Abc Minors

[steve lamont]

Does anyone remember going to their local picture house on saturday morning as a child.Mine was the ABC Regal, we had badges to collect, a song"We are the minors of the ABC ..."and if it was your birthdays, I remember some kids having a birthday once a month!, you got a card to let you in free newt week. Happy days.

[Bondian]

We had an ABC Cinema down here in old 'Soufend', but it closed many years ago. Fortunately though, it had been re-opened as a Theatre.

What's happened to the atmosphere these days at the Cinema. It used to be a pleasurable experience. But now, you have a cold and moody colour scheme. Silly kids dressed in short sleeves and baseball caps, and an attitude that quite frankly I find offensive. :grin:

Yes, I'm one of the old gits. [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/laughing.gif[/img]

Cheers,


Ian

[DAVID RAYNER]

I was a regular cinemagoer in the 1950's and early 1960's and I was a cinema projectionist for twenty years from leaving school in 1962, but I never went to ABC Minor''s Matinees in the 1950's. It was enough that I had to get up early for school during the week without getting up very early again on a Saturday morning to take a two-mile bus ride into town to the local ABC. All my visits were either in the afternoon or the evening.

When an "A" certificate film was being shown, I, like many other little boys, would wait outside the pictures for a man to come along and ask him "Will you take me in, mister?" After they took you in, sometimes they'd go and sit somewhere else and sometimes, they'd sit next to you and share a bag of sweets with you. Despite such activities filling modern parents with horror, incidents of being "touched up" by a man who'd taken you into the pictures to see an "A" film were very rare, although it did happen to me once (I won't go into detail). Of course, I never told anyone about it, because I knew that if my father had got to find out, he would have gone up in the air with me and stopped me going to the pictures for good and I didn't want that, so I kept quiet about it. I often wonder how many other youngsters kept quiet about such things in those days for the same reason.

However, I haven't been to the pictures for years and I doubt that I'll ever go again. A friend has told me that I just wouldn't take to these modern multi-plexes, as there is no discipline in them, nobody keeps order and you can't get interested in the film, because everybody seems to be chatting away on their mobile phones.

On the plus side, however, the seating is much better than it was years ago and the rows are further apart, allowing more leg room and the cinemas are much lighter inside than in the old days, so that if a man did touch up a young boy sat next to him, everyone would be able to see what he was doing. So it doesn't happen these days, I am told, not like in the anonymous darkness of the cinemas of my childhood.

[Steve Crook]

You should try looking out for Art House cinemas or Cinema Clubs in your area David. They are no longer just filled with men in raincoats watching Naked as Nature Intended, they can get those on video now. They are usually filled with people who actually want to see the film.

You tend to get some good screenings of the older films as well.

Or you could come and visit us in London at the NFT. Remarkably cheap prices, even cheaper if you're a member. A nice riverside location with a reasonable (it used to be better before it was franchised) cafe. And in the cinemas themselves (3 of them) there's a strict "No food" and "No mobiles" rule. And if anyone talks loudly they're liable to get a swift "tut-tut" from those around them. :smiling:

Steve

[Allen Dace]

Originally posted by SteveCrook@Feb 17 2005, 10:30 PM Or you could come and visit us in London at the NFT. Remarkably cheap prices, even cheaper if you're a member. A nice riverside location with a reasonable (it used to be better before it was franchised) cafe. And in the cinemas themselves (3 of them) there's a strict "No food" and "No mobiles" rule. And if anyone talks loudly they're liable to get a swift "tut-tut" from those around them. :smiling: Steve <div align="right">Quoted post</div>

In recent years the only cinema trips I've made are to the NFT (with the solitary exception of the local Odeon for 'Die Another Day' as I can't miss a Bond on the big screen). If you're lucky you might even find some film folk in the audience!
I tend to watch DVDs now in a way I wouldn't get VHS - frankly the experience can be as good or better than some cinemas without irritating distractions.

I recall going to Chester ABC in the early 1970s when there were some vouchers for free shows in a comic ('Whizzer and Chips' or 'Buster' maybe?).

[DAVID RAYNER]

Alas, my present day health problems preclude me from going to the pctures as I did in my younger days, and the extortionate cost of the return train fare from Stoke-on-Trent to London makes it financially impractical to visit the capital just to see a film at the NFT. But we do have a specialist Fim Theatre attached to the University of North Staffordshire here in Stoke, that shows quality up-to-date films of the kind that the two local mukti-plexes, the Odeon and the Warner Village, would never dream of showing.

[samkydd]

I remember the ABC Minors at the flicks on Soho Road in Handsworth, Birmingham in the mid 1960s. They had dancing competitions on the stage to current pop hits before the films came on, and you could win tickets for the following week.

The main film was always something like a Sinbad movie, and they also showed 30 minute episodes of a very early Batman and Robin serial (in brown and white), when they didn't have a Batmobile as such it was just a 1930s American convertible. When they had to change into superheroes they stayed in the car and pulled the hood up! When in "civvies" they wore these gangster type double breasted suits and broad rimmed hats.

Flash Gordon and Dan Dare were also serialised favourites, and in the euphoria of manned space flight back then, space films, albeit very old ones, were the new rock n' roll to us kids.