A SALUTE TO IRENE DOBSON

A letter from Richard Armstrong in this month’s Sight & Sound magazine (we’ll spare you the details for the sake of brevity) led us to delve into the strange and little known story of Irene Dobson and the Penwicken Bijou cinema. It’s a cracking tale of witch hunts, mauled children, and people who turn into cats…

Apparently, the Bijou opened in 1923 but by 1980 it was failing and was bought by Frank Hughes, an academic from the nearby Falmouth College of Art.

He and his young partner Felicity, one of his ex-students, were busy looking after their new baby so they left the programming, securing of prints, and drafting of publicity to someone else.

Irene Dobson started at the Bijou as an usherette and loved movies. She had been running things since before Frank bought the place and knew the Bijou back to front so was the ideal person to take the reins.

As Armstrong explains on the Flickhead website: ‘The first time she saw Taxi Driver was a special moment for her. She went all the way to the Edinburgh Film Festival in 1980 just to see the reds in Mean Streets. She liked the Italians Bertolucci, Bava, Argento, middle and late Visconti. She had a worn copy of The Leopard which she liked to curl up and watch on her night off.’

In April and May of 1986 there was a spate of cases in which babies in Penwicken went missing and were subsequently discovered dead and dreadfully mauled.

Armstrong continues: ‘When the killings began, Irene had been running a double bill of the two versions of Cat People in the late slot. At first, the atmospheric 1942 original passed little muster. But after the second or third night a particularly striking locandina poster for Argento’s Cat O’ Nine Tails which adorned the pillar on the cinema’s facade had been daubed with red paint.

‘The following afternoon angry parents picketed the Cat People matinee. There were letters in the local paper. After a week, a council meeting was called at which it was suggested that either the program be changed or the cinema be closed while “things got back to normal”. The proprietor urged “Dobbin” to heed local feelings. Irene pointed at the healthy box office.

‘By the end of the second week, there were more reports of babies going missing and parents warned children that if they didn’t go to bed ‘The Cat’ would get them. This time Frank ordered Irene in no uncertain terms to change the late show.

‘Irene scheduled I Was a Male War Bride and Bringing Up Baby in the late slot. Attendance fell dramatically. Somebody at the council began querying Irene’s job record. A month later Irene Dobson resigned as programmer of the Bijou. People said it was probably a good thing: “She was strange, that one.”

‘Then one hot afternoon towards the end of July another child was snatched and died of shock before whatever it was proceeded to feast on its remains. A few days later on a side street near the Bijou what was left of another infant was found, its limbs mauled. It was Frank and Felicity’s baby.

‘The Bijou showed no films for a month out of respect for the grieving couple. The police again turned up nothing. Nobody was ever brought to book for the Penwicken killings. Financially, the Bijou never recovered and the cinema was gutted for supermarket space in 1988.’

Armstrong also interviews a regular from those late shows in the Eighties called Eddie Biesel.

Eddie says: ‘Irene Dobson was a real original, the best thing that happened to moviegoing in Penwicken. The Bijou had real personality.

‘But she was treated badly. The vicar told everyone that she used to show ‘video nasties’ at the kids’ matinees. Some said she had seen so many movies she could see in the dark! Others said she couldn’t blink! She looked hunted the last time I spoke to her…’

Well, no wonder. We sure hope ‘Dobbin’ is still out there, fighting the good fight (albeit in a non-blinking fashion, of course). One should never forget that it’s thanks to the enthusiasm of people like Dobson that the idea of demonising someone for enjoying horror flicks or (perish the thought) foreign movies now seems so alien to us.

So, we’re asking D+Cineastes for more information about this unsung hero of local cinema. Send your memories and stories of Irene Dobson to info@devon-cornwall-film.co.uk or post a comment below. We’ll print the best of them over the coming weeks.

Posted by Thin White Duke


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