All language subtitles for SCALA.2023.720p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-JFF_eng_sdh

(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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