This Nostalgic Life #42
Movie Theater Memories
This Nostalgic Life is a free weekly publication rich with nostalgia brought to you by co-creators Eric Vardeman and Mick Lee. If this is your first time reading, you can subscribe using the button below so you don’t miss receiving any future issues delivered straight to your inbox.
Welcome back for another edition of This Nostalgic Life. This week, our dynamic duo of Eric and Mick are offering up memories of going to movie theaters back in the day. Grab yourself a big bowl of popcorn, settle in, and enjoy these stories.
Small Town Theater Memories
by Mick Lee
When I was a kid, there were few things more exciting in thought was going to the movie theater at the mall about an hour away from where we lived. Unfortunately, I rarely ever got to go there. As I got a little older, my brother and his friends were going nearly every weekend, and I had to listen to their exploits after the fact.
As time passed on and I got older, I couldn’t wait to get my driver’s license so I could start going to the movies with my friends and having a good time. But as fate would have it, that theater at the mall closed about a year before I turned 16.
But in the other direction from home was a small, 2-screen cinema. It was very “low rent”, but my family had gone several times when I was growing up. I can remember going there to see Jaws 3-D, Elvira: Mistress of the Dark, Back to the Future 3, and a few other films. My first job was in the same town as the little Lee Cinema, and I would end up seeing a great many movies there.
When I was 16 and working at that grocery store, there was a group of us who would go to the movies every Tuesday night. We’d go on Tuesdays as that was the night that the theater ran there weekly “$2 Tuesday” special. All movies were just $2 bucks, and sometimes we’d do a double-feature if they were showing two movies we were interested in.
Most movies they showed were a week behind, meaning that if a new movie debuted this Friday night, they wouldn’t get it until NEXT Friday night. But that was ok with us. It gave us a chance to gather plenty word-of-mouth reviews to decide what movies we wanted to see and which ones we wanted to skip.
From 1994 until the new theater opened in 1997, I probably saw a hundred movies or more at that little Lee Cinema. Blockbusters like Toy Story, Independence Day, Apollo 13, Armageddon, and too many more to name. And I saw lesser movies like Celtic Pride, Cops and Robbersons, Heavyweights, and just as many lower-tier films as the blockbusters I saw.
I took many young ladies there for date night, and the parking lot was one of the cruising and hangout destinations for teens in town. I learned a lot of life lessons in and around that theater, and I still smile every time I drive by the old place.
It closed for good in 1999, but the owner opened a drive-in in the next town over, and I continued my movie-going experiences there for years. I have a lot of nostalgia for that old place, and that weekly ritual of going to the movies is one I still continue today, but I do it at home. I installed a 75” HD television, which may be the same size as the screens in that old theater, and every Saturday night, I feel like I’m back there again, as my wife and I settle in for another night at the movies.
I Want My Mom
by Eric Vardeman
I will forever be befuddled by the choices my strict, evangelical parents made when it came to what I could and couldn’t do, could and couldn’t listen to, and could and couldn’t watch. For instance, take the summer of 1982. I was twelve at the time, the movie Poltergeist debuted in theaters that summer and I really wanted to see it. Around that same time, the teacher of the Sunday school class I was in at church got the bright idea to take the six of us in my class on an outing one weekend. That Sunday school teacher? My father.
His plan was for us to go get pizza for dinner then go to the movies. Somehow, we(I) convinced him to take us to see Poltergeist. He didn’t even bat an eye at the suggestion. None of the other parents did either. So, one weekend, off we went to a local pizza place for dinner then off to the movies. Out of the six of us, I was the only one that had seen any kind of horror movie up to that point. I wasn’t too far removed from seeing The Exorcist with my cousins (a movie that has scarred me to this day). Out of the other five, there was one boy, Randall, who was a little more sheltered than the rest of us. His mom had a tendency to baby him just a little. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. He was a good kid and a good friend. Be that as it may, before we even got to the theater, he was apprehensive about seeing the movie. And a couple of the other boys, we’ll refer to them as Terry and Jason, had a great time teasing him about it.
Well, his emotional grasp on reality went downhill steadily during the movie. With every paranormal happening, every jump, every scare, people all over the theater would yell and scream. Randall was no exception, even burying his face in my father’s shoulder during several scenes. But there was one scene, in particular, that was the breaking point. It’s linked here:
The theater was filled with screams during this scene and one person in our group jumped up and ran out of the theater yelling “I want my mom!” Only it wasn’t Randall. Oh no. It was Terry, one of the boys that had been teasing him about being scared. Billy made it through the entire movie, Terry sat in the lobby for the rest of the show. Needless to say, we teased him about it. Randall even joined in a little.
Side note: this is how cold blooded my father was. When Terry ran out, my father cackled like a hyena but made no effort to check on him because he wanted to finish the movie. That describes growing up in the 80’s in a nutshell right there.
Thank you for joining us again this week. If you’d like to share your movie theater memories with us, we’d love to hear them. Just drop us a line in the comments and we’ll talk! See you next week.
