at the Scala Cinema

and The Cramps were on hand to introduce the film.

It's The Cramps made out of brick and mortar, isn't it?

Bal.

There's a filmmaker, a very good filmmaker,

well, no, actually a terrible filmmaker, called William Castle.

He was king of the gimmicks

so every one of his films you either had 3D spectacles

or there was always something that was a bit weird about them.

And we wanted to do a double bill

so we went to Jane at the Scala and said, "We want to put on this double bill."

There were two films: The Tingler and The House on Haunted Hill.

The Tingler is in Percepto!

which is you perceive something and what you perceive is...

In the film Vincent Price, surprisingly, is a mad scientist

and he works out that when you get that crawling sensation in your stomach

when you're nervous,

it's actually an organism called the Tingler.

So he finds this woman who's a deaf-mute who can't scream,

cos if you scream that kills it and the organism dies.

So he gets this deaf-mute woman and scares her, and it gets bigger and bigger.

And then he kills her and then operates on her

and gets this sort of lobster-like thing out of her stomach.

But it escapes from his laboratory and it gets into a cinema

and you see this projection booth

and this thing, the Tingler, jumps on the projectionist

and kills him, at which point the screen goes...

It goes black and you hear Vincent Price's voice going...

(Vincent Price) Ladies and gentlemen, please do not panic,

but scream, scream for your lives!

The Tingler is loose in this theatre and if you don't scream, it may kill you.

- (Screaming) - Keep screaming!

- Scream for your lives! - (Man) It's here!

And you would have set up buzzers under the chairs

and then you press this buzzer and all these people go, "Oh, my God!"

And everyone's jumping up. Well, that's the idea.

We had these bell buzzers and about six car batteries,

and we could only get a slight pff... buzz.

After the first screening we were like,

"Right, we need more batteries. We need to up the voltage."

And me and Mark were down in reception,

and the first audience were going out and the second lot were coming in,

and this guy was outraged and just grabbing people that were coming in,

going, "Don't go in! It's rubbish!"

He was grabbing their hand and going, "Pff. That's what it felt like!

Rubbish! It was rubbish!"

And I was just like, "Result!"

Another fantastic Mondo Movies psychotronic big hitter.

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

(Mark Valen) We were conveniently located next to a very popular gay pub

called the Bell that was a dance club also.

And between the Scala and the gay programming that went on there,

the Bell next door,

I think there was even a gay bookshop on the other corner, um...

it sort of, like, made this vibrant area of King's Cross happen

for the young gay community.

One of the most, um, important venues that I went to was the Bell,

which was literally just, you know, 50 yards away from this cinema.

And that was a venue that had, like, the Pet Shop Boys,

Derek Jarman, um, Jimmy Somerville, um...

I mean, everybody really involved

in the kind of pop sort of alternative scene.

And, in a way, that kind of queer group

also would also come to the Scala Cinema, you know.

There was a certain oppositional counterculture

which existed, really, in the audiences which attended, um, the Scala Cinema,

and I think we saw them, really, as being part of our cultural sort of identity.

Both the Scala and the Bell facilitated that

because they were both places where different tribes all mixed together.

It was what we'd now call...

what the younger kids would call "queer" in the broader sense, really.

It was very much people from all different, um, places

on the sexual perspective and gender perspective

and you all shared this one common thing

which is that you were all alternative.

You didn't call yourselves that in those days,

but you were alternative to the mainstream.

This was the way we let our friends from the Bell in.

We'd go downstairs, we'd unlock the fire escape,

and they'd come up this way.

Um, also other people broke in that way.

And other people used this back passage for back-passage-type events.

Um, I had to clean it out at the end of an evening.

It was always dark in here. I'd come down with my flashlight.

And I'd wanna get it cleaned and checked as quickly as possible

before running, terrified, back into the auditorium

in case I encountered something I didn't wanna see.

(Yelling)

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

I had to help Serena, the cleaner, pick up a mountain of latex gloves

that had been dropped in between the seats during the women-only all-nighter.

Midway through cleaning up, she asked me what they were for,

and I thought that I really couldn't properly explain it to this religious lady,

so I said it was a fashion statement.

October, God knows when.

Sometime in the empty '80s.

Dressed for sex night.

Movies like Let Me Die A Woman, Maitresse and Thundercrack!

A sweaty affair.

G-strings and see-through plastic skirts are paraded around,

and that's just the guys.

All night, both toilets rattling away with fevered enthusiasm.

Twelve flavours of ice creams and seven flavours of condom.

I also saw quite a few things at the Scala off screen

that were quite eye-popping as well,

because it was quite cruisy

and the kind of boys that I liked came here.

I was very into the kind of, um... the tattooed rockabilly sort of boys.

So I was into the kind of greasy-haired, slightly bad boys, you know.

Um, so, to me, the Scala's aesthetic was very much about that.

It had that kind of retro '50s aesthetic

that was very popular at that time in the mid-'80s, late '80s.

And people were wearing lots of biker rings and studded leather jackets

and all that kind of stuff.

(Rory Perkins) I did know of one character who came to The Mix

who would make a beeline

for the toilet upstairs, the balcony area.

And, you know, he would take all the lighting out of that toilet,

just leaving the fire-exit glow on in there.

And I knew who this guy was. Actually, he was a friend of mine.

But I just thought it was a lost battle. Couldn't stop him.

It was his mission, you know, to have this little area

that he could turn into his own little pleasure zone

with whoever, luckily or unluckily, entered... ventured in, you know.

♪ Well, now my boyfriend always wears... ♪

(Vic Roberts) I was trying to learn German at university,

so I'd sit and watch Taxi zum Klo endlessly.

I picked up some choice phrases which apparently weren't very, um, decent.

♪ And his surfin' hat and a big plaid Pendleton shirt ♪

All the ingredients for misbehaviour were here at the Scala.

Darkest auditorium in London, crazy films on the screen,

and, of course, an audience of crazies themselves and misfits.

And so all kinds of things happened in the cinema

throughout the showings, especially during the all-night screenings, so...

In the auditorium, in the back row, of course,

but mostly, um, in the toilets, which is where we are now.

I... I don't remember these toilets looking like this at all.

Um, they're far too smart.

Hm. Ah.

OK, well I want to put on record the fact that I never engaged

in any kind of activity whatsoever in the toilets at the Scala.

I'm glad I've put that on film.

I suppose the Scala was the nearest thing to a 42nd Street grindhouse, in a way.

I mean, having sort of, like, been in them at the height of the '70s,

um, I can probably tell you that it was sort of similar, you know.

People with their legs over the front of the seats.

You know, seats slamming.

The gents' toilet door completely, you know, on...

might have been revolving, really.

And, like, the dark bits at the back of the auditorium, you didn't go there,

just in case you might trip over somebody having a shag on the carpet.

That's part of the theatre of it all, isn't it? That's what I think.

When you went to 42nd Street, like when you went to the Scala,

it wasn't just to go and see the film.

It was to go and see the people who turned up.

You know, the bonkers guy who was down the front,

screaming at the screen every time a woman took her top off, stuff like that.

So that's what you wanted, and I think the Scala was the perfect place for that.

And, sure, you know, you're not gonna get that sort of person

at an Agnès Varda quadruple bill, are you?

But, I mean, for, like, a John Waters double bill or a Russ Meyer one,

perfect audience to watch it with.

- Yes? - Miss Babs Johnson?

Yes, I'm Babs Johnson.

Special delivery package, ma'am. Sign here, please.

Any time something awful happened, people would cheer.

(Babs) Oh, my God Almighty!

- Someone has sent me a bowel movement! - Oh, Babs!

Pink Flamingos, without doubt,

the bit at the end where Divine eats dog shit, uh...

you would hear just mass screams of disgust from the entire audience,

except for the people who'd seen it before, where it would be screams of joy.

The Scala was where you got the audiences that were the most hardcore,

and I mean that in the best way.

I was only in the audience in the Scala at one of my films once

and I remember being shocked,

and I had been all over the country to midnight-movie audiences everywhere.

So this was the most insane, vocal, partying, great audience I ever saw.

- Can you dig it? - (Cheering)

- Can you dig it? - (Cheering)

Going to see The Warriors was one of the best experiences

I've ever had in a cinema.

I mean, it was just incredible.

So, you've got to imagine an all-nighter,

and I think The Warriors comes on

at about three... in the morning.

There are five of us, pretty drunk by then.

And we've all seen The Warriors.

Cos we loved Walter Hill so we've seen The Warriors,

I mean, I don't know how many times by then.

But this particular night, everybody had memorised the whole film.

I don't know how we'd learnt it but everybody knew,

you know, so from the beginning,

when, you know, uh, Cyrus says, "Can you dig it?"

We all got up: "Can you dig it?"

It was just an amazing, um, Brechtian moment in the cinema

where you were engaging with the screen.

The screen was manufacturing feelings for you.

You were going with those feelings but changing them, you know.

So we didn't know it word for word. We were improvising as well, you know.

Um... and that's, for me, one of the... the magic moments.

It's the magic of cinema, actually.

It's the metaphor for how cinema works,

caught in a drunken moment sometime in '84 with four mates, basically.

(Menacing music plays)

A lot of the time when I would go out at night

I would just stay round people's flats,

stay in squats, stay on people's floors, um...

But a useful alternative appeared with the Scala all-nighters.

Going to an all-nighter was fantastic,

because I lived in that period in Acton in West London.

This was a long way away.

So if you'd done a gig in East London or whatever

and you were maybe not being paid cos you were in a try-out spot,

a really great thing would be to come here on the way back

and see what was on and sit through the night.

No self-respecting young person would turn up to the Scala

any earlier than one o'clock in the morning.

And the reason for that was because the ticket prices were a bit cheaper,

or free, you know.

I spent a lot of time at the all-nighters.

They were the sort of place you would go after a show.

I actually remember going there one time when I was between squats,

and I had my little overnight bag.

It was a social thing as well. You'd hang out in the café between films.

Or sometimes if you were getting burned out from watching five films in a row,

you might retire there for a little while.

A lot of bands that would come to London

to play from out of town would...

They couldn't afford hotels, they were playing tiny pubs,

and they would literally stay...

come to an all-nighter just to sleep, you know.

Obviously watch the films,

but they'd try and get a bit of kip towards the end.

I remember coming to all-nighters, and you'd sort of come late

and you'd have to try and squeeze your way between the rows of seats,

literally over, like, sleeping bodies, you know,

sort of kicking them awake and people telling you to fuck off, you know.

(Mary Harron) My favourite thing was the all-night things.

The dream-like experience of half falling asleep

and then waking up and the movies were still going on.

The movies and the dreams kind of merged.

I don't know how people made it through the entire all-nighters.

The thing about doing an all-nighter film evening at the Scala was

you'd actually arrive quite late and probably already quite drunk,

possibly stoned, possibly tripping.

Oh, wait, yes, I do. Drugs.

People would be there on speed, uh, coming down on speed.

Some people would be there on acid.

When you talk about the Scala,

I would never immediately say, "Oh, yeah, it was druggy."

But it was definitely a place where people were on drugs watching the movies.

Don't get uptight with me, man.

Cos if you do, I'll have to give you a dose of medicine.

So here's the thing. Uh...

People who are going to the cinema

with a programme that starts at midnight

uh, really need a bit of help.

And this guy called Barry would come in.

Now, Barry lived locally in a squat in Warren Street.

Barry would come in to the all-nighter and he had the stuff on him,

and it was a big bag of blues and I used to just buy them.

And then one night I thought, "Why don't I just buy loads?"

And so he used to come round the back of the coffee bar,

into the... into the larder... (Chuckles)

...and give me a thousand blues in a plastic bag

for, um, 40 quid or whatever it was.

I can't do the math but it was basically four a quid.

And I would sell them over the the counter for three a quid,

thus making one blue amphetamine for each sale.

This pill's valued at two quid.

Two quid? You're out of your mind.

These I would eat, cos I also had to stay awake,

even though I wasn't watching the films.

And by then I was addicted to these damn things anyway, so...

So, Barry used to shave, like, to within an inch of his skin.

I mean, literally, you could see the blood kind of popping on his skin

from where the blade had kind of...

And he had hair that was, like, gelled and, like, sharky,

and very deep-blue eyes.

And one day I said to him, "Barry, where do you get this stuff from, man?

Cos I can just go straight to them instead of keep having to wait

for sort of middle of the night on Saturday to get the gear, you know."

And he was like, "The Iranian embassy."

I remember one of my most embarrassing moments here,

and I think I nearly lost my job over it.

I was supposed to be in the ticket office, selling tickets.

One of the ushers, he was smoking mushrooms,

and he handed me this... this thing with mushrooms in it.

The next thing I knew, the doors opened

and these monsters walked in.

(Snarling)

(Menacing music plays)

And Louis and I hid underneath the desk and both of us were like, "Fuck!"

The tentacles were banging on the... on the glass, wanting to buy tickets.

(Monster laughing)

And then I think we just basically gave away a whole pile of tickets

to just get them away from us.

(Monster laughs)

So I wonder if my character, Danny, from, um, Withnail

would have gone to the Scala if... if it was around in 1969,

and I have to say I think he would, you know, uh...

I'm not sure if smoking huge amounts of weed

is gonna keep you awake all night,

but I think he would probably attempt to sell you that on that understanding.

"It's a long time till dawn, man.

It's... Well, it's gonna be six or seven, eight, nine hours.

You need something to keep you going, keep you interested in what's happening."

Yeah, he'd have been there.

I remember an amazing New Year's Eve coming to see Pink Narcissus.

I'd never seen anything like this in my life.

It was probably the most psychedelic of all the films

you could ever, ever imagine,

and just shocking and beautiful,

and just completely, you know, really, really blew me away.

To me, it was just like a very psychedelic, dreamlike experience

every time I came here.

There was always something strange and weird

and, like, did that really happen?

Did I just see that?

Did that night actually exist?

(Man on radio) Can anybody hear me?

We found something. We found something.

One of my favourite memories of it was going to see an all-nighter.

I sat next to this bloke and he was really drunk.

He started talking along, and someone at the front said, "Will you shut up?"

And it was, um, The Thing.

And the guy next to me shouted to the whole cinema and he said,

"Shut up or I'll tell you the ending."

So everyone's like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa."

And he goes, "It's the Black bloke and the bloke with the beard. Everyone else dies."

(Laughs)

One man versus 300. It was pretty good, you know, pretty impressive.

No one could get away. We were captured. He was shouting it out.

It wasn't like... It wasn't like he was whispering it to me.

He was broadcasting this to the whole cinema.

The guys down the front were like, "Shut the fuck up!" Then that was it.

He just went, "No, this is the end of this film for all of you." (Laughs)

(Screeches)

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

You know, we loved our audiences but they were difficult sometimes to shift.

I mean, I remember one morning I was clearing out.

I was walking down all the rows with my trash bag

to pick up rubbish and polystyrene cups

and the bits of sandwiches

and all sorts of other strange things that people might have left.

I was clearing row by row and there was a guy at the back.

I'd shouted to him, "Oi, wake up, go home!"

And he didn't respond.

He'd been, I think, asleep for the entire night.

I think he might have bought a ticket so he could go to sleep.

So, eventually, when I got to his row, um, I shouted at him again.

"Oi, mate, mate, come on, fuck off!"

Didn't move. So I grabbed him... and ripped his arm right off.

You have to understand, this is really early in the morning.

I am exhausted.

We've just had a night of A Nightmare on Elm Street 1, 2, 3, 4.

I don't know how many there were. It just went on and on and on.

So, he suddenly jolts upright

while I'm standing there with my arm... his arm in my hand.

He stares at me and goes, "You cunt."

Grabs his prosthetic limb, which it turns out it was,

and storms out of the building, leaving me... slightly shocked, still.

Seeing The Terminator, being the last film of an all-nighter,

and, like, watching it... hearing the Brad Fiedel kind of music

going doom-doom, doom, doom-doom,

and then waking up just as, um, she's driving away,

going, "There's a storm coming."

(Laughs)

And having the whole film compressed into, like, 30 seconds

and then waking up freezing,

and then staggering out into the street in King's Cross.

I'll be back.

I always remember staggering out in the morning,

feeling quite ill, you know, as dawn is breaking

and you've just watched six films,

you know, three of which you only remember in fragments.

But there was nowhere else to get that intense experience.

(Menacing music plays)

(Stewart Lee) Coming out into King's Cross in the morning was always odd.

I remember, trying to get from here to the train station,

something weird would happen.

Like, a bloke went past in a car once,

standing up in a car with the top off,

and threw loads of liquid over me and went,

"Do you like that? That's my piss."

I remember, at about six in the morning on... in 1990 sometime.

People would come up to you and go, "Oh, it's a nice day, isn't it?"

About six in the morning. "Yeah." "Do you wanna come back to my place?"

You know, like some kind of stupid Monty Python sketch.

Anybody else going out?

(Fast-paced music plays)

(Mark Valen) My first all-nighter that I managed was for the Alice in Wonderland party.

It was part of this '60s psychedelic revivalism

that was happening in London in the mid-'80s.

And it was very popular, and so...

the natural progression was, "Let's go to a bigger venue, the Scala,

and then we can show all-night movies."

So the place was packed. It was sold out.

And things were going OK during the course of the evening

until, I wanna say, like, three or four in the morning.

I happened to be in... I guess I was in the café upstairs,

and I got a call from a cashier at the front desk saying,

"Mark, the police and the fire department are both here to see you.

Could you come downstairs, please?"

And, oh, my God, I just suddenly had visions

of ending up in prison that night.

So I came down, very cool, calm and collected.

"Yes? Can I help you?"

And, um, they asked if we had a window at the top of the building

that was large enough that somebody could pass through.

And I was, "What do you mean?"

And he said, "Well, there's a body on the pavement outside your cinema

and we think somebody might have jumped out of it,

but we need to go up and see what's up on the top."

So I was like, "OK, I'll show you through."

And this was where I really got scared,

because all these kids were just, like, flung-out on acid or whatever,

splayed on... throughout the auditorium, watching the movie or whatever,

and I thought, "They're gonna... They're just gonna know."

But they didn't care.

I marched them up to the top of the stairs and to where the men's loo was,

and, sure enough, there was two, um, lockups

and one of them was locked from the inside.

And so they asked for permission to kick the door in.

And, sure enough, the window was open.

So what had happened was this boy had actually jumped out of the window.

It was, I think, four storeys high.

So it was, you know, I mean, a real shocker.

And the police and the fire department, though, handled it very professionally,

as far as, like, they didn't close down the cinema, surprisingly.

The party kept going. They just wanted the facts and the details.

So I went back out front with them, answered various questions,

and they said, "All right, thank you. We'll let you know if we have any questions."

So I called JoAnne. I was just, like, mortified.

And, um... and a few days later, in the office...

I mean, there was just nothing else I could do about it. Um...

And a few days later in the office I got a phone call

and a woman said, um, that...

She said, "Can I speak to one of the managers?"

I said, "Speaking."

And she said, "Yes, um, I'm calling because my brother is the person

who committed suicide in your cinema the other night."

And I was like... I was just so... I felt so bad. I apologised.

I said, "This is a terrible thing.

I... I... You know, I don't think there was anything to do with the event

that might have caused it, but I don't know, I'm really sorry."

And she goes, "No, I'm calling you to tell you

your cinema had nothing to do with this.

In fact, he was manic-depressive."

It was very sad and...

He had tried to commit suicide once before, uh...

I guess jumping off a bridge, so...

It was... It was a real tragedy.

But, I mean, the fact that she did that was...

It sort of took a weight of guilt off my shoulders,

cos I really did wonder, like, what led to this circumstance.

(Menacing music plays)

(Ali Kayley) I worked at the Scala

during that time when King's Cross was a pretty shitty place

and was not... not an easy place to be walking through.

(Graham Humphreys) It was always a bit sleazy anyway,

but, literally, we're at a point now

where you're literally wading through syringes

and puddles of blood on the pavement.

- (Smashing glass) - (Sirens wail)

And I remember a policeman saying to me one day,

"The bullet's not going to go round you",

when there'd been an incident outside.

There was a lot of drug dealing going on,

uh, prostitution,

and it was pretty sleazy, even in the daytime, you know.

I just do remember hearing about there being a human turd

on the footsteps of the Scala building.

I mean, that's King's Cross, though.

It was a pretty dirty place at that time.

Hence the brutal beauty of the Scala Cinema.

It was a really, really difficult time.

All of the forces that shaped London,

and Britain in general,

via Thatcherism, were already in place, you know.

Councils were starting to disappear.

Culture was under threat, you know. Um...

Many of us who were into independent cinema had started to make films

which were directly about the moment we were living in, you know.

So it was in that kind of context that, um, the Scala became, for me,

a sort of refuge.

It was an extremely chaotic time, with AIDS...

Thatcher, Clause 28,

the miners, all of that.

And I was kind involved in that a bit,

because I was putting on benefits where I could

or donating takings... some takings to the miners.

I was really struck by the number of benefits

that used to happen at the Scala,

cos it was such a wonderfully welcoming queer space,

not just for the films and for the all-nighters that used to happen here.

So, you know, they put their money where their heart and their politics was.

So, you've benefits for Switchboard

and benefits for the proposed new London Lesbian and Gay Centre.

Later, the new fledgling Terrence Higgins Trust,

there's benefits for that.

And on 10th April, 1984,

HM Customs and Excise raided the Gay's The Word bookshop

and took away thousands of pounds' worth of books, all American stock.

You know, the community was completely shocked

at what had actually happened,

because whatever else Gay's The Word was, it was not a sex shop.

It was set up specifically to be a bookshop about ideas.

What I find quite extraordinary and very moving

is that on 1st May, two, three weeks later,

the Scala has a benefit for Gay's The Word, to support it.

So, thank you.

Straight in there to just show your support

and this was not acceptable.

People forget now that there was quite a strong gay movement

in this country through the '80s,

which is why we got hammered by the mainstream press,

and then hammered politically,

because we were raising our head above the parapet.

Many people I was fighting alongside were very ill

and didn't have much time left,

and they were angry and they wanted to make a difference.

It felt like everyone were allies.

We were all allies against the Tory government.

When you were here, you were sort of safe on some level.

You really felt like you were protecting your freedom.

Watching amazing films here or going to fundraisers,

you felt like you were actively taking part in something that was really...

It really mattered.

The Scala resided in our imagination as a community

as this place that offered an alternative reality,

an alternative narrative to what was going on around us.

And a lot of people galvanised around that.

(Caroline Catz) All these restrictions that were being placed on us constantly

by the government

were just getting more and more, you know, intrusive, homophobic,

and blatantly just...

They were just really fucked-up.

And it did feel lawless and it felt free.

It felt like the right place to be

in a climate that was really oppressive.

Yeah, it was kind of worrying, cos you could feel

things were closing in on the place a bit, you know.

And I think it was a marked venue, to be honest with you,

because the stuff that was going on there was very close to the edge, you know,

and it was quite risqué at times, you know, uh...

But I think they... they had... they had an eye on it,

and maybe it was...

They were just waiting for that ideal moment,

which came later,

to really clamp down on it and finish its... its run.

(Man) There's no turning back now.

(James O'Brien) I was a first-year student at the London School of Economics in 1992,

and there was a poster up in the student union

saying that the Lindsay Anderson film, If...

was gonna be displayed at the cinema that I'd heard of

but I hadn't got around to visiting.

And alongside it, a "surprise film" was due to be broadcast as well.

So the certificate comes on the screen

and it's A Clockwork Orange.

(Fast-paced music plays)

I knew it was controversial. I think I knew it was banned.

I must have known it was banned cos I was such a Malcolm McDowell fan.

So I was there much more for the Malcolm McDowell fandom

than for any sort of enthusiasm

for A Clockwork Orange itself or Kubrick in general.

And someone definitely shouted,

"About bloody time!" or something like that.

So there was a sense of this being quite a culturally important moment,

or at least a... at least a moment,

and proper applause and, you know, sort of proper cheering.

But, yeah, it was definitely the fella that shouted, "About bloody time",

or words to that effect,

that made me sort of do almost a double-take

and realise that I don't think we're supposed to be watching this film.

And, um, obviously we stayed.

It wasn't really a big deal,

but in the days and weeks and months and year after that screening

it became a really big deal.

A former manager at London's Scala Cinema

was convicted of breach of copyright today

after showing the banned film A Clockwork Orange.

Jane Giles was conditionally discharged

and ordered to pay £1,000

towards prosecution costs by Wells Street magistrates.

And your defence was what? You just wanted to show the movie?

Did you plead ignorance?

Yeah, but they felt bad for you

because you weren't trying to make money for yourself or anything.

You were just trying to show a movie that your audience was dying to see.

But I'm playing prosecutor now. Could you have rented it legally?

You couldn't have gotten the film to show at the Scala legally

through proper choices?

So you had to go to pirates.

So you almost went to jail for movies.

I did go to jail for movies.

I got busted making Mondo Trasho and they took us to prison.

Well, not prison, jail.

And then we had a trial and everything and we got off.

But we were charged with conspiracy to commit indecent exposure.

So I was arrested for movies, and so were you.

You see, that's a good thing to have on your résumé, I think.

It felt like the end of days.

We had had a massive fundraising campaign.

It felt like all of culture had come out to support us.

But, sadly, it wasn't enough.

(Gentle music plays)

But we also knew that, like you do,

you need to celebrate a life as well as mourn a death.

We may have lost something,

but there will be a future somewhere, somehow.

And we've seen how inspirational the Scala has been

to so many artists, musicians and filmmakers.

And that future is with us and we are benefiting from it now.

(Gentle music continues)

(Gentle music continues)

(Woman) Hello!

(Man) When the Scala closed, uh...

I was here for the big party we had the final night.

I watched King Kong.

And we went up on the roof.

Obviously, it was a sad night.

But it was a celebratory night as well.

The Scala went out, um, as it began,

with a lot of happy film-going people having a good time

and watching a great movie.

(Dramatic music plays)

(Chris Watson) It's a cathedral-like space in the centre of London,

and it has this beating heart, which is the Northern line,

sort of coming up, volcano-like, through the entire fabric of the building.

It's such a rich place to explore.

Right at the apex, um, of the Scala, on the roof,

there's a small, um, entrance hole, a service entrance,

into what is above the rest of the building.

And it's one of those magical places,

because I don't know what's in there, it's very dark,

but whatever's in there makes these amazing sounds,

because there's a deep, low, quite malevolent rumble, which...

You can't tell where it comes from because it's low-frequency.

And then these high-frequency...

intermittent high-frequency whines and grinds and whispers.

It was just a magical place to explore.

It's such a privilege to get into these places,

because quite often we're excluded from them.

But when you do, you realise the sounds of this place

is a big part of the character of it.

And it's speaking all the time.

Even when there's nobody in it, it resonates.

And the apex of that

is within this dark, mysterious place...

(Laughs)

...called the void.

It reminded me of Eraserhead, some of Alan Splet's fantastic sound work.

(Howling wind)

(Clicks, clangs)

- There's the rumble of the trains. - (Distant rumbling)

Is it the rumble of trains?

Or is it the beginning of the end out there

in the post-apocalyptic wasteland?

There's lots of memories here and there's lots of ghosts here.

Lots of people that I used to come here with are no longer with us as well, so...

Very dear friends that I spent many great times at the Scala with

sadly didn't make it.

So, yeah, there are ghosts here for me.

(Barry Adamson) I came here to see a film, The Man with the Golden Arm,

and right from the opening credits I was completely hooked.

And I was very much attached to the story

because of my own wayward life by that stage.

And I'd already sort of had a grounding, if you like,

in terms of being amongst like-minded people,

and I felt sort of safe to be here at all hours of the night

in whatever state that I was in.

But, suddenly, what seemed to sort of snap me out of everything

was seeing this title sequence.

And I was in the middle of making an album called Moss Side Story,

and I wanted something out there first to say,

"This is what I'm about, this is what film has done to me and for me."

And it seemed the perfect combination of those two things.

It was like a kind of, um, fertilising ground

for the youth of London

who were artistic in some way

and who wanted to make a living in the arts, you know,

and who were just feeding off all this stuff that was in there

and off each other, you know.

And I can't think of any other cinema that did that.

I loved going to rep cinemas,

and out of all of them, the Scala was... was... was tops.

There was something protean, Catholic,

uh, multicultural, in the broadest sense, not just in the ethnic sense,

about the Scala.

Losing the Scala was seriously a blow.

It's been part of my history for so many years now, you know.

I mean, I came here as a young man 40 years ago.

It became us, and we became it.

It was part of everybody being able

to be who they wanted to be and needed to be.

I think of the Scala not as a building or something that's inanimate,

I think of it as a... like a sister, and everybody in it were my family.

I was brought up by the people there.

I really knew nothing when I came to the Scala.

And the content of the films or the staff that were working there

helped me figure out life, also figure out my place,

that it was acceptable to be queer, that it was acceptable to be...

to struggle with my own gender and my own gender identity.

Because it was never questioned.

Whatever I was, whatever clothes I turned up in,

or whatever mood I was in, it was OK.

So it became a holding place.

And I think for a lot of queers and a lot of weirdos generally,

this cinema was somewhere to go where we were with our own people.

(Rhythmic instrumental music plays)

(Cathi Unsworth) You know what it is? It's that song, "The Green Door".

That's what I always think of.

"Eyeball peeping through a smoky crowd behind the green door."

And you can, you know, you can hear the piano tinkling, and you want to get in.

And in the Scala, you could get in, you could get behind the green door

and you could spend an amazing night.

And perhaps you can't remember it properly now,

but perhaps that's the whole point.

(Upbeat instrumental music plays)

This is for all you rock 'n' roll animals out there.

(Cheering)

All you street-walking cheetahs.

Here we go!

(Cheering)

(Upbeat instrumental music continues)

(Music fades)

(Snarls)

(Slow jazzy music plays)

(Music ends)

My goodness. Why is there a toilet on stage?

I suppose there's a reason.

Shall we go down and have a look?

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