Scala!!!
In Jane Giles and Ali Catterall’s lively documentary, the most individual of all London cinemas is celebrated by those who loved it.
The makers of this exhilarating documentary may have chosen a title that incorporates no less than three exclamation marks but they have also opted to go further. While the short title may be thought expressive enough, they nevertheless offer a longer version of it, namely Scala!!! Or the Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World’s Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits. In view of that, even viewers unaware of London's unique Scala Cinema which ran from 1978 to 1993 cannot claim that they were not alerted to what is featured in this film. Nor are they likely to emerge from a screening of it declaring that the description was in anyway hyperbolical. Many cinema enthusiasts possess treasured memories of halls which they relished when young, but the Scala has a unique standing as a place so individual that London has known nothing else in any way comparable. Should the longer title still leave American viewers in any doubt about the character of the Scala, they can take note that one interviewee in this film opts to compare it with the New York grindhouse cinemas found around the city’s sleazy 42nd Street. For that matter, John Waters is on hand here to tell us that, although he visited the Scala only once, he treasures the memory because he found there the audience which he regarded as perfect for his films.
A book about the cinema already exists. It was published in 2018 and written by Jane Giles, a noted programmer at the Scala who is also the director here along with Ali Catterall. But, rather than this film being an unnecessary addition, it provides a perfect opportunity to hear directly from a whole range of people who were devotees of the Scala in its heyday. Some of them were on the staff, but the majority were audience members who willingly paid a small sum for membership, an arrangement that enabled the cinema to function as a club that could show films not passed by the British Board of Film Censors. Also included here is the well-known producer Stephen Woolley who was involved in setting up the Scala in 1978 at a site off the Tottenham Court Road, although it was a move to King’s Cross which established the Scala Cinema in Pentonville Road in the building forever identified with it and which housed it for over a decade.
Scala!!! is presented as a film in three titled chapters, the first dealing with its early history and the third covering its disintegration following an unauthorised screening of A Clockwork Orange in 1992 which led to a breach of copyright claim that proved to be a death knell. But the main section of the film is the middle one named to capture the essence of the place, “The Sodom Odeon”. That element was not the whole story as is evidenced by the fact that the films which I saw there were Citizen Kane and Clouzot’s The Fiends. Furthermore we learn of screenings which brought Laurel and Hardy to the Scala’s big screen at a time when they were usually only seen on television. But nevertheless the special reputation of the Scala cinematically lay in its emphasis on films that the censors of the day would not accept. Key examples that are included among the vast number of Scala films represented here in extracts are Thundercrack!, Pink Flamingos and Faster, Pussycat! Kill Kill. This rebellious stance with its defiance of censorship made the Scala a natural home for explicit lesbian and gay films of the day and for the more extreme horror films and that in turn built up a youthful audience whose alternative lifestyles had full expression in the cinema both on screen and off including a range of sexual activity particularly apparent during all night screenings. The cinema’s gay aspect took on another form in such special events as a benefit to support Gay’s the Word bookshop after a police raid.
It's a matter of taste as to whether or not one relishes the more lurid items in the Scala programme but it is striking how many of its supporters went on to become notable filmmakers (several appear here in addition to John Waters, namely John Akonfrah, Ben Wheatley, Isaac Julien, Peter Strickland and Mary Harron). In any case one can take pleasure in Scala!!! whatever one’s cinematic taste: to hear the enthusiastic nostalgia expressed by the contributors is engaging in itself and the film’s directors in conjunction with the editors Edward Mills, and Andy Starke have given us a film that is exceedingly well put together. Recollections by former staff members include splendidly idiosyncratic details extending even to references to two deaths. One of these was followed up rather touchingly by a sympathetic phone call while the other as reported here takes on the flavour of black comedy (“I think I have a dead body in my office"). Even more comically macabre is a third incident involving somebody with a prosthetic limb which would not have been out of place had it occurred within a film that the Scala audience were watching.
Anybody with fond memories of the Scala will welcome this film, but it is also very well made in its own right and will stand as a valuable screen record of the history of a unique cinema.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring John Waters, Mark Moore, David McGillivray, Alan Jones, Vic Roberts, Ali Kayley, Jane Giles, Ralph Brown, Paul Burston, Kim Newman, Douglas Hart, John Akomfrah, Mary Harron, Stewart Lee, Stephen Woolley, Lisa Power, Carolina Catz, Mark Valen, Jayne Pilling, Adam Buxton, Isaac Julien, Peter Strickland, Ben Wheatley.
Dir Jane Giles and Ali Catterall, Pro Alan Marke, Jim Reid and Andy Starke, Screenplay Jane Giles and Ali Catterall, Ph Sarah Appleton, Ed Edward Mills and Andy Starke, Music Barry Adamson, Animation Osbert Parker.
Fifty Foot Woman/Ani-Worlds/Channel X-BFI Distribution. Available on BFI Player and BFI Blu-Ray from 22 January.
96 mins. UK. 2023. UK Rel: 5 January 2024. Cert. 18.
