South 17 Twin Drive-In
1860 Wilmington Highway,
Jacksonville,
NC
28540
1860 Wilmington Highway,
Jacksonville,
NC
28540
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The South 17 Twin Drive-In was the only multi-screen drive-in in North Carolina east of I-95. It was closed by 1980 and demolished by 1982. The site is now home to the South Gate Mobile Home Park.
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NightHawk1
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Recent comments (view all 5 comments)
In the 1950 there Six drive-ins in this city,Didn’t see a South 17.
The South 17 was probably built in the 1960s. I used to pass by it on the way to Surf City in the late 1970s and 1980-81. It was torn down by 1982. There was another drive-in theater (X-rated) nearby, with a drive-in hamburger restaurant next to it, but I couldn’t find any remains of that theater or the restaurant. The South 17 Twin Drive-In advertised on local late night TV in the 1970s, WCTI-TV 12’s “Will C’s Red Eye Cinema”, which ran drive-in-type movies on Saturday late night long before Saturday Night Live existed.
I’m amazed that of Jacksonville’s drive-in theaters, only the South 17 Twin and the Cinema Drive-In are listed; apparently all the others are long forgotten. I vaguely remember the XXX drive-in theater near the South 17 Twin mentioned in my last post on this page; it may have been called the Moonlite Drive-in and was north of the South 17 Twin.
The school bus garage located at 450 Wilmington Highway was apparently built on the site of a drive-in theater, the name and dates of operation for which I do not know. The shape of the lot in aerial views strongly suggest that the site was once a drive-in. Judging from the garage buildings presently on the site (one at the entrance and the main garage in the center of the lot), the drive-in theater at 450 Wilmington Highway was demolished circa 1968-1970. The South 17 Twin may have run the 450 Wilmington Hwy. drive-in out of business and forced the Starlite to run porn movies; the South 17 ran mostly standard drive-in fare (B movies, horror films, second-run features).
The Starlite was located next to the Western Sizzlin' Restaurant. When I was a teenager, we got into a heap of trouble because you could see the screen from one of its dining rooms! This would’ve been in the early-mid 1970s.