THE ODEON STRIKES BACK - May 1980

Opening week, London, 1980...

Here's something I should have done more often, take photos of cinemas in the 1970s and 1980s. This is the front of London's Odeon Leicester Square, (the one that backs onto Charing Cross Road). I'm looking up at the hoarding above the main doors, the first week that The Empire Strikes Back was on worldwide release in the US and the UK. Usually Britain got the prints several months after the US, so this was special.

Note that it was a 70mm presentation, and in stereo! I also saw Star Wars and Close Encounters of the Third Kind at this cinema, and the use of stereo was certainly a novelty back then, if a little scary at times with some of its more directional effects. Stereo systems first appeared at these large city cinemas before being added to local multiplexes.

I think I was using up a roll of film with this shot. Film was expensive, developing film and paying for prints was expensive. Therefore, I've not got any other shots like this...