Ad Time Again. enjoy.. Early 1982 stuff..

[ronnie21]

dobby. heres some info on cinemart.. there was also a theater down the street from cinemart called the edgemoor which closed 3 weeks after the cinemart. last movie show there was "mothers day" of all movies. The edgemoor was an old one screen theater with balcony that showed almost every horror movie that came out in 1980..

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/33008

[ronnie21]

http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/21256

[Paff]

Following those links, I did find this: http://www.cinematour.com/tour/us/22479.html
or http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/11910

I went here quite often, and I distinctly remember seeing Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2. That was '86, obviously, and since it closed in February of 1987, was likely the last movie I saw there.

What's interesting is that the building has stood intact and vacant for 25 years. The obvious idea would be to reopen it, but I think that ship has sailed (for one thing, I'm not moving back to the other side of the country to do it). I guess there's a multiplex nearby, maybe even in the same complex. While it's tempting to open it as a rep theater, showing older and independent movies, I don't think there's a market for that (especially in this area of the US; there's a reason I left there!). But I wonder if something could have been done with it mid 90s, before the DVD boom hit and when most movies still showed 35mm film. Midnight movies, foreign stuff, really could have been given a chance.

But with almost all revival screenings being done from Blu-Ray nowadays, it would be pointless. Sigh. There's an era of film viewing that will just never come back....

[ronnie21]

wow, i wonder if anyone ever broke inside and if the seats and screen were still in there.. very intresting. Texas chainsaw 2 came out in august of 86... how many screens were in there?

[Paff]

It was a single screen that was "twinned" in the mid 70s. I'm also trying to recall if this is where I saw the re-release of Andy Warhol's Frankenstein in '82.

I'm sure that the interiors were gutted, either by the owners or vandals.

Funny that you mention seats though. In San Diego, we have "The Ken", a single screen theater that's been in operation since the 1940s at least. It's only recently that they've upgraded some of the equipment though. They finally took out the dual carbon-arc 35mm projectors and replaced with the modern platter system. They also took out the antiquated seats. I was there for a screening the night they unveiled the new seats. Feeling curious and mischievous after the show, I wandered around the building, until I found one of those huge haul-away dumpsters. What was inside? Yup, all the WWII-era seats! I wanted to grab a whole bunch, but even fitting one inside a Miata was hard work.

So, I still have a 1940s era theater seat that I need to put in my home somewhere. It will need some work, as it's meant to be bolted to the floor, and a slanted floor at that. I'll have to go to Home Depot and build a frame to mount it on. But it's great. All metal, with wooden arm rests (with a ton of grafitti carved in to them, naturally). The seat cushions have these big springs in them, that no matter how much you shifted your position, one always poked into your butt cheeks. Try watching Seven Samurai like THAT! I know I did....