Cineplex Odeon Route 17 Triplex
85 South Route 17,
Paramus,
NJ
07652
85 South Route 17,
Paramus,
NJ
07652
16 people favorited this theater
Showing 76 - 100 of 127 comments
You can see what this theater looked like as a single with a 52 ft. wide screen at this site:
View link
My faulty memory got a jolt when I saw “Yours, Mine and Ours” on TCM last weekend. I had forgotten that I’d seen it here in 1968 when it was still a single-screen.
There is a sign on the front door of this theatre that says “the showing of movies at this location has been suspended until further noticeâ€. I’ll just bet.
This was a pretty ramshackle operation in its latter years, but it had a great funky quality, plus that wonderful popcorn oil/disinfectant/mildew smell that I get so nostalgic about. The thing I will always remember is that whether from laziness or lack of letters, the marquee always featured drastic truncations of movie titles, often just one key word. The best one was While You Were Sleeping, which on the marquee was reduced to just “While (PG)â€. That’s it!
This hung on for a long time…..
Another end of an era :(
AMC , I believe, decided to go with the former Stanley Warner’s Route 4 Theatre instead of Century’s Paramus (Route 17) Theatre. (Both theatre from 1981 to 1987 were RKO Century Warner Theatres)
Someone IS trying to put a 16 screen multiplex at the Plaza. Paramus is divided over whether to grant the required approvals. From what I remember, the town granted it but another entity within the town has sued over it. The mall developers have said that they have to keep improving the mall by adding new things to it or it will fail especially with the Xanadu project coming along and the fact that everything is closed on Sunday in Paramus and most of Bergen county. The movie theater would be allowed to be open.
I figure AMC will try to put a multiplex in Garden State Plaza (Loews was trying to as well) and do away with the Ten Plex down the road – this one has been closed for two weeks now, it would have been shocking to see the AMC name on this one.
This theatre is listed with no showtimes at EnjoyTheShow.com .
Here comes the wrecking ball…an end to another era..I’m glad I went there
This theatre has apparently closed permanently as of last Thursday.
Used to drop by the Walt Whitman Shopping Center next door to the Whitman on my way home from visits to my company’s corporate offices (down the road in Melville) a few jobs ago. Never took in a movie at the Whitman, though. A shame, as I would like to have seen a Century house in its original state. My only experiences with (former) Century theatres have been after they were subdivided—the Fresh Meadows in Queens (where I believe the movie my wife-to-be and I saw, the Meg Ryan flick “Kate & Leopold,” was playing in what is apparently the only okay-sized auditorium in the complex) and the Route 17. In the balcony theatre, “Aliens” was done justice and so was “Last Temptation of Christ” a couple years later (only a couple of picketers outside, though). Downstairs, the story was different—for whatever movie I saw there, I remember the projection was dim. From some of the comments above, I guess it’s dim upstairs now too.
The last true original CENTURY house to close as a single screen Aand never to have been redone was the whitman theater in Huntington ny…..closed ABOUT 2003…..AND had never been changed
ROOSEVELT FIELD IN NASSAU COUNTY- BEEN RE DONE
Is this really one of the last remaining old style Century Houses left in the metro NYC area? In Brooklyn every single Century House is gone except for the Kings Plaza which opened in 1970 and is now a sixplex, it’s been mordernized quite a few times since 1970 so no traces of Century theates are left in this cinema.
I went here for the first time a few years back and saw Gangs Of New York in one of the downstairs theaters. It was like stepping back in time with all the old RKO Century branding remaining inside and out. Exactly the way I remember the Roosevelt Field Theater (as a triplex and before going over to Loews/Sony) circa the early – mid 1980’s.
Bill,
Great ADs!!! You are 200% correct. The art of movie advertising for a theater is a lost art. These ads actually make me sad because they bring back memeories from the better days of theaters and movies. How we took all that for granted huh?
When I was at Rt. 17 last week, there were highschool employees commiserating in the lobby (the theater was empty anyway, so what the hell else where they going to do?)but I also agree with the marquee. They put NO effort into it. The thinking is, the theater is gonna go bust any time now, so squeeze whatever you can before it dies, then another multiscreen plex with more bad movies, highschoolers who know nothing and managers without a clue.
BTW Bill, I saw Rocky III at the Bellevue in 70MM. It was a scope print, probably one of the only ones, 6-track and it was awesome. Naturally, I was dumbfounded when I saw it at Cinema46 #2 2 months later and it was a flat, mono print. I knew nothing then.
Also, saw “Last Temptation” at Ziegfeld also, they had a few picketers, security at the foot of the screen, and checked our bags. It was like a William Castle film. It was great.
Love the ads, keep em coming.
Here are two ads for this theater that were actually personalized by the management, commenting directly on the movie being featured. It’s great showmanship, and it’s a lost art. The second link features two such ads, one for the Century’s Paramus and one for the Pearl River Theater (“Cleopatra” – You May Never See Its Likes Again!) Will we ever see the likes of ads like this again, not to mention the theaters and the movies?
View link
View link
It only goes to show nobody gives a damn, the manager or the district people. With a huge marquee like that why is this allowed? Then they sit and wondwer why theatres close.
Another memorable event at this theater was “The Last Temptation of Christ” in 1988. It was my second time seeing it. The first was at the Ziegfeld where at least 100 fundamentalist Christians marched on the theater in protest. At the Route 17 a week later, there were about 3 people outside the theater picketing the movie.
I’ve never been in this place as it looks pretty sad. But I have to say the habit of the one word movie descriptions on the marquee provides my wife and I with a fun game driving up Route 17.
In a lot of ways, THIS is the ideal location for a multiplex and sure enough, THIS is where the next big one is going and it’s only Bergen county’s second stadium seating theater.
When and if they get the Xanadu complex up and running, I’ve heard rumors that a 20+ theater complex is going up down there.
I saw “Rocky III” here in 70mm in 1982. The screen image was nothing special – it wasn’t even a Scope film anyway – but the opening song “Eye of the Tiger” and the whole rest of the movie did sound great in 6-channel sound.
I’m sure the moronic practice of putting one word for each title turns off anyone who is not familiar with the place.
did you see any of the 70MM flicks at this theater Pete??? What was it like??
Think the Lafayette will invest one day for a 70MM festival???? Charge $15 a ticket, alot of pre-advertising and you’ll get many from this site??
(I should’ve included this comment on the Lafayette site, but since I was here…sorry)
BTW…I always find it a shame that the parking lot of Rt. 17 is always empty…just think, they could host premieres in the upstairs big screen theater…what a waste!!! It’s a shame I didn’t have money to buy a theater like that…what I could do….(ranting here…we’re all dreamers)
Sadly, I was never in there when it was a single.
Small screen size is no deterrent to running 70mm, you just don’t get the same benefit of the large format image on a small screen, but you do get the 6-channel sound – which, in the pre-digital-sound days, was a big selling point.
I have a newspaper listing from 1982 when it played both Rocky III and Poltergeist in separate theaters….it said they were both 70MM….how could such a small screen theater play 70MM
What was it like as a single screen theater?