After the first couple of years had passed I’d found that I had to widen my parameters, in in order to find new goodies to watch. The Imperial cinema felt like Walsall’s answer to The Clifton in Wolverhampton and I began to take a bus into Walsall at least once week. This building had a theatrical tradition dating way back to the 1860’s, but it wasn’t until 1887 that it became known as the Imperial Hall. It’s life as a cinema began in 1910 and little changed it would seem, except for the installation of sound in the early 30’s. I became a regular visitor and was delighted when I discovered they were about to have a special week of horror double bills, with a different double bill every day! I was more than happy to pay my money and watch the movies. Unfortunately I was too naive to understand that these shows were the final desperate efforts of the cinema management trying to keep their business afloat. Among the films viewed there were ‘The Werewolf’, ‘The Two Faces Of Dr. Jekyll’, ‘Revenge Of Frankenstein’, ‘Strait-Jacket’, ‘Creature With The Atom Brain’, ‘The Damned’, ‘Maniac’, ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man’, ‘Master Of The World’, ‘Castle Of Blood’, ‘Valley Of The Dragons’ and ‘Dr. Cyclops’. It closed it’s doors in 1968, after a month of revivals that included the likes of ‘The Ten Commandments’ and ‘Cat Ballou’. It reopened as part of J D Wetherspoons but even that has now closed. The Dale cinema in Willenhall was just a short bus ride of ten minutes away and was in a state of very poor repair. It looked as if someone had recently painted the interior walls a dark, but brilliant blue and had missed large patches which allowed you to see a, once vibrant red from years before. If my memory isn’t playing up I seem recall correctly it was the first cinema where I encountered Festooned curtains. I only visited it a couple of times and the only reason it is on my list is because it was here that I saw a double bill of Hammers’ ground breaking 1950’s horrors, ‘Dracula’ and ‘The Mummy’. It was 1966 before I visited the Plaza, in Dudley to see a double bill of ‘The Deadly Mantis’ and ‘The Land Unknown’ and later that same year ‘Tarantula’ and ‘The Monolith Monsters’. They too had a week of horror double bills which had included ‘Son Of Dracula’, ‘The Day the World Ended’ and ‘War Of The Zombies’. Also seen there were ‘Nothing But The Night’, ‘The Legend Of Hell House’, ‘The Cat From Outer Space’, a re-release of Disneys’ ‘Alice In Wonderland’, ‘Frankenstein And The Monster From Hell’, ‘Nightwing’ and ‘The Howling’ among others. And two Godzilla movies, ‘Monsters From An Unknown Planet’ and ‘War Of The Monsters’, (better known as ‘The Terror Of Godzilla’ and ‘Godzilla Vs Gigan’). These were two of only six Godzilla movies I saw in a cinema. It was a warm and friendly cinema and I enjoyed my visits. I pass the site of the former Plaza cinema every time I visit my local Multiplex (a Showcase), it’s now a weed infested eyesore.
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