Certain dates stick in the mind. May 1, 1997, for instance. Cast your mind back to that fateful night. What were you doing? Who were you with? For Neil McDonald, no great feats of memory are needed to recall that evening. It was a night when a dream became reality, a night when the plans came together.
Not that McDonald had any greater connection to the General Election than the rest of us. Rather, May 1 was the first outing for the Fleapit Film Club, an organisation that's returning to active service tomorrow after a seven-month hiatus.
The Fleapit (so named in reference to the quality of decor and furnishings at its first venue, the private screening room at Duvaly's go-go bar in Fox Street, Glasgow) is a members-only cinema club, devoted more to the cult and the outre than the mainstream. It's the brainchild of McDonald, a 37-year-old library assistant at the BBC with a fan's knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, forgotten and sometimes tacky movies, and Emma Taylor, a 28-year-old house manager at the Glasgow Film Theatre, who utilises her film industry contacts to
co-ordinate the club's programme.
It was the GFT's patron's request scheme that perhaps provided the impetus for Fleapit. The range of requests made Taylor think there was a sufficiently large number of people interested in oddball stuff to support a small film club, and so she and McDonald organised the first screening: a 16mm print of Russ Meyer's lungtastic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
The success of that night (no small achievement, given Fleapit's shoestring budget and the restrictions on small cinema clubs as regards advertising and membership) encouraged them to do more, and other notable coups include Hal Ashby's exercise in high art and bad taste, Harold and Maude, and the swinging London satire Morgan - a Suitable Case for Treatment, starring David Warner as the crazed artist fixated with gorillas. Not forgetting Taylor's own favourite, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, when members of the audience and organisers turned up in the de rigueur outfits of the dedicated Rockyist. Indeed, members are encouraged to suggest future presentations, and occasionally one member, Deirdre, will act as usherette, selling popcorn at the interval. Which fits in with McDonald's avowed reason for Fleapit's existence: ''We're not po-faced about this, we're doing it to have a good time.
We have a bar-club atmosphere, and people can smoke and drink in the room.'' When circumstances allow, and the film is appropriate, Fleapit has organised a larger night around a screening: like the time when a screening of Saturday Night Fever in the Arches was followed by a club night in the same place, or when a screening of Faster Pussycat, another Meyer favourite, was emceed by Frankie Saveloy, from the ironicalist easy-listening nite Casino Royale. There have been collaborations with musicians and galleries - a screening of Un Chien Andalou, for instance, presented in association with the Glasgow Early and Silent Cinema club had live accompaniment from members of Glasgow bands Swelling Meg, Soulfinger, and Dawson.
But all this costs, and that explains to some extent why Fleapit hasn't been in operation since the end of last year, and why it's returned in slightly modified form. Prints cost #70 to hire, plus couriering fees; halls cost to book; such publicity as the law permits doesn't come free; statutory membership of the BFFS is another #40 - and when sometimes you're playing a film to only a dozen dedicated fans it's easy to see how one can become overextended. So, temporarily, proper cinema prints transferred on to video tape will be shown on a large video screen, until such time as membership fees have accrued again and proper 16mm prints and equipment can be afforded.
Being a members-only club has some drawbacks - people must apply to join and pay their dues in advance - but it does mean that Fleapit can show uncertificated films. That doesn't mean a job lot of Swedish filth for the brown-mac brigade; so far Fleapit's biggest coup in terms of the uncertificated market was a 16mm print of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, long before it received an uncertificated revival in London last year.
Fleapit has a membership of 200 people, although no more than 50 have ever attended a screening at the same time. McDonald puts it succinctly: ''Those were a good two years, and it's good to be back.''
For the first screening at Fleapit's new home, the 13th Note cafe in King Street, a copy of Mario Bava's 1967 Danger: Diabolik has been secured. It's an Italian Batman-style adventure about international master criminals and the superpolice that trap them. A better example of the cult movie you'd be hard-pressed to find.
n Fleapit can be contacted at PO Box 4711, Glasgow, G12 8YF. Alternatively, e-mail them - fleapit@dial.pipex.com.
n Danger: Diabolik, tomorrow, 9pm, the 13th Note.
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