Scala!!!

[GaryC]

I don’t know if this is mentioned in the film, but another part of Scala history is that it was the venue (in the same July 1972 weekend!) for the UK live debuts of both Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, photos from which became the covers of Transformer and Raw Power. There’s a commemorative plaque there now.

Yes, this is mentioned in the film. You can see Thurston Moore unveiling the plaque in it.

[GaryC]

And BFI Player are displaying an 18 certificate (for "strong real sex, nudity"), though there's no entry for the film on the BBFC database.

And now there is one.

[kubelkind]

The Thundercrack "content advice" on the BBFC database gave me a bigger laugh than I've had in quite a while, especially imagining whoever wrote it trying to keep a straight face. Does the presence of a home video certificate mean that someone in the UK has a release lined up? Radiance? Lets have a Curt McDowell box! A dream cum true. At the very least, his beautiful and poignant (and non-porno) feature Sparkle's Tavern needs rescuing from lo-res avi backchannel oblivion.

[MichaelB]

What with this and the recent surprise decision to wave through unambiguously hardcore footage in the extras for Indicator’s The Night of the Hunted, it seems as though there’s been a relaxation of policy, because previously they’d only pass clearly unsimulated sex at 18 if it was very brief or contextually justified (for instance, in the likes of The Lovers’ Guide).

Although The Good Old Naughty Days would most likely have to be snipped even at R18 thanks to a fleeting moment of bestiality, albeit at the mildest imaginable end of the scale.

[Altair]

a fleeting moment of bestiality, albeit at the mildest imaginable end of the scale.

Surely one of the most iconic lines ever written on this forum.

[GaryC]

The Thundercrack "content advice" on the BBFC database gave me a bigger laugh than I've had in quite a while, especially imagining whoever wrote it trying to keep a straight face. Does the presence of a home video certificate mean that someone in the UK has a release lined up? Radiance? Lets have a Curt McDowell box! A dream cum true. At the very least, his beautiful and poignant (and non-porno) feature Sparkle's Tavern needs rescuing from lo-res avi backchannel oblivion.

In the BFI Facebook group, Ben Stoddart says that a BFI disc release isn't planned, just the current stream on BFI Player.

[GaryC]

What with this and the recent surprise decision to wave through unambiguously hardcore footage in the extras for Indicator’s The Night of the Hunted, it seems as though there’s been a relaxation of policy, because previously they’d only pass clearly unsimulated sex at 18 if it was very brief or contextually justified (for instance, in the likes of The Lovers’ Guide).

Although The Good Old Naughty Days would most likely have to be snipped even at R18 thanks to a fleeting moment of bestiality, albeit at the mildest imaginable end of the scale.

I do wonder if there is any specific (legal) sexual content now that couldn't be passed at 18 and only at R18? Way back when, cum-shots were cut from The Pornographer and the DVD but not the cinema release of Romance, but I don't doubt they'd go through now. I thought then and, while I haven't rewatched it, I still think now that The Pornographer should have passed uncut at 18 as it's in no way a "sex work" but a serious and in my opinion rather dull drama which contains less than a minute of unsimulated sex in a film which runs 106 minutes. Whether or not the BBFC considers the film a "sex work" seems to be the difference between 18 and R18.

For the record, The Good Old Naughty Days was one of just three R18s passed for cinema release in the last thirty years. Another was Deep Throat in 2005, to enable a one-off screening at the Everyman as the documentary Inside Deep Throat (which was passed uncut at 18, though it included a hardcore clip from Deep Throat) was on release. Then in 2018 there was a short film called Four Play. As per the BBFC in its annual report: "In 2018, the makers of Four Play, a short explicit pornographic film, submitted the film with an R18 request for cinema classification. This is only the third R18-rated cinema film since 1993, and the film forms the centrepiece of a Channel 4 TV series in which a group of mothers, concerned by the abusive nature of much online pornography, make their own ‘ethical’ porn film. The television transmission of the documentary shows the mothers attending a private screening of Four Play, although any explicit detail is masked or obscured for TV transmission in accordance with Ofcom rules. Although the film does not technically require a BBFC age rating, given that private screenings do not need our authorisation, the makers intended to demonstrate that the film has been properly regulated and is within UK standards. Given that Four Play is a sex title featuring images of real sex but nothing abusive, harmful or illegal, we accordingly classified it R18."

[The Curious Sofa]

I remember seeing The Good Old Naughty Days at the Metro Cinema in Rupert St. and you had to get out a membership 24 hours before.

[MichaelB]

Yes, that was how places like the Scala and Everyman operated too. BBFC certificates are only compulsory for home video - with theatrical screenings, you can show anything you like provided (a) it doesn’t contain actively illegal material, and (b) you have the written permission of the local authority, which must be applied for no less than 28 days prior to the screening. (Or at least that was the case in the 1990s.)

Normally, Camden Council would award an advisory 18 certificate, but if the film had a particularly notorious reputation - Salò, for instance - they’d impose an R18 and would insist on screenings exclusively under club conditions.

(Although in practice all screenings were under club conditions - not strictly necessary for 99% of them, but the token membership fee brought in a few thousand pounds a year, which was particularly welcome as things got financially tough as the 1990s progressed.)

[tenia]

The documentary mostly tries to explain The Scala to an audience that has never heard of it and while that widens its appeal, from the effort here I can't see why they should be interested.

That's me, and yeah, it was tough to understand what made such not just some kind of weird special theater but a particular historical landmark. It felt like the 1st half hour of the doc was dedicated to people first seeing Eraserhead, and then it was basically a bunch of anecdotes which, to me, failed to be more than small brushes allowing to have a bigger picture of the specificities of the theater. I think part of the issue is that there are just too many people appearing in it, in particular people who would be best described as "celebrities who happened to go to Scala at least once", while it probably would have done much better by replacing Douglas Hart and Ben Wheatley by more screentime to the Scala programmers. They're the ones I wanted to hear about, hear about their job, what they were doing that was making Scala very unique, and how they were curating this. So in the end, instead of having this more general view, I had something much more spotty, that felt like a list of anecdotes, sometimes repetitive, but that mostly felt just this : a list of anecdotes.

I'm also unsure how I feel about the overall style of the documentary, that seems to aim at being hip and vivacious, but mostly looks MTV-like.

[MichaelB]

A crucial problem is that in order to truly understand what made the Scala so special, you had to actually be there - which is clearly impossible without a time machine. The atmosphere of the place was unforgettable, as were the audiences (I must have been to hundreds of cinemas in my life, but the Scala was truly one of a kind), but the lack of footage is a challenge - and I suspect even actual footage wouldn't help much; most of my memories are aural and tactile rather than visual as the place was so dark. And my memories of it also tend to be strongly anecdote-based.

But those who want a more comprehensive and scholarly history of the Scala (the "bigger picture", in other words) have already been amply catered for via Jane Giles' superlative 2018 book - which, amongst many other things, reproduces every single original Scala programme at readable scale, and includes a comprehensive index of every title that they screened there. So that ground has already been amply covered, and I can see why they went down a more eye-catchingly populist route for the documentary.

[jlnight]

Yes, that was how places like the Scala and Everyman operated too.

With this talk of cinema club conditions spare a thought for the people of the North, who suffered more than most during the Thatcher era, even to the extent of being deprived of Thundercrack!!!

SpoilerShow

Grimsby Evening Telegraph, 20/10/81:

Gone... with the wind?

The members-only film due to be shown at the Whitgift Film Theatre in Grimsby on Thursday, and which should have been at Scunthorpe Film Theatre last week, has been stolen - and it was the only copy in the country.

Thundercrack, a non-certificate film which combined hard-core sex scenes and slapstick comedy in an "underground" parody of The House on Haunted Hill, disappeared following its showing in another part of the country as it went round the circuit of film theatres.

A spokesman at the Whitgift told the Evening Telegraph today that a number of members had asked for their money back when they heard that the film would not be showing. But she added that most had decided to keep their original bookings when they heard what was on as a replacement. Its title? - Is There Sex After Death?

Thundercrack! had apparently played at the Paris Pullman in March '81.

[tenia]

I understand what you mean Michael, but I do think that too much of the interventions are dedicated to people telling scattershot anecdotes, the kind of things that can go on for 10 min or 1000, instead of allowing people who actually made it happen and keep fuelling it having a bigger say. In the end, I'm surprised to feel, in particular, I haven't learnt much about Scala's programmers, how they were programming, if they had different styles from each other. Instead, we get a tour of the toilets and humpteen persons telling us how the last rows were used by the audience to shag.

[The Curious Sofa]

Being friends on social media with a number of people who were regulars or staff (none of whom appear in the film) at the Scala, there was great excitement before the release, with many sharing memories of the Scala on Facebook. But unless I've missed it, there has been no mention of the film since it dropped. So I guess I'm not the only one disappointed with the result, even if I should be the target audience.

As to claims about sexual activity at the Scala: in my experience, it wasn't the audience members who went there for the movies who got it on. Prostitutes took their customers there, usually for quiet weekday screenings and they kept to the empty back rows. For them, it was a cheap, warm, and safe shelter and I guess is comparable to Times Square grindhouse theatres of the period. This was because pre-gentrification Kings Cross was a red light district and not because the audience was so uninhibited, as the film seems to imply. Alcohol and drugs were liberally imbibed, especially during the more rowdy all-nighters, but on the whole, the audience was better behaved than what I experience at any multiplex these days.

[MichaelB]

As to claims about sexual activity at the Scala: in my experience, it wasn't the audience members who went there for the movies who got it on. Prostitutes took their customers there, usually for quiet weekday screenings and they kept to the empty back rows. For them, it was a cheap, warm, and safe shelter and I guess is comparable to Times Square grindhouse theatres of the period. This was because pre-gentrification Kings Cross was a red light district and not because the audience was so uninhibited, as the film seems to imply. Alcohol and drugs were liberally imbibed, especially during the more rowdy all-nighters, but on the whole, the audience was better behaved than what I experience at any multiplex these days.

One of the most uncanny things about Scala audiences is that we collectively knew when to let rip (I knew I was in for a whale of a time when we cheered and applauded the near-opening scene when the rabid zombie rat got into someone's hazmat suit at the start of Zombie Creeping Flesh), but we also knew when it was appropriate to keep schtum. I'm really struggling to recall any audience-participation moments that felt misjudged, and I certainly can't think of any that wrecked the film.

(The best of all was Richard Driscoll's The Comic getting a slow handclap for being boring - I've never seen that happen before or since, but dear God it was richly merited, even if it meant that the Q&A afterwards was mysteriously cancelled.)