By Mark Mawston
Cinema Retro is always on the lookout for classic
and cult movies being screened in unique ways by film clubs and societies. We
seem to have found one that could really top them all- literally at a dead end!
I learned about The Flicker Club via the B-Movie
Podcast (www.bmoviecast.com) recently and I was intrigued. This February
they ran a short season of Hammer Films. Nothing exceptional about that, you
may say, bar the fact that they have screened rarities such as The Reptile, The Witches and the obscure
The Lost Continent. If that wasn’t
enough, in conjunction with Hammer, they screened the newly restored Dracula from 1958 with found footage
that was missing for decades.. However- wonderful though this is - it is the
location and the way in which the Flicker Club screened these gems that elevates
them beyond the norm. They chose to screen the films in the tunnels under
London’s Waterloo that were once part of the London Necropolis railway station.
I’d heard mention of this years ago and was always fascinated by it.
The London Necropolis
Railway was opened in 1854 as a reaction to severe overcrowding in the city’s
existing graveyards and cemeteries. Specifically, the rail system was used to move
as many grave sites as possible to the
newly-built Brookwood Cemetery in Brockwood
Surrey. This location was within easy travelling distance of London, but
distant enough that the dead could not pose any risk to public hygiene. It was
at one time the largest cemetery in the world.
The Station was used for many years (it even had first to third class
tickets!) until it was bombed in the war, when it was abandoned and further
demolished to make way for offices (and the usual car park). However, the
tunnel system under the railways remained intact and this is where the films
were screened- in the actual tunnel room that was used as the morgue for the
dead bodies awaiting their final trip- of their mortal remains at least. It was
chilling in more ways the one, no matter who many coffees you had! However, the
warmest reception was when Fenella Fielding of Carry On Screaming and The
Prisoner fame headed to stage to give a reading from Mary Shelly’s famous
novel. She enraptured the audience and you could hear a pin drop until one of
the trains pulling into Waterloo rumbled like thunder above. This happened on cue
as Fenella read about an oncoming storm. It was quite a moment. Frankenstein Created Women (a Martin
Scorsese favourite) was then introduced by author Alan Barnes, who co- wrote
excellent books on Hammer with Marcus Hearn (who could not be present but who
sent a very informative introduction to be read out.)
All in all this was a very memorable night and hats off to Juliette and
Clive at Flicker (www.theflickerclub.com) for putting on such a great
“underground†season! The Club will have further events and screenings and we
will keep you posted on where and
when these will happen in the future.