Long before immersive cinema was a thing, there was King’s Cross’s Scala Cinema. For moviegoers in ’90s London, a visit was a portal to a heady but frill-free world of movies – a big-screen Babylon where bad taste and high art were showcased with equal enthusiasm, anything went during its famous late-night marathons (the toilets could get pretty seedy) and the two resident cats, Huston and Roy, gazed on it all with a seen-it-all-before nonchalance, cadging snacks from indulgent audience members.
As captured by ‘Scala!!!’, a wild and gonzo new documentary from co-directors Ali Catterall and one-time Scala programmer Jane Giles, it was also a gateway drug for young filmmakers-to-be like Ben Wheatley and Peter Strickland. The latter, the visionary behind films like ‘Berberian Sound Studio’, ‘The Duke of Burgundy’ and ‘Flux Gourmet’, shares his formative memories of going to the Scala as a teenager.
‘I first went to the Scala in 1990, a 16-year-old sixth former from Reading. I'd been to London twice with my parents to see “Star Wars” and “Return of the Jedi”, but that was my first solo trip and it was a bit of an unknown. I’d wanted to see “Eraserhead”, which I’d read about in Empire Magazine. Its iconic poster with the hair and the backlit backdrop was very popular with goths in Reading. I was never in that world but I took a punt, and the Scala was where it was showing.
I used to go to the Odeon and Reading’s ABC Cinema, so it was like nothing I'd experienced. It was like “Alice in Wonderland” – a portal to another world.
I loved the way the double-bills were programmed. They’d put Jodorowsky's “Santa Sangre” together with Georges Franju's “Eyes Without a Face”, or “The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover” and Luis Bunuel's “Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”. The Scala destroyed the hierarchy between pornography, horror and arthouse. I saw Jane Campion's “Sweetie” there, a Russ Meyer triple bill, and this sadomasochistic all-dayer of “Maîtresse”, “Venus in Furs” and “Mano Destra”. I wish I'd gone to the all-nighters but they felt way out of my league – I was too young.
The Scala was like Alice in Wonderland – a portal to another world
I remember tickets being very cheap – about £2.50 – and you had to join, which cost about a pound. It was a loophole to get around censorship, because you could show X-rated films at film clubs. You’d go up the stairs, through this café area covered in graffiti with film references, and through these other doors and into the dark. The Scala had a very different flavour of darkness. You could sense that stuff had happened there.
It smelt a bit sweaty, a bit beery and smoky, with a slight smell of cleaning products. I’d heard all these tales of drugs but I was just a 16-year-old kid so those tales are for other people. The films were transformative enough, you didn't need anything else. I'm more of a dog person than a cat person, but I remember a homeless person feeding the cinema’s cats during a screening of “The Night of the Hunter” and quoting all the dialogue. It was like an impromptu version of Secret Cinema.
Before the Scala my film knowledge was very pedestrian. I'd watch whatever they’d show at my local cinema: “Crocodile Dundee”, “Cocktail”, those kinds of films. It was very transformative; it made me realise that cinema serves many purposes. I saw “Wonka” recently and I love those narrative films, but I also love films that are experiential and are just about atmosphere. It just triggered this sense of: “Ah, this is what I'm into!” for me. You had the “canon”, sacred cows like Bergman, Tarkovsky and Hitchcock, and then there was the Scala showing (cult pornographic comedy) “Thundercrack!”, which was anarchic and bad taste.
On a selfish level, I always wanted to make a film to be shown at the Scala, but that never happened. That was a huge ambition. There was nowhere like it.
‘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’ is in UK cinemas Jan 5. Read our review here.