Free Shows at the Local Cinema Hall

At Nibong Tebal, there is an old cinema hall by the name of Southern Talkies. (A talkie, according to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, is a film/movie that has sounds and not just pictures.)According to a friend of mine, this theatre has a history of not less than 100 years old. I do not know how far it is true.

During my Standard Four year in the primary school, it had been my daily routine to watch cinema show in the evening. The show would last for about two hours, starting from 7.00 pm till 9.00 pm. I used to have my daily doss of free show either by hook or by crook. Of course there were times I was quite frustrated for not being able to be admitted to the theatre after my repeated attempts.

In the evening, about half an hour before the show time, I would stand nearby the theatre pleading to any prospective cinema viewer by saying, `Uncle/Auntie, please take me into the theatre.' Some cinema-goers were quite obliging; others were not. When I was lucky, a man would hold my arm to bring me through main entrance and to allow me to sit beside him. To a lady who was not so willing to bring me into the cinema hall, I still clung to her by holding a portion of her dress as she walked through the entrance. Sometimes I even walked side by side among the children in a family pretending to be a member of the family. As I always appeared in the vicinity of the theatre, the ticket checker, by the nickname of 不倒翁(in Chinese it means a toy that assumes the form of Bodhidharma in a sitting position), could recognize me as a fake child of umpteen cinema viewers. So, it is at his mercy to allow me to enjoy a free show or otherwise.

Another means by which I could watch a free show was to hide in the toilet for at least half an hour before the show began. When show time started, the entire hall would be in total darkness. At that moment, I would quietly sneak into the theatre from the toilet to find an empty seat in the middle of a row. Hiding in the ladies’ toilets would be safer still as the ticket checker seldom checked the ladies’ toilets before the show.

Another desperate attempt to get a free show was a concerted effort by a few notorious boys. These boys, including my second brother, were already blacklisted by the ticket checker. They had no chance to enter the theatre through the main entrance. What they did was to climb over an eight foot tall plank wall or to crawl through a pre-dug hole beneath the wall.

As the toilets were situated outside the theatre, a high wooden plank wall was erected to enclose the toilets and the cinema hall. I could not remember how many times I followed my second brother to climb over the wall by stepping over the shoulder of another boy and went down from the toilet wall to walk into the cinema hall through the door adjacent to the toilets. In the process of climbing, one might be injured due to accident.

Another safer method was to dig beforehand a big hole beneath the wall and covered it with a piece of cardboard. On top of the cardboard was covered with soil to make it unnoticed by others. During the show time, one by one, the boys would crawl through the hole to get into the theatre.

Not all attempts to get into the cinema hall were fruitful. Sometimes, the boys would be caught in the act. Others still had to leave the theatre if they failed to produce counterfoil tickets when confronted by the ticket checker inside the theatre.

I was lucky all the while for not being caught by the checker. It was either I had an innocent look, or I was an excellent pretender to be a good boy.