Earlier this week the news broke that this year the West Virginia International Film Festival would take place, in part, at the currently-shuttered Park Place Stadium Cinemas in Charleston. This is great news on a couple of fronts.

First, it means that the folks at WVIFF expect crowds that will be larger than the Floralee Hark Cohen micro Theater can hold. It’s a nice space, but it is tiny. Second, that means that Park Place is being kept in decent enough shape that it could be up and running in short order should a new owner be found. It’d be great to see that happen. It’d be even better if the new owners don’t try to turn it into some kind of “drafthouse” theater. Charleston needs to have at least one thing going on that doesn’t involve beer. 

You can find the full schedule and details about the Film Festival HERE.

Meanwhile, all this talk of movie theaters took me back to an early post in this blog, twenty years ago today, to be exact, where I was very enthusiastic about a then-new theater in the area. Happily it’s still in business, and it’s also the the movie theater where I saw two movies last year. Those were probably the only two movies I’d seen in a full-blown theater in about a decade. I’ll talk about that at the close, but for now, here’s the original PopCult post from October 2, 2005.

Great Escape from the Marquee Malaise

I’ve never made any secret of my intense dislike for Marquee Cinema on Corridor G. I don’t like the layout, the crowds, the thin walls, the sound system, or much of anything else about it.

So I was thrilled when I learned that we were getting a new multiplex in Nitro, just a ten-minute drive from my house. Mel and I have seen two movies out there, and I have to say, I’m delighted. The sound system is great, the movies are in focus, and get this, if you have to stand in line to buy a ticket, YOU CAN ACTUALLY DO IT INSIDE!

One of the things I hate most about Marquee is that you pretty much have to stand outside while waiting to buy tickets, rain or shine, heatwave or torrential downpour.

One thing I’ve noticed about Great Escape is that the crowds haven’t been too big. Now, as a person who doesn’t buy into that whole “movies are better if you see them with lots of people” claptrap, this doesn’t bother me, but as someone who likes to have a shorter drive to go to a theater that isn’t Marquee, I’d like to see more folks flocking to the theater. It’s like I have a choice between lamenting the size of the crowds, or watching the place go out of business. I’d like to see them stick around, so I’ll deal with larger crowds.

So what I’m saying is, get yourself out to the Great Escape in Nitro. You can wait in line inside, the service is better at the snackbar, and there are no stairs to deal with. Also, you don’t hear the movie that’s playing next door. It’s a first-rate operation.

I like Park Place, but I don’t care for the parking building, and this is even closer to me, so it’s Great Escape for me from now on. And they’re listed in the Gazz theater box listing thingy “Movie Finder,’ which is cooler than chocolate-covered robots!

To give you the short background  story…from 1991 to 2005, Mel Larch and I, as part of the Animated Discussions column for The Charleston Gazette, reviewed animated movies. That Gazz link is long dead. 

We had some wonderful experiences seeing some fantastic films. Watching The Lion King after midnight in an otherwise-empty theater in Kanawha City the day before it opened is a fond memory.

However…reviewing movies at the Marquee Cinemas at Southridge made me hate seeing movies in a theater. I NEVER had a positive experience seeing a movie there. Even if the film itself was great, we had to endure lousy sound, audio bleeding from ther theaters due to the paper-thin walls, out-of-focus pictures, poorly-behaved fellow audience members and just a general malaise at having to watch movies in a glorified shoebox. Marquee destroyed any desire I had left in me to ever see a movie in a crowded theater again. 

In the twenty years since I first posted about what is now The Regal Cinemas in Nitro, I have not set foot in the Marquee…and I never intend to. The pandemic taught the world how wonderful it can be watching a movie at home, without the expense of going out or the forced interaction with other humans, who en masse tend to suck. If I do go out to see a movie, I still head to Regal.