The Fleapit : A Boomer’s Life at the Movies…

Slogger is a North Antrim retiree and latecomer to political discourse.

I spent the first ten years of my life on a farm, well away from the temptations of the town. So, movies were just something on a black-and-white TV. Only two channels in those days so movies were kind of rare and rather antiquated. All posh Englishmen and Cockneys.

Then, at ten years old, we moved into the town. When I say town, I mean the Irish notion of a town. A big village really. However, this town had a cinema. When I say cinema, I mean a picture house. The kind of place often referred to in the vernacular as a fleapit. Hard wooden benches at the front for one and sixpence. Proper soft seats at the back for two and sixpence. The soft seats were mainly for snogging couples so the hard benches suited me just fine. Ma would give me two shillings so the extra sixpence paid for my gobstoppers and penny chews.

But that was all I needed to begin the addiction. A fleapit, but it was my fleapit. Somewhere to escape to every week. Sometimes twice a week.

So from the mid-sixties until the early seventies, I immersed myself in just about every movie that was released. Reading film critic reviews came later so I just watched them all, the gems and the stinkers. All the great productions of the era passed in front of my eyes. Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago, The Sound of Music, Mary Poppins, Planet of the Apes. I was well and truly hooked.

The old lady who worked the ticket roll machine did not seem to age discriminate so I had access to the entire certificate range up to and including X rated movies So adult stuff such as Barbarella, In the Heat of the Night and Easy Rider were all part of my coming of age. One of my most abiding memories was watching all the Christopher Lee Dracula movies and being so scared that I was terrified of the five-minute walk home at night.

Then, in the early seventies, I moved to college in London. No longer the cheap seats in the fleapit. Now I had access to the full Leicester Square experience. No waiting for movies to reach the picture house in Norn Iron. Highlights included the movie Earthquake in “Sensesurround” (the floor vibrated a bit during the earthquakes), going to watch One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest three times in one week (it was that good) and attending the public premiere of The Man Who Fell to Earth. (Bowie was a no-show.)

The decades passed and picture palaces morphed into multiscreen joints. Some of them had screens not much bigger than TVs on display at Currys. Best experience – the unexpected pleasure of Last of the Mohicans at a wee screen in the Ormeau Road Curzon multiplex. It was a cracker.

Then came Xtra-vision.

I just loved Xtra-vision. For the first time ever, you could pick and choose what to watch at home. Best memory of Xtra-vision – once when I had the flu, my wife unexpectedly brought home a VHS copy of “Aliens”. I went “meh, couldn’t be a patch on Alien”. As it turned out, it was one of the best action/sci-fi films I have ever seen.

Then came the streamers and a seismic change. Prime, Apple, Netflix, Disney, et al. Ultra convenient but very much a case of saturation. Too many companies with a voracious thirst for output. There are silk purses among the sow’s ears, but you do have to check out reviews before you commit.

That has been my life at the movies. I’ve reached a point where I have seen just about every plot and style multiple times, and so the magic of new movies rarely comes to visit. As for TV, Breaking Bad was so bloody good that everything else seems pale by comparison.

But I will keep looking.