The Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies digs up some proud London horror history for their November event with “Cabinet of Curiosities: the strange case of the Scala cinema”, a deep dive into London’s famed Scala. Scala was akin to Grindhouse in the United States. A theatre that played outlandish and explicit horror films. It was a place where the only thing wilder than the film was the audience. Raucous, rambunctious, and rowdy audiences combined with violent and sexually explicit content made for a potent combination.
Nov 8th ex-Scala programmer Jane Giles hosts a class on the history, notoriety, and collapse of the venue John Water’s once called ‘A country club for criminals and lunatics and people that were high’. Ms. Giles was a programmer at the Scala from 1988-1992 and has written a book on the subject. The class will include access to rare documents and insight (and the Scala’s jukebox and intermission music!) and will educate and enlighten audiences while giving a platform to discuss underground culture, censorship in the UK, and all things fringe.
GRAB TICKETS TO THE EVENT HAPPENING TONIGHT!
Date: November 8th 2018
Time: 7:00pm-10:00pm
Venue: The Horse Hospital
Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD
Prices: £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concs (students/seniors with ID)
Venue: The Horse Hospital
Address: Colonnade, Bloomsbury, London WC1N 1JD
Prices: £10 advance / £11 on the door / £8 concs (students/seniors with ID)
The Scala, though loved by many film freaks, was forced to close in 1993. Its deep roots were in the site of an old brewery in 18th century Fitzrovia, a concert hall which was rebuilt in 1905 as an ornate folly of a theatre. The theatre housed both the birth of color cinema and an exclusive year-long run of the racist epic Birth of a Nation, as well as an onstage appearance by unplaced Sean Connery in the ‘Tall Men’ category of the Mr. Universe competition, 1953. Fast-forward to 1976: the Fitzrovia site is occupied by a soon-to-be-bankrupt socialist film collective, but overtaken by a teenage punk who transformed it into the legendary and notorious Scala cinema.
Unique to the Miskatonic Institute, a cache of rare archival documents, architects’ plans, drawings, photographs, and other ephemera will form the visual backdrop to a guided tour of the Scala, which moved from Fitzrovia to the defunct Primatarium in King’s Cross, 1981. Specializing in a mixture of horror, music, LGBT films, Psychotronic, and Kung Fu, the Scala pushed back against censorship in all of its forms, culminating in a devastating lawsuit by Warner Brothers, which ultimately contributed to the theater’s demise. While the Scala no longer operates, it echoes in eternity and the mark it has left on the horror and fringe film world may be felt in fullness at the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studie’s evening of tribute and remembrance.
