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What Were Cinemas Like When You Were A Child, Grandparent?

Started by SteveDave, September 19, 2013, 11:00:27 AM

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Popshed

The ABC in Doncaster circa late 70s - a monstrosity pleading to be bulldozed.



And yet, forty years later, it's still there - broken, desolate and whimpering. 



Although, to be honest, the same could be said for Doncaster.



mothman

My childhood was too eclectic to feature any one cinema. Mostly it was watching films in other people's houses in other countries - pre-video recorders, projector-rental seems to have been a niche-but-thriving industry in some of the countries I lived in. My earliest memory of going to an actual cinema would be... 1978. Star Wars, of course, at a cinema on the Strand that isn't there anymore. The same year my Dad and Uncle took me to see a 10th-anniversary re-release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I was 7. I don't remember if it had an intermission, being so long, but when I watched it on the big screen again during a Tyneside Film Festival in the early '90s, there was one which surprised me at the time.

Is there anywhere that still does those little pots of ice cream? But cheap - well, cheapish... er, cheaply-made, semi-affordable ones, not little tubs of Haagen-Shit for £6 each. And in the actual auditorium from a tray, not just in the lobby. Future generations will watch the Monty Python "Albatross" sketch and wonder what the attendant is doing there in the first place...

Lee Van Cleef

Quote from: Catalogue Trousers on September 20, 2013, 06:27:17 PM
The Majestic, King's Lynn.


I saw Independence Day there, to be honest, it was underwhelming (the film).

The one I went to most when I was young was the one of the RAF base in Ayios Nikolaos. Not sre what it was called, but I do remember that pretty much every week we'd walk down there to see the new film that they'd got in and about 2 in every three times it wouldn't have arrived and we'd be watching a repeat of The Jungle Book.  I think that's probably why I'm not a big environmentalist.

Marty McFly

A magical thread.

The first film I ever saw in the cinema was Ghostbusters 2 at the Odeon in Anglia Square, Norwich. I was 7.

It used to look a bit like this but slightly more colourful:


It's still going 20-odd years later as the Hollywood Cinema, most recently of course it got plenty of media coverage as the cinema where the world premiere of Alpha Papa was held, and it doesn't look that much different now:

Gulftastic

Already mentioned on the thread, but the Hyde Parl Picture House in Leeds.



I was born and raised within 5 minutes walk of the place, and lived near it nearly all my life. We never used to go and watch proper films there, but we were regulars at the Saturday morning pictures, with The Chiffy Kids and various CFF films. They were good times. I only started going to grown up films there years later, when it successfully moved with the times and re-invented itself as something more 'art-house'. I once had a first date there seeing 'La Reine Margot'. I also had a summer job at the video rental shop opposite.

And one last fact, it was used in 'First Of The Summer Wine'.

Johnny Townmouse

That is easily the single most profound thing I miss about living in Leeds. For a time that was a 10mins walk from my flat, and I used to pass it every day going both ways. Stopping off for a pint on the way home, and then catching a 6.30 film at the Picture House, constitute some of my happiest memories whilst living in Leeds.

Awful seats, sometimes quite woeful projection quality, but absolutely sublime programming. During the Leeds Film Festival I practically lived in that place.

Serge

I can only echo what Johnny said a few posts earlier about this being a great thread. There are some smart looking buildings in here, and I'm glad that most of them are still being used for something.

Quote from: Popshed on September 21, 2013, 04:32:57 PM
The ABC in Doncaster circa late 70s - a monstrosity pleading to be bulldozed.

I only remember it when it was part of the Cannon group. Pound a ticket near its final days.

phes

Quote from: Johnny Townmouse on September 21, 2013, 08:04:49 PM
That is easily the single most profound thing I miss about living in Leeds. For a time that was a 10mins walk from my flat, and I used to pass it every day going both ways. Stopping off for a pint on the way home, and then catching a 6.30 film at the Picture House, constitute some of my happiest memories whilst living in Leeds.

Awful seats, sometimes quite woeful projection quality, but absolutely sublime programming. During the Leeds Film Festival I practically lived in that place.

Here's a picture from the last couple of years:





I think they replaced the seats with those from another theater just a few years back, and though i'm no expert i'm not aware of any problem with projection quality, so that's all good news. I have most of the the ticket stubs from the 75 times I went in my first year at university. The films I have enjoyed most there have been Repo Man on a pissed up, late Saturday night showing, Cabin in the Woods at a riotous (for cinema!) showing and 2 years at sea in an empty daytime showing.

It's still great value and I think it's £4.50 concession and £5.50 adult with a buy 3 get 1 free on the late night Saturday showings. I often smuggle beers in but always buy a stick of chocolate to clear my conscience. I love that place.

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on September 21, 2013, 08:39:46 AM
This was the ABC, then the Regal, now no longer a cinema but a shitty nightclub. Brings a tear to the eye, it does.



was once this:



Get it right several shitty nightclubs. Saw my first cinema film there:  Masters of the Universe, and thought all cinemas were like that (marble floor, plush curtains, probably nothing like that and looked like hell but that's my memory and I was impressed at the time) Went near the end, Ghostbusters II, when it was in it's death throes and all I can remember was it being freezing cold.

phes

This is the now deceased Odeon in London Road, North End, Portsmouth (1990).



I think It really looks fantastic with its monolith front and old style listings above the entrance, and look, Total Recall! According to the history page I found it was a single screen of a little under 2000 (!) including balcony, and was tripled some time in the mid 1970s, which reduced capacity to under 1000. A fourth screen was added in 1990 and along with some other restructuring that increased the capacity to around 1500. This is the cinema that I would take my little brother to every Christmas Eve and I remember seeing Home Alone and A Nightmare Before Christmas. We still do it some years but the films have been dog-dirt by comparison.


Catalogue Trousers

Another deceased Odeon - somewhat less glamorous but the site of my very first cinematic run-ins as a toddler/primary school kid. Snow White & The Seven Dwarves, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Lucky Luke...ladies and gentlemen, I give you - the Odeon, Camberwell.


SavageHedgehog

Quote from: Catalogue Trousers on September 21, 2013, 03:23:16 PM
Why not come and enjoy a film at Cinema City, Norwich?



Oddly enough, this was one of the main cinemas of my childhood. I saw Rescuers Down Under supported by the Mickey Mouse version of Prince and the Pauper, which I'm pretty sure was the first film I saw in the cinema in 1990 or 1991. Later I saw half-price, on the way dreck like Tom & Jerry: The Movie and Mr. Nanny.

The old-school Norwich cinema which hasn't been mentioned yet, and is the one I remember most despite probably actually seeing fewer films there, is the ABC, which unfortunately I can't find a decent picture of, and is now a Nightclub.

Catalogue Trousers

Re the ABC - see that bloody huge pic that I posted a page or so back. It's obviously photoshopped, but only in matters like the marquee and the ivy. The basic frontage looks pretty accurate, from what I recall.

Treguard of Dunshelm

Luton ABC cinema. I think I saw Jurassic Park in here once.



Sitting abandoned and derelict since 2000, it squats over Luton's already unlovely town centre like an wizened and unwanted whore sitting on a tramp's face.


Subtle Mocking

Well, it started as a nipper at The Tatton Cinema in Gatley, a lovely pre-WW2 cinema with a small choice of films but very fair ticket prices (according to my parents, anyway). It's been closed since 2001, and replaced with...absolutely nothing! It still looks like this today:


My nearest cinema now is sadly this overpriced, garish, Americanised, charcoal block of shite in Didsbury, better known as Parrs Wood:


But hey, it's got a fucking Nando's, so who cares?!

SavageHedgehog

Quote from: Catalogue Trousers on September 22, 2013, 04:02:43 PM
Re the ABC - see that bloody huge pic that I posted a page or so back. It's obviously photoshopped, but only in matters like the marquee and the ivy. The basic frontage looks pretty accurate, from what I recall.

Apologies, I didn't notice that for some reason. Aping a style a little before my time I think, but hardly a million miles away.

cosmic-hearse

Quote from: Catalogue Trousers on September 22, 2013, 03:23:55 PM
Another deceased Odeon - somewhat less glamorous but the site of my very first cinematic run-ins as a toddler/primary school kid. Snow White & The Seven Dwarves, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Lucky Luke...ladies and gentlemen, I give you - the Odeon, Camberwell.



Is that the corner of Coldharbour Lane? I think it's a Nandos now

Small Man Big Horse

As others have mentioned, this is a fantastic thread.

My first local cinema was The Majestic, Reigate. I like how The Majestic title has popped up a couple of times in this thread, it makes the cinema sound so much more exciting with a name like that, rather than UCI Crawley, and all that kind of tiresome and bland rubbish. The first film that I can remember seeing is Star Wars (possibly a re-release, I'm not sure) and predictably I loved it, though it was a vaguely traumatic experience as afterwards we went in to a local newsagents and I saw a sci-fi magazine with a Star Wars cover on sale that I begged my Mum to buy for me. She was resistant at first, but eventually caved. But I wish she hadn't in retrospect, as it contained a massive feature on Alien with a selection of photographs that disturbed a tiny little Small Man Big Horse. Greatly disturbed. Anyhoo, this is what the cinema looked like:



The Majestic closed down in the very early 80s, but a few years later it was replaced by The Screen At Reigate. Which was pretty good, especially as they had a policy of getting one mainstream film in, and one arthouse, for a lot of the time. Unfortunately because the town council are posh twats (the bastards refuse to allow McDonalds or Burger King to have stores in the town, for instance) it's one of the dullest cinema's to look at that you could possibly imagine:



It's still there, though now an Everyman, and the percentage of arthouse cinema has dropped a great deal. But they still occasionally get the odd one in, especially if it's Oscar nominated.

Oh, and whilst The Majestic was closed we used to go to the ABC in Crawley:



It was great, along from the cinema you can see a Bingo hall, but then there was an amazingly greasy cafe, and then a bowling alley - you could literally spend your whole day on that street blissfully happy. Unfortunately it closed down a good decade ago, maybe longer, and for a fair while it was a Bar Med. Now it's just an empty shell of a building, albeit one which still smells of vomit.


Small Man Big Horse

Quote from: Jim_MacLaine on September 22, 2013, 10:15:54 PM
Just who is Ian Grundy?

Haha, I was wondering that. I can't find much about him online bar his love of cinemas, and taking photos of everything he sees: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stagedoor/

El Unicornio, mang

#81
This appears to be the only picture available of the Cannon Cinema in Monkseaton (albeit a pic of it boarded up. It's flats now), which was our main local when I was a kid.



There was also the Warner cinema at Manors in Newcastle, the one at the Metro Centre in Gateshead, the Odeon in Newcastle



and the Playhouse in Whitley Bay. Remember seeing Arachnophobia there with friends, but mostly it was the place my parents took me when I was a little 'un to see stuff like ET, Indiana Jones, Empire Strikes Back, etc



Frazer

Quote from: El Unicornio, mang on September 22, 2013, 10:45:03 PM
There was also the Warner cinema at Manors in Newcastle, the one at the Metro Centre in Gateshead, the Odeon in Newcastle
I used to go to late shows at the Metro Centre years ago. Walking thru the huge, deserted shopping centre always put me in mind of Dawn of the Dead, nicely set the mood if we were going to watch a horror.

Only went to the Odeon once but it's a fond memory; I'd hit a gold seam of free cinema tickets from Dime bars, the shop keeper must've thought that I was addicted. I used the first free pair on a weekend down London, the cunt mini-boss stared at it for ages before taking it thru the back room to show the cunt big boss who took even longer to inspect it before begrudgingly accepting them. Anyway, long story short, next weekend me and 5 mates went to the Newcastle Odeon with our Dime bar wrappers, the woman didn't bat an eyelid - I could've kissed her, welcome home (well, close enough). Bloody eyesore it is now.


Famous Mortimer

Quote from: Wentworth Smith on September 22, 2013, 12:16:21 PM
Get it right several shitty nightclubs. Saw my first cinema film there:  Masters of the Universe, and thought all cinemas were like that (marble floor, plush curtains, probably nothing like that and looked like hell but that's my memory and I was impressed at the time) Went near the end, Ghostbusters II, when it was in it's death throes and all I can remember was it being freezing cold.
Hello, fellow Chesterfield-er!

Re: the cold in there, the rumour was that it was cheaper for the cinema to "break" the heating and wait the maximum allowable time to call out an engineer, than it was to keep the heating on all the time. So, there was an excellent showing of "Hellraiser 3" where all five of us who were there had brought blankets.

One of the very last films I saw there was "The Exorcist", before the ban had been lifted. I think they just stopped caring. Halfway through the performance, one of the huge speakers fell off the wall and destroyed a row of seats, but luckily there were only maybe 20 people in there, and no-one anywhere near the affected seats. If it had been a gimmick done by the cinema, it would have been amazing, but sadly it was just knackered.

Ta for reminding me of Zanzibar, the place it was after the cinema but before its current incarnation. Huge be-turbaned statue of a fella above the entrance...I think it was a chain of horrific nightclubs?

thepuffpastryhangman

Check the fins on this fucker:



Only went there once or twice as a young kid. The ones in town were closer.

It's still there, but not a cinema.



This pic (So Dear To My Heart was released in 1948) is probably the best.



We have the Savoy, that's still going. And pretty darn quaint. And Broadway aside, the only we (used to) go to. They're the two with bars, coincidentally.


Neville Chamberlain

Thanks for those pics there, puffy, old chap! Used to drive past The Futurist pretty much every day up until a couple of months ago because it was just a minute's drive from my flat. And I've been to The Savoy a few times, too. Used to live right about 30 seconds' walk from it. The one in town's been knocked down to make way for student accommodation, isn't it? Not that I ever went to the one in town because it shut long before I came to Nottingham.

phes

We go to the Savoy occasionally. Mostly terrible films but cheap and with the occasional re-release. I think my girlfriend saw The Godfather there a month or two ago. Obviously broadway has a much better programme but is more expensive.

Kane Jones

When we used to leave the village and come into town to watch films in an actual cinema and not in the town hall (see page 1), the cinema used to look like this;



It's the big white building with the pillars.  I saw Watership Down there.  It's a nightclub called TOKO now.

Quote from: Famous Mortimer on September 23, 2013, 10:06:33 AM
Hello, fellow Chesterfield-er!

Re: the cold in there, the rumour was that it was cheaper for the cinema to "break" the heating and wait the maximum allowable time to call out an engineer, than it was to keep the heating on all the time. So, there was an excellent showing of "Hellraiser 3" where all five of us who were there had brought blankets.

One of the very last films I saw there was "The Exorcist", before the ban had been lifted. I think they just stopped caring. Halfway through the performance, one of the huge speakers fell off the wall and destroyed a row of seats, but luckily there were only maybe 20 people in there, and no-one anywhere near the affected seats. If it had been a gimmick done by the cinema, it would have been amazing, but sadly it was just knackered.

Ta for reminding me of Zanzibar, the place it was after the cinema but before its current incarnation. Huge be-turbaned statue of a fella above the entrance...I think it was a chain of horrific nightclubs?

'rate duck.

I have seen another Zanzibar somewhere but for the life of me can't remember where. I think there may have been a pre-Zanzibar incarnation but again my memory fails me.

Speaking to the elders of the town there used to be three cinemas dotted around the place, which seems excessive now but I guess was pretty standard back in the day.

There was a strange period post ABC/Regal and before Cineworld in which Crystal Peaks was the nearest... a strange, dark time.

Lets look back to happier cinematic times: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8050359@N07/4080206573/