This I wrote a few years ago when the Grindhouse movie came out but I didn't have a decent photo but now I have.
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| The Grand Cinema by Jonathan Joyce |
It was the town's second cinema and off the town centre up out of the way by the West Side Stop - a notorious hang-out for young hoodlums - and was a World war 1 memorial hall which meant cheap rent to keep it in its memorial use, that of a theatre. After a brief time hosting dances which usually ended in extreme violence it doubled as a bingo hall for a while before settling into a less troublesome groove of sleazy movies. Every now and again strip shows were organised for members of a special club called 'Frank's Delight' which wasn't cockney rhyming slang. There were always lurid double features on there - whether martial arts, horror, porno, Confessions of a window cleaner type comedy, Peckinpah or spaghetti westerns or some other drastic bill of exploitation. Every now and then they'd show an old classic musical to appease the operatic fraternity like Sound of Music or My Fair Lady and then it was back to films like 'Percy', 'If....' or some Vincent Price shocker. I can remember clearly every few days being mindblown by the posters alone being too young to go but I passed the billboard every day and these images etched themselves onto my young mind. Double features - I had to sit through Born to Boogie in order to watch Let it Be I think. One of our friends worked there doing the Bingo and we kidnapped him. We turned up and asked to speak to him and then bundled him into a car and sped off - laughing wildly.
Nowadays its back to being a theatre specialising in what seems like entertainment aimed at the old folks - the West Side Stop is now no longer there - even the Hexagon Suite, Frome's very own Studio-54-with-violence-disco tacked onto the back is now an old people's day centre most of the time.
I do have fond memories of seeing all sorts of films there though - my dad knew the projectionist and he gave me a poster of the film Waterloo - but I suppose I'll always remember the Grand for films like Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia or some such nonsense. Of course you could smoke in a cinema in those days - can't really imagine that nowadays but there was a time... I think it added a nice sleazy touch but I know you non smokers don't appreciate our efforts to bring an extra dimension to going out - coughing - but anyway I think my abiding memory of the cinema was walking home afterwards - it would always be raining - 'that was crap' 'which one?' 'Both of them'.
