Tag Archives: lockdown

40 Years Of Memorable Movie Moments

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Hammersmith Odeon circa 1983

Maybe it was the lockdown popcorn, maybe a great recent piece in Empire magazine initiated by director Edgar Wright, but this time away from the cinema has got me waxing all nostalgic.

Will the big screen ever regain its mojo? The alternative is a crushing thought.

Don’t know about you, but my idea of a night out at the flicks doesn’t involve wearing a mask and showing a security guard my vaccination certificate at the door. If that’s the future of moviegoing in Brave New Britain, forget it, I’m done.

And whatever the merits of Netflix et al, they can’t replace the shared experience watching a superb movie on a big screen with great sound and those ‘wonderful people out there in the dark’ (© ‘Sunset Boulevard’).

So, if it’s all over – and I hope it’s not – here are some memorable movie moments of the last 40 years (all in London cinemas unless otherwise stated), from the sublime to the shocking (with spoilers…). I hope they inspire some recollections of your own.

Seeing ‘The Exorcist’ at a cinema above a nightclub in Kingston circa 1989, me absolutely terrified as Salt-N-Pepa’s ‘Push It’ was heard pulsating through the floorboards… The entire audience laughing throughout ‘Prince Of Darkness’ (it’s supposed to be a horror movie…) at the Hammersmith ABC circa 1987… A late-night screening of ‘Carrie’ at the Prince Charles circa 2012, the young, hip crowd jumping three feet out of their seats upon the famous finale…

At the same venue circa 1994, a ‘lone white male’ saying very loudly, apropros of nothing: ‘What a f***ing bitch’ as the credits rolled at the end of ‘The Last Seduction’ (it’s a female-fronted, neo-noir)… Almost having an out-of-body experience as Jeff Bridges walked through the plane at the end of ‘Fearless’ at the Prince Charles… The ripples of hilarity echoing around the cinema during Michael Wincott’s cracking cameo as Kent in ‘Talk Radio’ at the Riverside Hammersmith circa 1988…

Spooked amongst the drinking/smoking audience during ‘The Blair Witch Project’ at the Notting Hill Coronet in 1998… The quietest, most rapt audience ever for Orson Welles’ ‘The Trial’ at the BFI (formerly NFT) in 2019… Audience hilarity during Hugh Grant’s performance in ‘Bitter Moon’ at the Prince Charles circa 1994… Early cinema revelations seeing ‘Jaws’, ‘Close Encounters Of The Third Kind’, ‘Airplane’ and ‘Raiders Of The Lost Ark’ between 1980-1982… Seeing ‘Rain Man’ two nights in a row at the Richmond Odeon in 1988… The ‘Star Wars’ triple bill at the same venue circa 1985… A Laurel & Hardy all-dayer at The Kings Cross Scala circa 1988… Terrified watching ‘Scream 2’ alone in a huge moviehouse in Times Square, NYC, the only other paying customer deciding to sit directly behind me… Meeting David Lynch – and getting his very odd autograph – after a screening of ‘The Straight Story’ at the NFT in 1999… Seeing ‘Fame’ at a huge, almost completely empty Hammersmith Odeon circa 1983…

Not hearing one line of dialogue during ‘Fletch’ as the assembled teens screamed/laughed/threw food at the screen, Putney Odeon, 1985… Panic and nausea at the finale of ‘The Vanishing’ at a late-night screening at the Ultimate Picture Palace in Oxford circa 1991… Watching JG Ballard and David Cronenberg chatting amiably onstage after the London premiere of ‘Crash’ at the NFT, 1996… Sitting behind a constantly laughing Jimmy Page at a screening of ‘Beware Of Mr Baker’, the Riverside Hammersmith circa 2012… Seeing ‘Heathers’ at the same venue in 1989 and thinking: well, that’s almost the perfect film… Feeling the whole packed house take an inward breath as the body crawled out of the TV set during ‘Ringu’ at the ICA, 1998…and…and…?

London Lockdown Circa 1980: ‘Babylon’ & ‘Breaking Glass’

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One of the few positives of this lockdown may be investigating your local area more than usual.

And if London is your manor, the mostly-silent, near-empty streets may just take you back to the city of your youth, when car ownership was relatively rare and there was plenty of room to kick a football or swing a cricket bat – mainly for sporting purposes, you understand…

Joking aside, London felt pretty edgy at the turn of the ’80s. Youth subcultures fought each other, and the police fought them. Some parts of the city had barely moved on from the Victorian era.

There were great swathes of wasteland, still reeling from World War 2 bombs. Tube trains and stations were often deserted and you might even get a slap (there didn’t seem to be many knives around) if you wandered into the ‘wrong’ neighbourhood (hello Gary Bates…).

It was a world accurately captured by feature films like ‘The Long Good Friday’, ‘Babylon’, ‘The Clash: Rude Boy’, ‘DOA‘, ‘The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle‘ and ‘Breaking Glass’, all released 40 years ago.

‘Babylon’ was illuminated by sumptuous photography by legendary Brit cinematographer Chris Menges (‘Kes’, ‘The Mission’, ‘The Killing Fields’), capturing rundown, turn-of-the-decade Lewisham, south-east London, site of a notorious August 1977 battle between the National Front and 10,000 protestors.

All of these films accurately capture the energy of inner-city life during the late-’70s and early-’80s, and the pressures of young people living at the sharp end of recession, racism and unemployment.

Also ever-present is the constant theme of music-business skullduggery and police brutality. But it’s all shot through with healthy doses of humour and humanity, particularly throughout ‘Babylon’.

For all the benefits of ‘gentrification’ and the corporate restructuring of the capital, true Londoners of a certain age probably feel a tinge of nostalgia about the time when they seemed to own the streets, when there were many secrets to be found in the city’s nooks and crannies – for better or worse.