Six Flags Cinema 1-5

This theatre building is still standing but rotting. I went many a time to the original Six Flags Mall Cinema I&II. Sometime in the ‘80’s, they added three more screens behind the original two.

he General Cinema Corp.’s (GCC) Six Flags Mall Cinema I & II was announced late in 1969 to be located in the Village adjacent to the Six Flags Mall at the confluence of highways 80 and 360. It would open with the rest of the mall on August 5, 1970. It opened with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” It would be GCC’s second Arlington theater with its nearby GCC Park Plaza Cinema which had opened in May of 1966. The Six Flags theater’s identical 350 seat auditoria had push-back chairs, automated projection equipment, special smoking sections, and an art gallery in the lobby. The mall was planned by veteran shopping center group Homart Development which had an exterior GCC at its Seminary South shopping center and would have exterior GCC theaters at its Town East Mall in Mesquite four years later and also at the Parks Mall in Arlington late in the 1980s. Six Flags’ external shopping area was called “The Village” and the theater could be seen from the northern doors of Sanger-Harris and Sears. A night out at the GCC Six Flags I-II might have also included a low-priced steak dinner at the neighboring York Steak House.

The mall got competition from the Forum 303 mall less than three miles away and the General Cinema. While that mall was underwhelming on a variety of levels, it did feature an interior and superior six-screen AMC theater opening on October 13, 1971. AMC signed a 10-year lease and did such great business with first-run fare and midnight shows that it re-upped for another 10-years and was supposed to build an additional six-screen theater adjacent to the Forum Mall. Fortunately for GCC Six Flags, that project was scrapped. Some of the theater’s biggest hits were “The Godfather,” “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”

General Cinema faced pressure from six-screen multiplexes with both its Town East and Six Flags properties. In both situations, the theaters were retrofitted to become five screen properties. Town East got a poorly executed five-screen shoehorned into its existing space while Six Flags got extra space to tack on the additional screens. Fortunately for Mesquite moviegoers, Town East was then retrofitted to be an improved five-screen experience while the Six Flags Cinema I-V simply coasted to its end at the end of its 20-year lease in August of 1990. AMC would re-up for another lease at the Forum Mall.

The timing of GCC’s departure was curious as the mall, itself, was just completing a major expansion and redesign to compete with the new Parks Mall. But with General Cinemas opening its more modern Arlington Park Square 8 just across the street from the Parks in 1986, the circuit turned its attention there leaving behind both the Park Plaza and Six Flags. The Six Flags cinema became home to short-lived live projects including some wrestling events but for the most part look sad, empty and decrepit over the next 25 years. And fortunately for the Six Flags Mall, the March 28, 1997 launch of the nine-screen Tinseltown USA brought movies back to the Six Flags Mall even after the mall, itself, closed and then re-launched under a different name.

Official address – 2922 Galleria Dr #150, Arlington, TX 76011

The Six flags are Spain, France, Mexico, Texas, Confederated States of America and the USA.

and closed in 1990.