Great Nights & 1984... 

I love widescreen, always have.

What could be better then, than eight track Dolby, 70mm Super Panavision Widescreen? - The widest of all feature film widescreen formats (as far as I know - Remember, no research!).

It's 1984, and it's Ghostbusters at the Odeon Leicester Square. I had already long been in the habit of booking tickets in advance. All it takes is a little effort to go to the box office a few days before. Go early afternoon and there will be no queuing - and here's the best part, you can usually get the exact tickets you want.

The curtains began to open. They kept on going... and going... People were almost getting restless it was taking so long. "My god, that is wide" I thought to myself. I also have to re-iterate what Ian says below about that one shot of the lions - the sound was awesome. So awesome, I remember the moment clearly, just one shot, sixteen years on. I said to myself at the time: "I'm going to enjoy this"....

Ghostbusters was one of those great cinema experiences, made extra special by the electric audience atmosphere. Hard to understand unless 'you were there'. The anticipation of finally being able to see for yourself what all the fuss is about adds to the buzz. It would seem Ian also had a thing for that ghost film back in '84 too...

..."I'm gonna get a stiff neck here. Why has the teacher put us so close?" These thoughts would soon be forgotten a quarter of an hour later when my eyes were transfixed by the sight of a sweet old woman's face metamorphosing into a monstrous skull-like visage and lurching out from the screen with only one row of seats to protect me.

Did the teacher realise what was in store for her 20 or so charges?

Well, in any case, the next scene in the film gave me some pointers at least. Not a sequence with our 'heroes' darting furiously through darkened corridors with some unspeakable horror yapping at their heels, but rather lumbering down the steps of the New York Public Library like one and a half Laurel and Hardy's and accompanied by some very un-scary jazzy piano music.

Ok, I think to myself, this is like uh, funny yes?, not scary? So let's laugh, and then everything will be all right. Yes, it was the beginning of my love affair with that most fun of genres, comedy-horror.

Looking at my best school buddy at the time sat next to me to let him in on the joke, all I was met with was the sight of his face still transfixed on the screen, maybe trying to wish away the vision of Miss Skull-face. Oh well, I must have thought at that point, at least I know the score now.

Ok, let's go back to a few days before and our school room. After finding out what our summer day out was to be, there was only one question we wanted to be asked "Who you gonna call?" (and our teacher duly obliged on a few occasions at register), and only one answer we could possibly give "Ghostbusters!!!". A bit worrying that this exchange of banter is one of the most prominent memories of my school days perhaps. But hey, I'm sure there's plenty of education to be gained from watching a Bill Murray movie. Heck, my Dad reckons he's gathered all his knowledge of right and wrong from watching Doris Day films in his youth! Go figure!

Getting back to here and now, the 'here' being the second row (yes, the second row!) of the Odeon Leicester Square and the 'now' being the summer of 1984, my ears were still ringing from the breathtaking crescendo accompanying the opening shot of the stone lions on the library steps. Whoever did the sound mixing on that movie deserve a medal. I still find the sound of the 'unlicensed nuclear accelerators' being powered up exhilarating. Video is all very well in it's place but I'd love to hear that sound again where it was meant to be heard, in Dolby Stereo booming from the speakers of a state of the art West End cinema. As it was, I had to console myself with Ray Parker Junior's theme song on 7" single for the rest of that summer. As an aside. a few years back I was lucky enough to visit the very sound stage in Hollywood on which the finale atop the apartment block was shot. The very same stage that housed the truck crashing down through the trees sequence in Jurassic Park.

That, anyway, was definitely the most enjoyable movie experience I've had. As for the strangest, that must belong to Batman Returns at the Empire Leicester Square. It's certainly not my favourite movie of all time. Yet no other film I've seen at the cinema can claim to have had quite the same effect, albeit temporarily, on me. What effect? Well, basically the movie made me depressed!

It was nothing to do with Tim Burton's gothic vision of a hell on earth teeming with half-mad mutants. No, I left the cinema, at first thoroughly entertained at such a visually stunning experience presented in pristine condition on screen 1 of the Empire. Then I began experiencing something else. Wouldn't it be incredible I thought to actually live in that world. Now, I was not some pre-pubescent on a school trip here but a fully mature 20 year old. The film must have made my mind slip back a few years to when I had a different outlook on life where anything was possible.

Getting my mind back in gear a little later, the next few days were turned over to imagining the next best thing. If not to live in that world, then to create it. That's the life to go for I thought. Jack in my job, get some design qualifications, and then a job at Jim Henson's Creature Workshop in London for some invaluable experience. Then have my work noticed by some Hollywood scout. Move to the City of Angels and spend the next thirty or so years working on blockbuster after blockbuster. Hey, maybe even eventually get a special effects award named after me.

Oh yes, my perfect life was all planned out for me, courtesy of Mr Burton. These temporary thoughts were very bizarre for me, as my feet are normally adhered to terra-firma. I don't know why Batman Returns in particular had this effect on me. I do know that the filming of it was quite unusual in that there was no location shooting at all. The entire film was done on sound stages so maybe I appreciated more than most the idea that the entire film was created 'from scratch'. Or maybe my mind was frazzled by the sight of Michelle Pfeiffer clad in a very, very tight cat suit.