Scala!!! Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World’s Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits Blu-ray Review

Scala!!! Or, The Incredibly Strange Rise and Fall of the World’s Wildest Cinema and How It Influenced a Mixed-up Generation of Weirdos and Misfits is a documentary directed by Ali Catterall and Jane Giles based on the latter’s book Scala Cinema 1978-1993. It tells the story of “London’s most infamous and influential cinema,” a repertory cinema that showed all variety of offbeat and alternative cinema to all variety of offbeat and alternative cinema-goers.

I did not know of the Scala Cinema before this documentary, but growing up in Southern California, I was fortunate enough to know many theaters like it in Los Angeles and the surrounding area in the ’80s. Some are still in service, like the Nuart and the New Beverly, and others like the Balboa Theater went out of business years ago.

Scala!!! offers a history lesson and also serves as a marvelous scrapbook for those lucky enough to have attended. In1976, the theater opened on the site as the Other Cinema. It closed and reopened in 1978 as Scala Cinema. One interviewee said David Lynch’s Eraserhead “opened at the Scala and changed everything.”

The Scala Cinema was a place for movie lovers of all persuasions. In the brief flashes of their monthly calendars, viewers can see an an impressive array of what screened and clips from some of those films are included. From Hollywood classics, such as King Kong which opened and closed the theater, to films of world cinema.

To get around Britain’s censorship laws, they registered as a membership club, which allowed them to show movies unavailable to the general public, things like graphic horror, exploitation films, and queer cinema. The late hours and permissive attitudes drew people in and occasionally led to wilder acts within the theater and its restroom than were playing on screen. In 1992, they got in trouble for showing the then-banned A Clockwork Orange, which along with a “recession and technological changes,…drained the Scala’s last resources,” leading to its eventual closer. Interviewees for the documentary who used to work there and those who attended still remember the Scala fondly.

The video has been given a 1080p/MPEG-4 AVC encoded transfer displayed at displayed at an aspect ratio of 1.78.1. The new material looks sharp, clean, and colorful. The archival footage is in various stages of condition. The audio is available in DTS-HD 5.1 and 2.0. There’s a score that plays in the surrounds but the track is predominantly comprised of interviews that come from the front.

The Three-Disc Collector’s Set comes in a hard slipcase, a replica program and membership card, and 13 hours of Special Features.

Disc One:

• Audio Commentary with Co-Directors Jane Giles & Ali Catterall
• Introduction from the UK Premiere at the 2003 BFI London Film Festival (12 min)
• Introduction to Scala by Director Michael Clifford (4 min)
• Scala (Michael Clifford, 1990)(37 min)
• Scala Cinema (Ali Peck / Victor de Jesus, 1992) (4 min) with with optional audio commentary byPeck & de Jesus
• Scala Programs 1978-1993(12 min) – Giles takes viewer through 15 programs, one a year.
• Cabinet of Curiosities – Inside the Scala Archive(18 min) – Giles returns to present various artifacts.
• Extended Interviews (60 min)
• Outtakes of Mary Harron (14 min), Nick Kent (29 min), Thurston Moore (12 min), and John Waters (16 min)
• Cartoons by Davey Jones (HD; 3:13) is an interview with Jones documenting his work.
• Osbert Parker’s Scala!!! Animation Experiments and Outtakes(1 min)
• Primatarium Animation (1 min)
• Scala Programs Animation(2 min)
• Tentacles Animation(1 min)
• Trailer(2 min)

Shorts Disc 1 presents various short films that played at the Scala:

• Divide and Rule – Never! (Newsreel Collective, 1978) (41 min)
• Dead Cat (David Lewis, 1989) (20 min)and David Lewis Remembers Dead Cat (15 min)
• The Mark of Lilith (Bruna Fionda / Polly Gladwin / Zachary Nataf, 1986) (33 min)
• Relax (Chris Newby, 1991) (23 min)
• Boobs A Lot (Aggy Read, 1968) (3 min)
• Kama Sutra Rides Again (Bob Godfrey, 1971) (9 min)
• Coping With Cupid (Viv Albertine, 1991) (19 min)
• On Guard (Susan Lambert, 1984)(51 min)

Shorts Disc 2 presents documentaries and shorts:

Documentaries

• The Art of the Calendar (Kier-La Janisse, 2024)(46 min) – A film that looks at the programming calendars of the Scala and other rep theaters in the U.S.
• Splatterfest Exhumed (Jasper Sharp, 2024) (80 min) – A film about the most notable all-night horror film festival held at the theater

Short Films

• Maniac 2: Mr. Robbie (Buddy Giovinazzo, 1986) (7 min) with optional audio commentary by Giovinazzo
• Horrorshow (Paul Hart-Wilden, 1990) (5 min) with optional audio commentary by Hart-Wilden
• Cleveland Smith: Bounty Hunter (Josh Becker, 1982) – Original Cut (9 min)
• Cleveland Smith: Bounty Hunter (Josh Becker, 1982) – Producer’s Cut (11 min) with optional audio commentary by producer Scott Spiegel
• Mongolitos (Stéphane Ambiel, 1988) (7 min) with optional audio commentary by Ambiel
• The Legendary H.G. Lewis Speaks – 1989 Scala Appearance by The Godfather of Gore(16 min)

Scala!!! is a wonderful tribute to a long-lost movie oasis. It will make one wish they had gone, and make those lucky enough to have gone glad they did. If movies are your passion, the documentary will make you long for those bygone days in which a passion could be solely and completely indulged. The high-definition presentation is pleasing, and the extras go so far above and beyond they could have been released separately and been worth buying.