Scala!!! (2024)

★ 7.8 1h 36m IMDb
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This feature-length big screen documentary tells the riotous inside story of the infamous sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll repertory cinema which inspired a generation during Britain's turbulent Thatcher years.

Scala!!!

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Cast

John Waters
John Waters as Self Age 79 · Baltimore, Maryland, USA John Samuel Waters Jr. (born April 22, 1946) is an American filmmaker, writer, actor, and artist. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, including Multiple Maniacs (1970)...
Adam Buxton
Adam Buxton as Self Age 56 · London, UK Adam Offord Buxton (born 7 June 1969) is an English comedian, writer, podcaster, and actor, known for his work as one half of the comedy duo Adam and Joe with long-time collaborator Joe Cornish..
Stewart Lee
Stewart Lee as Self Age 58 · Wellington, Shropshire, England Stewart Lee is an acclaimed, award winning English stand-up comedian, a writer, columnist, music critic, opera writer and director. In the 1990s he was one half of the comedy duo Lee and Herring, alon...
James O'Brien
James O'Brien as Self Age 54 · Hackney, London, England James Edward O'Brien (born 13 January 1972) is a British journalist, television presenter, radio presenter, and podcaster. He is one of the presenters on talk station LBC, presenting on weekdays betwe...
Isaac Julien
Isaac Julien as Self Age 66 · East End, London, England, UK Filmmaker and installation artist, Isaac Julien was born in 1960 in London, where he currently lives and works. His multi-screen film installations and photographs incorporate different artistic disci...
Caroline Catz
Caroline Catz as Self Age 56 · Manchester, Greater Manchester, England, UK Caroline Catz (born 19 October 1969) is an English film, television, theatre and radio actress, best known for her role as Louisa Glasson in Doc Martin since 2004. Her other roles have included Detect...

Audience Reviews

CinemaSerf 7/10 Jan 13, 2024
This is quite a fascinating documentary following the fate of a cinema that even John Waters said "shocked him". It wasn't always on the same site in Central London, but the "Scala" name quickly became a magnet for all those who didn't conform to the more mainstream - with their own behaviour and/or attitudes and/or taste in films. Using an astonishing amount of well researched actuality and some interviews with the folks who worked there or attended over the years, we learn of a place that offered a venue for any combination of the Bohemian, the decadent, the drugged up, boozed up, gay - and, yep, even the serious film goer as it originally opened and closed many years later with "King Kong" (1933)! I did live in London in the late 1980s and King's Cross was a dump - full of hookers, rent boys and you never strayed far from an heroin needle. The "Scala" thrived amidst this alternative and hedonistic environment and though I don't know that I quite qualify for the groups that regularly used the place after midnight, my two visits were fun and never intimidating - the sound system there was not the best! Porn, horror, martial arts, cartoons - nothing was off limits until the local council took exception to "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) and the subsequent legal fracas pretty much put paid to the place as a cinema. It's split into parts that illustrate the rise and fall of what was essentially an establishment that didn't really matter in which building it was located. Sticky floors, sticky seats, dark "back massages" offering a range of facilities from a sleeping berth to a shagging one. It can't resist the usual bit of Mrs. Thatcher-bashing at the end which adds a bit of authenticity to a cinema that existed precisely because it was so anti-establishment and pro free-spirit. It reminded me a little of the "Studio 54" (2018) documentary. A place that was legendary and fun and necessary - probably still is. Very watchable on a big screen if you can.

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