Saw HOME ALONE here and the crowd had a blast. That movie came outta nowhere that Christmas Season and just blew the box office doors down.
Nice theatre over all, but I just remember that it was placed in a real tight spot in the middle of a very busy shopping center, and that parking was a nightmare and a half, and just getting into the shopping center was also a pain. This was before the whole area was developed into retail hell.
I never really frequented this theatre as it wasn’t very close to my house, but in 1988 I did attend a marathon screening of (then) all three NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies which was then capped off by the premiere of the fourth entry, THE DREAM MASTER. I actually wore my NIGHTMARE 3 shirt and Freddy Glove, and they had a Freddy look-a-like run up and down the aisles during breaks between movies.
I remember this being a very dark place as well. I frequented this theatre during my teenage years in Charlotte (roughly 1986 – 1991) and when the mall was still a thriving mall.
I remember seeing PREDATOR 2, BACK TO THE FUTURE 2, and a whole slew of first run movies there. After a while though the mall became more and more run down and empty, and I stopped going.
Worked at this theater off and on for a couple of years between 1989 and 1991 during my high school days.
It was already a dollar house by the time I worked there. The front of the building was a huge series of glass windows, so you can see essentially a cross section of the entire theatre from the parking lot. One huge concession stand in the middle with a big house on either side, with a smaller concession on the west side next to a smaller house. The east side also had a concession and the game room attached to it.
Regency was not known for its sterling condition, and even though it lasted a few years after I left, even during my time, it was pretty run-down. The only reason we kept ‘em coming back was the $1.00 admission price. I remember a time where they tried raising the price to $1.50 and people stayed away in droves. Yes, fifty cents made that much of a difference.
The Eastern Federal Corporation ran the theatre…shall we say economically. The management and staff contained the expected mix of the good, the bad and the ugly. There were a number of strange events that would take place on the weekends when the full teenager crowds were out and about. In the abandoned lot next to the west side of the theatre, there would huge gatherings of kids who would often show off their souped up vans and cars, and also their various types of weaponry, including nunchuks. It was my job, when working the west concession stand by myself, to keep anyone from entering the side door adjancent to that lot. Needless to say, I never prevented anyone from that group from entering if they felt like it. I found it hard to reconcile a cracked skull against the loss of one dollar admission.
I remember in 1989 just as the movie CASUALTIES OF WAR opened there, Charlotte was slammed by Hurricane Hugo which effectively broke the city for a couple of weeks. I ended up spending a lot of time at the Regency as they hard partial power and my house did not for several days. I also remember that the hurricane blew out the full sized marquee in the parking lot. There were letters and white plastic everywhere.
One of my favorite mental images of the Regency had to do with their way of advertising for help. They had a pretty high turnover rate there, so they were almost always looking for people, so they would just add the legend, “NOW HIRING” to their marquee out front. This would inevitably lead to some unintended grammatical hilarity. For example, drivers passing by the theatre during a certain week in 1994 would often do a double-take at the Regency’s marquee bearing the message “NOW HIRING NATURAL BORN KILLERS.” That’s only one example of course, but its my favorite.
Time eventually caught up with the Regency and it (along with the small strip shopping center attached to it) was leveled to make way for new development. The property on which the Regency sat was at the foot of a slightly sloping incline that was then completely reshaped and raised up to make it level with Albermarle Road. On the property now sits an Aldi Foods, and the physical space where I used to sweep up, eat popcorn, and engage in other various types of theatre tomfoolery is now a couple dozen feet underground. The land was reshaped to such a degree that the parking lot literally is the same level as the ceiling in the theatre used to be.
There’s nothing left now of the theatre except a small hole where the pole for the marquee was once placed.
Saw HOME ALONE here and the crowd had a blast. That movie came outta nowhere that Christmas Season and just blew the box office doors down.
Nice theatre over all, but I just remember that it was placed in a real tight spot in the middle of a very busy shopping center, and that parking was a nightmare and a half, and just getting into the shopping center was also a pain. This was before the whole area was developed into retail hell.
I never really frequented this theatre as it wasn’t very close to my house, but in 1988 I did attend a marathon screening of (then) all three NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET movies which was then capped off by the premiere of the fourth entry, THE DREAM MASTER. I actually wore my NIGHTMARE 3 shirt and Freddy Glove, and they had a Freddy look-a-like run up and down the aisles during breaks between movies.
It was a blast.
I remember this being a very dark place as well. I frequented this theatre during my teenage years in Charlotte (roughly 1986 – 1991) and when the mall was still a thriving mall.
I remember seeing PREDATOR 2, BACK TO THE FUTURE 2, and a whole slew of first run movies there. After a while though the mall became more and more run down and empty, and I stopped going.
Worked at this theater off and on for a couple of years between 1989 and 1991 during my high school days.
It was already a dollar house by the time I worked there. The front of the building was a huge series of glass windows, so you can see essentially a cross section of the entire theatre from the parking lot. One huge concession stand in the middle with a big house on either side, with a smaller concession on the west side next to a smaller house. The east side also had a concession and the game room attached to it.
Regency was not known for its sterling condition, and even though it lasted a few years after I left, even during my time, it was pretty run-down. The only reason we kept ‘em coming back was the $1.00 admission price. I remember a time where they tried raising the price to $1.50 and people stayed away in droves. Yes, fifty cents made that much of a difference.
The Eastern Federal Corporation ran the theatre…shall we say economically. The management and staff contained the expected mix of the good, the bad and the ugly. There were a number of strange events that would take place on the weekends when the full teenager crowds were out and about. In the abandoned lot next to the west side of the theatre, there would huge gatherings of kids who would often show off their souped up vans and cars, and also their various types of weaponry, including nunchuks. It was my job, when working the west concession stand by myself, to keep anyone from entering the side door adjancent to that lot. Needless to say, I never prevented anyone from that group from entering if they felt like it. I found it hard to reconcile a cracked skull against the loss of one dollar admission.
I remember in 1989 just as the movie CASUALTIES OF WAR opened there, Charlotte was slammed by Hurricane Hugo which effectively broke the city for a couple of weeks. I ended up spending a lot of time at the Regency as they hard partial power and my house did not for several days. I also remember that the hurricane blew out the full sized marquee in the parking lot. There were letters and white plastic everywhere.
One of my favorite mental images of the Regency had to do with their way of advertising for help. They had a pretty high turnover rate there, so they were almost always looking for people, so they would just add the legend, “NOW HIRING” to their marquee out front. This would inevitably lead to some unintended grammatical hilarity. For example, drivers passing by the theatre during a certain week in 1994 would often do a double-take at the Regency’s marquee bearing the message “NOW HIRING NATURAL BORN KILLERS.” That’s only one example of course, but its my favorite.
Time eventually caught up with the Regency and it (along with the small strip shopping center attached to it) was leveled to make way for new development. The property on which the Regency sat was at the foot of a slightly sloping incline that was then completely reshaped and raised up to make it level with Albermarle Road. On the property now sits an Aldi Foods, and the physical space where I used to sweep up, eat popcorn, and engage in other various types of theatre tomfoolery is now a couple dozen feet underground. The land was reshaped to such a degree that the parking lot literally is the same level as the ceiling in the theatre used to be.
There’s nothing left now of the theatre except a small hole where the pole for the marquee was once placed.