Back in time

Where we're going we don't need roads

I often find myself reminiscing about the big old ABC cinema that used to sit on the banks of the Thames. There were three screens: two were modestly sized; the main room, screen one, might have been the biggest movie screen I had ever seen. You had to catch big releases in week one, because you wanted that deity dwarfing screen. I learned these tricks early; this week marks 40 years since my eighth birthday and my first trip to the cinema.

I mean, it’s not 40 years since my first. I’d been before my eighth birthday, obviously. I have it on good authority that I saw Empire Strikes Back in the local ABC, and I remember seeing both Temple of Doom (with my mum) and E.T. (with with my dad¹) on the big screen. But my eighth birthday was when I fell completely, irreversibly, forever in love with the cinema.

Credit: IGN

Kids in my school had a tried and tested gamut of birthday parties. There was the local pavilion or the local leisure centre; upstairs at McDonald’s (everyone sat on a scaled down plastic steam train, the guest of honour and one special friend given a tour of the kitchen); or for the truly brave parents, running rampant round someone’s back garden/living room, hopped up on chocolate and Jelly Tots, until everyone was exhausted to the point of fighting/crying/tormenting the family pet.

Being a December born, all of these were quite hard to achieve, and by 1985, aged seven, I was thoroughly bored of these limited options anyway². I craved excitement, peril, thrills and spills. I must’ve seen a trailer for the film at some point. I loved trailers back then (still do today, to be honest, although I wish mightily that they’d stop giving so much away); I got so excited by those two-minute teases. All the classic 80s blockbusters absolutely nailed the art: gravelly-voiced fella giving a synopsis, bit of action, couple of laughs, title card. Imagine watching this shit as an eight-year-old.

Shut up and take my fucking money, right?

And so, one dark December evening, my long suffering mother took me and four friends down to the hulking ABC to watch Back to the Future; in the process changing my life forever.

Before then, the cinema had been a Saturday morning treat. I’d never been to the cinema at night before. It was busier, louder - with older, cooler kids everywhere. We grabbed snacks, proudly showed our tickets to the snooty adult (really just a teenage wage slave) and legged it into the auditorium.

Screen one always awed me. That big screen, man. The biggest screen. Years later, when I first visited an IMAX, I remember thinking that it wasn’t as big as the old ABC’s screen one. Now that simply cannot be true, yet my memory insists it is so. Screen one was bigger than IMAX, maybe even bigger than God.

The biggest screen in 1971. Credit: Cinema treasures

They didn’t do allocated seating back then, it was always a free-for-all. I remember charging up the steps to get to the back row. I remember the hatchet-faced old dear who used to sell ice cream (no, really, there used to be miserable ice cream vendor in the actual cinema until at least the early 90s) telling people off for putting their feet on the seats in front of them, and I remember my friends and I giggling as we did exactly what she’d just told us not to.

Long term readers will know that my cinema snack of choice is Peanut M&Ms. This is because they caused maximum impact when thrown from the back of a darkened auditorium onto the heads before me. A particularly horrible habit of my younger self, but one that didn’t develop until my teenage years. On this night, I had a bucket of popcorn - hot, sweet, redolent of the movies. I also remember a big cup of coke with ice cubes gently clicking off each other. The archetypal cinema experience, burning into my cerebral canyons as I celebrated the impossibly grown up age of eight-years-old.

The lights dimmed, the curtains parted. Pearl & Dean kicked in.

The world properly went to shit when we stopped letting Pearl & Dean gatekeep the cinema experience. I don’t even know who Pearl & Dean were or what they did, but back in their days, when the lights dimmed and that cue dropped, everyone got it: shut the fuck up and sit still, proceedings have started.

We got some adverts for local businesses - a glazing firm, a new Indian restaurant on the high street, a big garden centre. Then the trailers started. I wish I remember what they were but I’ve got nothing and the internet won’t shed any clues. I would’ve been jazzed whatever they were.

The screen went dark. The BBFC black card came up. Again, the internet has let me down here, so have the one for Back to the Future 2 and just squint or something.

Credit: YouTube

Some scenes may be unsuitable for young children.

But not for an eight-year-old living his best life with his best mates in the back row of the best and biggest cinema in the land.

I’m not going to review Back to the Future. It’s 40 fucking years old and if you haven’t seen it by now then frankly you should be disgusted with yourself. There were a couple of minutes early doors where I doubted myself, though.

Because Back to the Future starts with a slow, cold open. Yeah, you get Spielberg’s name (I might’ve only been a kid, I already knew that guy delivered) but then it’s just a load of clocks ticking. What’s this symbolism shit? We’re kids, get to the good stuff mate.

It takes exactly three minutes. Three minutes to reveal that Marty’s cool, but not that cool. Not so cool that he’s an arrogant dick (like all the IRL cool kids around us). A pretty normal guy. A guy who, when you’re eight-years-old, you immediately and completely idolise the very second he pulls his skateboarding hitchhiker schtick.

I was pinned back: dumbstruck, in absolute awe. Back to the Future hits you with a deadbeat dad, an overbearing bully, rock and roll, a faithful dog, nuclear fusion, Libyan nationalists and a motherfucking time machine³ inside the first 30 minutes. Not to mention some perfectly normal casual swearing, just like grown ups do. Yes Doc Brown, your calculations are correct and I am seeing some serious shit.

That first half an hour felt like a substantial step up in content, even from something like The Goonies that I’d seen a few months before. It wasn’t scary, just noticeably more adult. Seriously, what the fuck were Libyan nationalists, and why did they just gun down that nice old science man with the silly hair?

BttF has one of Hollywood’s most perfect scripts. Not a word of dialogue is wasted, everything zips forward, working towards the resolution of getting Marty home. Along the way, he fixes his parents’ marriage and saves the Doc’s life while gifting him his greatest ever invention. Not to mention putting that prick Biff in his place (under a pile of shit). The film tells its story perfectly, and even at such a young age I got it. I didn’t need a thing explained to me - I was right fucking there with Marty the entire time.

What I remember back then and what still lands is just how breathless the ending is. Hollywood loves a fake out ending; driving final acts into dizzy circles that, if we’re lucky, bring the story home satisfactorily.

Few, if any, stick the landing as well as BttF. The final act is a riot of resolution, starting with George decking Biff, amping up with Marty nearly blinking out of existence on stage before recovering to invent rock and roll, then finally reaching a gloriously frantic crescendo with the Doc’s high wire walk atop the clocktower. The direction, the editing and Alan Silvestri’s riotous score all work together perfectly. Beat after beat after beat, nailed.

By the time Doc dropped his shades (dropping possibly the greatest tease in movie history in the process) and Huey Lewis and the News ripped into ‘Back in Time⁴’ I was in a different realm. I danced out of the cinema on a carpet of air; I was so giddy with adrenaline that I moonwalked out of that motherfucker.

I’m 47 as I write this, the same age as Christopher Lloyd was when he played Doc Brown⁵. Three days from now I’ll be 48 (the same age as Robert de Niro in Cape Fear - I play this game a lot). That old ABC was demolished over two decades ago; replaced by luxury flats (luxury then, these days they’re looking rather raggedy), a grim, soulless chain bar, and a rather charming taproom where your faithful correspondent can often be found whiling away an afternoon.

I’ve chased the intoxicating high I got off Back to the Future for the last four decades. Some films have come close. Jurassic Park in that same cinema a few years later, mobhanded with my teenage mates and my wide-eyed little brother in tow. Speed, a perfectly constructed action movie that doesn’t let up for a single minute. Zombieland in a tired old fleapit in Hammersmith, so much fun that I stayed in my seat for the next showing. The Hateful Eight, so beautiful, brutal and completely Thingish that I lapped up every claret spattered minute of it.

But none of them has come close to the rush I got that night 40 years ago. The night I fell in love with the movies forever. Hit the fucking music, Huey.

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Thanks for reading. My ego is pretty rampant but it’s also fragile, so show some love before you scarper. Bang that like button on your way out, or get involved in the comments if this piece landed well with you. If you’re feeling really flush you could buy me a beer and I’ll love you for all time. Cheers.

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1. My old man took me to the cinema twice when I was a kid. E.T. and Days of Thunder, and that was only because he loved Nascar. I’m not complaining, he also taught me how to shave, took me to watch him race, bought me my first legal pint and introduced me to Derek & Clive. Man’s a fucking legend.

2. My constant boredom was a big old neurodivergence red light ignored. In 1985 I was probably still being called a gifted child, though, so we will not dwell on it.

3. Made out of a Delorean, lest we forget.

4. Better than ‘The Power of Love’ and we’ll do ten rounds, Marquis of Queensbury style, if you want to disagree with me on that.

5. And, coincidentally, the same age Marty tells the Doc he’ll be in 2015. (WHICH WAS A FUCKING DECADE AGO!!!)