If any British movie theatre deserved three exclamation marks it is the Scala, the subject of this richly enjoyable and informative documentary from Jane Giles and Ali Catterall. It was a unique grindhouse slash alt-cinephile repertory house which inspired generations of film-makers, artists and musicians, and its notional “club” status allowed it to show all sorts of outrageous and transgressive material: horror, sex, satire, drugs, vampires and bikers. The Scala also championed progressive, LGBT and pro-union causes.
The cinema was housed in a wonderfully stately building with a cupola dome in London’s scuzzy and pre-gentrified King’s Cross between 1981 and 1993; the building in fact now survives and thrives as a nightclub. The Scala also became legendary for its wonderful monthly poster-style foldout sheets advertising the forthcoming attractions which were sexier and more exciting than the earnest booklets in other cinemas; it became a movie theatre with the excitement of a 24/7 punk festival, not a college of further education. And this was the pre-Google, pre-YouTube age, when simply finding out about the existence of films, never mind actually seeing them, was very difficult.
As this film recounts, what made it special were the all-nighters (I remember the freaky experience), which in an age of dreary licensing laws and oppressively early last trains were a great late-night resource in the London of the Thatcherite 80s. In the end the Scala’s closure was not simply due to issues around rents and attendance figures, but also partly a battle about cinema and free expression. The programmers dared to show A Clockwork Orange which Stanley Kubrick had withdrawn from UK distribution on the grounds that he was getting blamed for copycat violence, and its distributors Warner Bros hit the Scala with a lawsuit that helped finish it off. A very entertaining madeleine for movie-going of the analogue age.
