Ken, I don’t know where and how you found these lovely hi-res pics, but how you’ve taken me back – on Saturday the 9th June 1962 I was in there watching the matinee of Escape from Zahrain ! (My dad had a music shop over in Weston Road and was given weekly passes to all the Southend cinemas in exchange for displaying posters and advertising material for the week’s films… )
I virtually lived in this cinema as a kid, and I was always enthralled by the lavish poster displays (particularly in the alleyway leading to the “other” box office and entrance, off the High Street) advertising wonderful American sci-fi and horror movies. I was 8 years old, and the X rating kept me out of Tarantula!, Night of the Blood Beast and Demons of the Swamp but my dad took me to see the A-rated Amazing Colossal Man, Earth vs the Spider, The Brain Eaters, and Viking Women vs the Sea Serpent. And it was at the Essoldo in the early 1950s that I had my key, life-formative moviegoing experience when I saw Forbidden Planet, still my favourite film 60 years later.
Ken, I don’t know where and how you found these lovely hi-res pics, but how you’ve taken me back – on Saturday the 9th June 1962 I was in there watching the matinee of Escape from Zahrain ! (My dad had a music shop over in Weston Road and was given weekly passes to all the Southend cinemas in exchange for displaying posters and advertising material for the week’s films… )
I virtually lived in this cinema as a kid, and I was always enthralled by the lavish poster displays (particularly in the alleyway leading to the “other” box office and entrance, off the High Street) advertising wonderful American sci-fi and horror movies. I was 8 years old, and the X rating kept me out of Tarantula!, Night of the Blood Beast and Demons of the Swamp but my dad took me to see the A-rated Amazing Colossal Man, Earth vs the Spider, The Brain Eaters, and Viking Women vs the Sea Serpent. And it was at the Essoldo in the early 1950s that I had my key, life-formative moviegoing experience when I saw Forbidden Planet, still my favourite film 60 years later.