The Futurist in Birmingham city centre began its life in 1919. It was the first cinema in Birmingham to have screen curtains, was decorated with wall murals and seated 1,400. It presented talkies from 1929 and by the late 60’s was part of the S & K circuit. Twinned in 1981, It became a Cannon cinema, closing in the 1990’s. A re-issue of the Toho production ‘The Mysterians’ was the film that drew me to this large and impressive cinema, which after all these years was looking a little tired, but it was clean, warm and friendly and was always pretty busy. I now not only scanned the local press but also read the Sunday Mercury, a Birmingham based paper, in order to find films to see. Over the next few years, trips to this venue rewarded me with ‘House Of Dracula’ and ‘Bride of Frankenstein’ on a double bill re-release, [(films that were almost 40 years old! Wonderful), that was on for a full seven days, beginning with a Bank Holiday and I travelled into the city by train. It was here that I’d watch ‘Horrors Of The Black Musem’, ‘The Eyes Of Hell’, (you may know this film as ‘The Mask’, it had a few 3D sequences), ‘Lady in A Cage’, (a film that hadn’t been granted a certificate by the BBFC, but was shown here under special licence) and ‘The Long Hair Of Death’ and many more. In the 70’s I saw the star studded movie ‘Earthquake’ presented in the noisy but exciting gimic of “Sensurround”. The 80’s saw me wearing 3D glasses for ‘Treasure of the Four Crowns’, ‘Jaws 3D’ and ‘Friday the 13th in 3D’. Some years later I saw ‘Highlander’, along with Derann co-worker, Dale Hemenway, in an all but empty auditorium, which we both thought was a brilliant movie. The Penn cinema opened in 1937 and was a popular local venue. The cinema was always independently operated and was well maintained, even up to its closure in 1973. I didn’t get to this cinema until around 1965 and I only visited it twice. Once to see a double bill consisting of ‘The Time Travellers’ and ‘Godzilla Vs The Thing’. The other film viewed here was ‘Onibaba’, a Japanese movie with subtitles and another that was being shown under special licence as it had not been granted a rating by the BBFC. The cinema was all but deserted! Situated in the southwest suburb it wasn’t an easy cinema to reach, as it was well out of the town center, but I don’t think that was why the cinema was empty, the film was just far too ‘arty’ for the likes of Wolverhampton.
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