(Jane Giles and Ali Catterall, UK, 2023 96 minutes)
When I first read a description of Jane Giles' and Ali Catterall's 2023 documentary Scala!!! in last year's Cucalorus Film Festival guide (below), I thought, "That sounds like fun," and I added it to my itinerary. Better yet, Giles, a former Scala Cinema programmer, would be in attendance with Vic Roberts, a former usher at the London movie palace, who had since relocated to Wilmington, North Carolina, where Cucalorus takes place.
During Britain's post-punk Thatcher years, London's legendary Scala cinema offered community refuge with a programme ranging from established classics and offbeat cult hits to sexploitation, horror, Kung Fu and LGBTQIA+ titles. Nudging the boundaries of convention, the cavernous picture palace acted as a source of inspiration for movie lovers and creatives. Featuring a cornucopia of interviews, archive and film clips, this is an engrossing tribute to an indelible legacy.
My biggest fear wasn't that I wouldn't enjoy Scala!!!, since I was certain that a film about a London repertory house that specialized in the odd, the offbeat, and the transgressive would be right up my alley. I mean, what's not to love? In their first go-round as documentarians, Giles, the programmer and former acquisitions head, and Catterall, the cultural critic and author, might have cocked things up, but they would've had to work pretty hard to make something dull out of the materials at their disposal.
No, my biggest fear is that the whole thing would play like a party that I had missed or to which I hadn't been invited. Giles had fun as a programmer, Roberts had fun as an usher, and Catterall had fun as an attendee–though the film doesn't stint on any of the cinema's hilarious and hair-raising challenges–but I never made it to the Scala when I lived in London in the mid-1980s. In fact, I don't remember hearing about it, and I thought I was pretty plugged in by reading NME, Melody Maker, and Sounds.
Notably, NME writer Nick Kent puts in an appearance, mostly to talk about the time David Bowie arranged for Lou Reed and Iggy & the Stooges to play the Scala in 1972, six years before it became a cinema (he goes into detail in the extended interview).
In case you're experiencing FOMO, Kent claims that Lou wasn't all that, but Iggy knocked his socks clean off. Until I watched Scala!!!, I had no idea that Mick Rock's iconic cover shots for Reed's 1972 Transformer and the Stooges' 1973 Raw Power emerged from the two-night London engagement.
During its run from 1978 to 1993, the King's Cross cinema, which started out on Tottenham Street, wasn't exactly a secret--John Waters and other Americans were aware of it--but I was spending so much time immersed in the city's music scene that I missed out on a lot of its cinematic happenings. Before the Cucalorus screening began, I told Giles I regretted that I didn't make it to the Scala when I had the chance, and she assured me the film would make me feel as if I had. It's a bold claim, but she was right.
I'm not sure exactly how she and Catterall pulled it off, but they did. On the surface, they aren't doing anything that hasn't been done before.
They interviewed actors, musicians, and filmmakers who attended screenings, programmed series, like the Shock Around the Clock horror all-nighters, or had their work shown at the Scala, and gathered up all the calendars, photographs, and video clips they could find. All of those things might have been sufficient, except they also hired animator Osbert Parker to recreate incidents that weren't otherwise documented or documentable and musician and graphic designer Luke Insect to add buzzy snap, crackle and pop to the inter-titles.
Then, they hired solo player Barry Adamson, a former member of Magazine and the Bad Seeds, to compose the finger-snapping, Elmer Bernstein-like score (Giles and Adamson also appear in the documentary as subjects).
In writing about Scala!!!, it's hard not to emulate the film's discursive nature, because the interpersonal connections are endless, but filmmakers Ben Wheatley and Peter Strickland, who both put in appearances, were Scala attendees (Wheatley's interview is audio-only). Luke Insect worked on the former's 2013 historical horror A Field in England and Adamson appeared, as an actor, in the latter's 2018 haute couture horror In Fabric.
I've always been drawn to documentaries that don't just depict a person or a phenomenon, but recapture the look or feel of the thing being depicted, and that's what they've done. The breakneck pace and staticky graphics emulate the punk, post punk, and new wave styles of the films screened at the Scala, in addition to the music attendees were buying and/or making and the calendars, which doubled as eye-catching posters for punters to tack up on walls and refrigerators, as I'm sure many did. If you lived in a hip college town or plugged-in metropolis at the time, you probably did something similar.
Five years before Giles became a filmmaker, she compiled all of the two-dimensional artifacts mentioned above plus written text into SCALA CINEMA 1978-1993, a large-format book through FAB Press. The reissue is available through Severin Films, which released a fabulous three-disc version of the film earlier this month, complete with commentary tracks, festival footage, featurettes, extended interviews, outtakes, short films screened at the Scala, and much more. Details on some of the special features below.
Intentionally or otherwise, it's as if Giles and Catterall had been rehearsing for the documentary, since he edited the book, except not all authors, editors, and programmers make a successful transition to filmmaking.
If I haven't said much about the films they cite or subjects they interviewed, it's because I would prefer for viewers to be as surprised and delighted as I was. I'll just say that a few of my favorite film writers, like Kim Newman and Alan Jones, and filmmakers, like Strickland and Mary Harron, put in appearances. Plenty of comedians, too, which adds some laughs.
They also roped in people with whom I was previously unfamiliar, like Roberts, a very engaging raconteur. Since Cucalorus, I've been following her, Giles, and Catterall on Instagram, and Roberts' posts about LGBTQ history, her British heritage, and her years as a London bus mechanic can't be beat. If she wrote a book, I'd read it–and she should. As she says in the film, "For a lot of queers and a lot of weirdos generally this cinema was somewhere to go where we were with our own people." At the Cucalorus screening, she handed me a Scala!!! pin, which I've worn on my jacket ever since. I also learned through her account that Giles makes a mean meat pie.
As for the Scala-screened shorts, all were new to me. I didn't enjoy them equally, though I wouldn't consider that a failing, especially since each one has something of interest or import to offer. Chris Newby's 1991 film Relax, for instance, makes extensive use of textural, high-contrast close-ups to depict the fear of AIDS, while the 41-minute collective-made Divide and Rule - Never! incorporates reggae and post punk music alongside unfiltered commentary from the youth population to reflect on racism in the UK.
The set also includes an exclusive Kier-La Janisse documentary about US rep houses, including the Fox Venice Theater featured in Messiah of Evil, and Michael Clifford's 1990 documentary short Scala from which the filmmakers extracted archival footage of S’Express's Mark Moore in his younger years, in addition to Scala cats Huston and Roy, who would slink around legs in the dark, leading unsuspecting punters to think the place had rats. And maybe it did, based on its location above a rumbling, bustling tube station.
Right: Huston manning the box office
Speaking of which, if I wasn't as thrilled by David Lewis's 1989 B&W Dead Cat, which lives up to its title, at least it eschews any cat torture, thank goodness--unlike Harmony Korine's Gummo eight years later–just a lot of maggot action. Love or loathe it, the inclusion is fitting in light of the participation of musician Genesis P-Orridge and Scala favorite Derek Jarman (Lewis's friend and mentor), an ominous score from GPO's Psychic TV, and Lewis's contextually rich commentary.
Severin Films' home video release comes complete with a classy, semi-gloss dust cover to hold the Blu-ray case, a fold-out Scala calendar-style listing of the special features, and even a numbered membership card.
The low-cost membership model allowed the cinema to screen films other UK cinemas couldn't, though not all kinds as their legal tussle over a screening of the banned-in-Britain A Clockwork Orange would prove. I doubt Stanley Kubrick intended his controversial film to strangle a cinema famed for screening controversial films, but it contributed to that very outcome.
In the end, though, the documentary isn't just about a cinema that flew too close to the sun. It gains in stature as a tribute to all cinemas and all programmers throughout the world who looked beyond the mainstream to entertain, to enlighten, and to shake up open-minded audience members.
In my case, as a Seattle film goer, that meant the University District's Neptune Theatre. Though relatively tame by comparison, it served as a much-loved rep house before transitioning to a music venue in the 2000s–and also produced a fold-out calendar–much as the Scala would in 1999.
Fortunately, eclectic rep houses, like the U District's all-volunteer Grand Illusion Cinema, which is raising funds for an unavoidable move, and Columbia City's Beacon Cinema, which celebrates its fifth anniversary this year, are still out there, though they're an endangered species due to the rise of home video in the 1980s and 1990s–which now seems almost quaint–and the monopolization of streaming nowadays–which relies on artistically-compromised cost-cutting, rapidly rising prices, and ever-decreasing attention spans. Along with the corporatization of everything that can possibly be corporatized.
If you find yourself reflecting on any of these things, Scala!!! could make you pretty despondent, but probably not while actually watching the documentary, since it's mostly a celebration–to which newcomers have been invited–of the kind of programming that allowed audience members to feel less alone and to find friends and collaborators who were also looking to be scared, to be surprised, to be turned-on, and even to be transformed, especially queer audience members during the height of the Thatcher era.
In other words, it's inspiring. It's inspiring that filmmakers with minimal experience--but invaluable knowledge and connections--made such a fantastic film, but it's also inspiring to hear from those who found the strength to live as their authentic selves from the films and folks they encountered, in addition to those encouraged to make art of their own.
I've lived with the film for two years now, having seen it in a theater last November and having revisited it on home video more recently, though even before I watched it for a second time, or even a third with commentary from the co-directors, I had come to the conclusion that Scala!!! is an all-timer.
I'm thrilled that it played at this year's Seattle International Film Festival, and I'm just as thrilled that it will be playing at The Beacon later this month. I only wish that any of its makers or contributors could be in attendance.
Beyond the pin and the conversation, Giles also set me up with a signed Davey Jones poster, which I had framed. It now hangs on my wall. The Viz artist's full-color poster plays an important part in the film, because he also depicted that which couldn't otherwise be depicted, like the time usher JoAnne Sellar, who would become PT Anderson's longtime producer, stumbled upon the body of an audience member who expired during one of the all-nighters or the time Shane McGowan took a whiz from the stands.
Just as veteran non-fiction filmmaker Thom Anderson's epic, essential 2003 essay film Los Angeles Plays Itself made me want to see every one of the 200 or so films he cites–and I've seen dozens since–Jane Giles and Ali Catterall's clip-filled documentary has made me want to see every one of the films they cite–yes, even the Curt McDowell/George Kuchar 1975 messterpiece Thundercrack!, a scandalous film the Scala screened almost as often as the Neptune screened midnight perennial The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
If inclined, you can now buy Thundercrack! or The Rocky Horror Picture Show on home video–though the former isn't available on streaming–but there's nothing quite like seeing an unhinged film with an unhinged audience. Scala!!! is the next best thing to having that exact experience.
Click here for my shorter 2023 review of the film (with shorter trailer).
Scala!!! plays The Beacon Cinema on Fri, Dec 27, and Sat, Dec 28, at 10pm. The film is available on home video in the UK through BFI and in the US through Severin. Images from me (Quinault wrapped around the Blu-ray set), Wikipedia (By No Swan So Fine - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0), Amazon (Transformer cover), Evening Standard (the Scala lobby), Severin Films (Graham Humphreys' cover design for the collector's edition Scala Book), Londonist (Huston the cat in 1990), The Stranger's EverOut (the Neptune Theatre marquee), and Scalarama (an assortment of programs).
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