Tag: BBFC

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

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 2 January 2024
No Comments on 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
Sticky post

Directors – Ali Catterall, Jane Giles – 2023 – UK – Cert. 18 – 96m

*****

From 1978 to 1993, London’s Scala Cinema programmed everything from art house to sexploitation, ushering in the upcoming generation of anti-establishment musicians, filmmakers, and others – out in UK cinemas on Friday, January 5th

Whatever the strengths of this film – and they are legion – it may be impossible for me to write an objective review of it. From my first visit to Tottenham Street to watch an afternoon programme of back-to-back Tex Avery animation shorts on Saturday, 25th October 1980, I could often be found at London’s Scala cinema in the 1980s, broadening my mind as I lapped up welcome servings of movies long or short, old or new, highbrow or trashy. So there are a few additional titbits in what follows which come from my own personal, mental Scala archive of memory rather than from the documentary itself.

As for the date, my memory’s not actually that good. Such information can, however, be discerned from the wondrous if unfeasibly large-sized book SCALA CINEMA 1978-1993, which amongst other things contains all the monthly Scala programmes. It was written by co-director and former Scala employee / programmer Jane Giles’ and edited by fellow co-director Ali Catterall.… Read the rest

Tags A Clockwork Orange, Alan Jones, album cover, album cover photos, Ali Catterall, Ali Kayley, all-night, all-nighter, audiences, backs of seats, Barry Adamson, BBFC, cats, celluloid, celluloid burnout, censor, censorship, cinema, cinema exhibition, court case, cover photos, cult, cut, David McGillivray, double bill, drugs, extreme cinema, fan, film festival, film print, gay, Gay’s The Word, gigs, graphic design, hardcore porn, highbrow, horror, how it influenced, Iggy Pop, incredibly, interactive, Jane Giles, Japan, John Waters, King's Cross, lavatories, legal loophole, LGBT, London, loophole, Lou Reed, machinery, Matt Johnson, membership, Mick Rock, midnight movie, Mike Leedham, misfits, mixed-up generation, monkey enclosure, monsters, movie buff, movie fan, movies, music, Osbert Parker, police, porn, poster, printers, projector, projector gate, prosecution Warner Bros., punter, raid, reels, rise and fall, risk of prosecution, rumbling, Scala, seats, sex, sexploitation, Shock Around the Clock, sleaze, sprocket holes, Stanley Kubrick, strange, tentacle, Thatcher, The The, Tottenham Street, train, trash, triple bill, UK, uncertificated, underground, weirdos, weirdos and misfits, world’s wildest cinema

Features Live Action Movies

Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles
(UK: Teenage Mutant
Hero Turtles)

Post author By Jeremy Clarke
Post date 30 July 2023
No Comments on Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles
(UK: Teenage Mutant
Hero Turtles)

Director – Steve Barron – 1990 – US, UK – Cert. PG – 91m 38s (cut) – 93m 25s (cuts waived for 2003 reclassification) BBFC info here

** 1/2

What can you say about four turtles who accidentally wandered into radioactive material, which caused them to grow unnaturally large and speak strange words? Like “pizza!” Or who serve a ninja master in the form of a giant, talking, four foot rat named Splinter (voice and performer: Kevin Clash)?

Whatever else they might be, the turtles are certainly different. While they might well fight for Truth, Justice and the American Way, they certainly know where their priorities lie, and never give up their other, equally important aims – to party and to seek out that essential slice of pizza.

This is the final film on which the late, great puppet master Jim Henson (The Muppets TV series, 1976-81; The Dark Crystal, 1982) worked. Here, his directorial protégé Steve Barron brings to life not only Leonardo (voice: Brian Tochi, performer: David Foreman), Michelangelo (voice: Robbie Rist, performer: Michelan Sisti), Raphael (voice and performer: Josh Pais) and Donatello (voice: Corey Feldman, performer: Leif Tilden), but also the crazy, teen crime-ridden city under which they live.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Censor

Director – Prano Bailey-Bond – 2021 – UK – Cert. 15 – 84m

****

In the 1980s so-called ‘video nasties’ era, a BBFC examiner increasingly confuses horror films with reality – on MUBI from Sunday, October 31st

A peculiarly British film in that it pertains to the way so-called ‘video nasties’ were dealt with by the UK censor in the 1980s. With the rise of video technology, a legal loophole meant that while cinema films were given a certificate by the UK censor, films released straight to video were not. A number of horror films far more violent and bloody than the censor would allow for cinema exhibition thus found their way onto VHS videotape, into video stores and onto the nation’s home TV screens via the video player.

Sections of the UK press ran stories of ‘video nasties’ suggesting that seeing such videos would corrupt children and impressionable members of society. One or two Tory MPs campaigned for changes to the law, resulting in the 1984 Video Recordings Act. Now videos came under the BBFC’s remit (it changed its name from the British Board Of Film Censors to the British Board Of Film Classification) and video titles were examined then passed, passed with cuts or banned.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

The Servant

Director – Joseph Losey – 1963 – UK – Cert. 12 – 115m

*****

A highly capable working class manservant slowly takes control of his foppish, upper class master’s life – out in cinemas on Friday, September 10th

Barrett (Dirk Bogarde) enters the curiously unlocked Chelsea house of Tony (James Fox) to interview for the position of manservant. He finds the unkempt Tony asleep in a chair. He seems to fit Tony’s bill and gets the job. Tony got the house very cheap, although it’s in need of repair and decoration. Barrett has any number of useful suggestions, but Tony overrides one or two of them. A servant should know their place, after all.

At a club Tony tells his date Susan (Wendy Craig) that he’s involved in clearing jungle to build three cities. When he brings her back to the house, she finds her attempts at both romantic intimacy and imposing her ideas on his home consistently thwarted by Barrett’s intrusions.

Barrett secures a job for his “sister” Vera (Sarah Miles) as a maid. She is actually his lover. And she sets about seducing Tony. All of this will come to a head, with Tony throwing the pair of them out.… Read the rest

Features Live Action Movies

Wendy

Director – Benh Zeitlin – 2021 – US – Cert. 12a – 111m

*****

A bold re-imagining of Peter Pan told through the eyes of Wendy which is unlike any other version of the story you’re likely to see – out in cinemas on Friday, August 13th

Her mother runs a fast and furious restaurant. Wendy (Tommie Lynn Milazzo) crawls along the long tables.

Boys play on trains on the nearby tracks outside.

Her brothers James (Gavin Naquin) and Douglas (Gage Naquin) come out to play on the jukebox, but quickly get thrown out for causing disruption. Through the night the goods trains pass. There’s a spark. Wendy, slightly older now (Devin France) sees something atop a train. A boy. She runs outside to chase the train. Her mother’s voice calls her back in.

The fast trains pass. One day she is on one, riding the rails. The boy (Dwight Henry) is in the freight car. He tells them to stand close to the open boxcar door. The train crosses a bridge over water. He pushes them out. They’re in the water.

Then they’re all in the boat, crossing the ocean to the island, Mother. They land. Beach. Forest. Geysers erupt.… Read the rest

Tags adults, BBFC, beach, belief, Benh Zeitlin, blade, blood brother, boat, boxcar, bridge, bridge over water, certification, children, crawl, decayed, Devin France, dream, drifter, Dwight Henry, eruption, fly, forest, freight car, Gage Naquin, Gavin Naquin, geysers, giant fish, goods trains, grotto, grow up, house, island, jukebox, man-made interventions, mother, natural world, never grow up, object, ocean, pirates, restaurant, riding the rails, rock, sea, section of pipe, table, tracks, train, US, used, volcano, water, weathered

Features Live Action Movies

Crash

Director – David Cronenberg – 1996 – Canada – Cert. 18 – 100m

*****

This review was originally published in the Arts Centre Group‘s member’s newsletter. See also my review for What DVD.

All stills from Crash apart from the one from Videodrome.

Canadian film director David Cronenberg has a reputation for filming the unfilmable. Formerly dubbed The King Of Venereal Horror (“a small kingdom but I’m happy with it”), his debut (commercial) feature Shivers / The Parasite Murders / They Came From Within (1977) is a low budget horror outing in which high rise tenants are invaded/possessed by little slug-like creatures resembling a bloody cross between phallus and faeces.

For renowned British producer Jeremy Thomas (Bad Timing, The Last Emperor, First Love) he has adapted and directed books considered impossible to turn into movies, notably William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch (in 1991) and J.G.Ballard’s Crash.

I was first drawn to Cronenberg’s work from the special effects angle, specifically an article on prosthetics expert Rick Baker which contained some amazing production stills (the shape of a hand-held gun pushing through the unbroken membrane of a television screen) from Videodrome (1983). An image suggesting television can kill?… Read the rest

Tags BBFC, body horror, Canada, car, car crash, crash, David Cronenberg, David Cronenberg related, horror, new flesh, orgasm, partners, science fiction, sex, sex scene, sex scene as narrative device, Shinya Tsukamoto, Toronto

Features Live Action Movies

The Isle
(Seom,
섬)

Director – Kim Ki-duk – 2000 – South Korea – Cert. 18 – 89m

***

Review originally published in What’s On In London to coincide with the film’s UK theatrical release.

Latest UK release from Korean maverick director Kim Ki-duk (Bad Guy; Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter…and Spring) has a unique setting: an isolated lake upon which float small chalets on rafts available for hire by punters. The proceedings never leave these immediate surroundings, which include the shack with a jetty on the shore – from which proprietress Hee-Jin (Im Suh Jung) hires out the chalets and sometimes her body – and a mysterious isle in the lake’s centre.

She embarks upon a relationship with life-weary punter and ex-cop Hyun-shik (Kim Yoo-suk), bringing unexpected changes to them both.

This is not a film for the faint-hearted, containing as it does some pretty unsettling imagery involving physical sexual activity and fish hooks, even if much of this is suggested rather than shown.

What we’re seeing here has been slightly pruned at the request of the UK censor the BBFC, notably of scenes involving the slicing off of a live fish’s sides before the camera which have been removed on grounds of animal cruelty.… Read the rest

Tags animal cruelty, BBFC, chalet, fish hooks, float, hire, horror, isle, jetty, K-horror, Korea, lake, punters, raft, South Korea