Looking Back: Kilcullen Cinema in 1962

While the revived Kilcullen Bridge Cinema is bringing a curated series of excellent films to local audiences, it only has one or two screenings in a month, writes Brian Byrne. How different it was in the heyday of the cinema in the 1960s, when it was managed by the late Paddy Melia, a man never short of a hyperbolic phrase, and regularly providing cinematic entertainment every night of the week.

Thanks to the continuing archival delvings of Joe Murray, we have here the Leinster Leader advertisement's lineup of a typical week of cinema in Kilcullen, beginning Friday 21 September 1962, on "KILDARE'S W-I-D-E-S-T SCREEN." The offerings began with the adventure of Swiss Family Robinson in Super Cinemascope 55, on Friday, Saturday, and a special Sunday matinee. Sunday also featured "for laughs", Strictly for Pleasure, a Technicolour comedy starring Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, along with the 20 hits song-filled Teenage Millionaire in a "Smash hit Sunday Show." 

Monday and Tuesday brought "fast and furious action" from the "Magnificent Three" of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr with Peter Lawford, (Yes, they are four. Go figure.) in a "Walloping Western", with "tremendous pace from start to finish", Sergeants 3 in "stunning Super Cinemascope 55 and Technicolour." 

Midweek audiences were to be treated to the "High Drama on the High Seas" of HMS Defiant, a stirring epic in the vein of The Guns of Navarone, featuring Dirk Bogarde, Alec Guinness, and Anthony Quayle, "the screen's most talented actors". The week would reach its dramatic peak with "something entirely new in cinematic entertainment", The Unfrocked, a "searing, searching study of an unfrocked priest." 

The blurb went: "However controversial its subject may be, this film has been hailed by the press as the best film ever shown in this country. The Catholic Herald said: 'It may be distasteful to the squeamish, it may horrify many, it may shock others, but it is THE BEST FILM WE HAVE EVER SEEN.' As this picture is being withdrawn from this country on 30th Sept., IT WILL NOT BE SEEN IN ANY OTHER CINEMA IN IRELAND. Don't miss this only opportunity of seeing the most talked-about film in years. We have obtained a Special Censor's Certificate for the final presentation. STRICTLY ADULTS ONLY. NOBODY under 18 years will be permitted to see this film." That it was a French film, originally released eight years before, probably added to the mystique. 

Looking ahead to the following week, the cinema promised screenings of Johnny Nobody, Taste of Fear, and Twist Around the Clock, and no doubt Paddy had already pencilled his purple prose for the next issue of the Leader.

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