Scala!!!
Jane Giles and Ali Catterall’s documentary “Scala!!!” is about a legendary, notorious, hugely influential and long-gone London theater. But it’ll appeal to anyone whose formative moviegoing years were defined by eccentric, usually urban or college-town cinemas that programmed whatever the folks who ran the place found interesting and switched lineups every day or two. There are increasingly few such venues left, alas, with real estate having become usuriously priced all over the world and “content” having largely replaced the notion of “entertainment,” a thing one sought outside of the home. Witnesses to the Scala’s history include patrons, management and staff, many of whom were or became notable filmmakers or programmers, including John Waters, Ben Wheatley, Ralph Brown, Mary Harron, Beeban Kidron, and Isaac Julien.
The thrill of transformation is a subtext. The Scala didn’t just show films, it stimulated interest in cinema, challenged and offended viewers (on purpose), and pushed the limits of what was then considered acceptable to screen in England. It championed pro-union and LGBTQ-friendly films, early works by subsequently legendary directors (including David Lynch’s “Eraserhead”), and underground movies that blurred arthouse and grind-house categories. One of the more fascinating tales is about the durable appeal of 1975’s “Thundercrack,” American filmmaker Curt McDowell’s fusion of an “old dark house” movie, a surrealist art flick, and a hardcore porno. “It was screened at the Scarlet constantly, probably from the day the cinema opened right to the time it closed,” says says Alan Jones, co-presenter of London’s Shock Around The Clock horror festival at the Scala, and one of the film’s most entertaining interviewees. “Legend was that there was only ever one print of Thundercrack here at the Scarlet, and it was run until eventually it fell apart.”
Located in the King’s Cross neighborhood of London before it became gentrified, the Scala started out as a traditional theater, closed and reopened, and then for 15 years was essentially a film club catering to buffs of one sort or another. During the later era, the film’s focus, it was a “ground zero” locations for the budding fan culture scene in the UK, popularizing John Waters “trash” trilogy of “Pink Flamingos,” “Female Trouble” and “Desperate Living” and films by Russ Meyer, and hosting the first Avengers convention, meetings of The Laurel and Hardy Appreciation Society, and The Shock Around the Clock festival (described by critic Kim Newman as “Kind of like Woodstock for the bizarro generation”).
The venue always struggled to keep its doors open but eventually succumbed to a variety of adversities, including rising costs, a siphoning away of repertory and art house viewers by home video. At the end, the killing blow might’ve been a lawsuit from Warner Bros. that was filed after the theater decided to disobey Stanley Kubrick’s decision to pull the film from UK distribution after what appeared to be copycat killings; after the Scala Film Club lost the case, it went into receivership, and while it reopened in 1999 and added two floors, it focused on live entertainment.
