United Artists South Theatre

dallasmovietheaters on October 10, 2013 at 1:54 pm

The UA South 8 opened May 23, 1984 in the multiplex era across the highway from the Red Bird Mall in Oak Cliff. The theater had great visibility from the highway but no direct exit making it a bit challenging to get to. Technically, it was not only UA’s first and last Oak Cliff theater, as of the 2010s, it was the last theater ever built in Oak Cliff. The theater stopped just shy of 15 years as it was shuttered on October 15, 1998 in a wave of closures during the megaplex era.

The UA South was interchangable with any number of UA properties of this era such as the Northstar 8 in Garland. But given the lineage of the UA Circuit’s Dallas existence which subsumed the Robb & Rowley Circuit – a specialist and backer of Oak Cliff – give UA credit for outfitting an auditorium with 70mm projection and being THX certified. Oak Cliff deserved that and gave UA a leg up over the General Cinemas 1-4 and the 5-10 both across the street and adjoining Red Bird Mall. And it sort of worked as the General Cinemas properties had 12 profitable years but then simultaneous years in the red. In October of 1994, both General Cinema multiplexes were shuttered. Unfortunately, the lack of competition just didn’t help the UA South.

Again, giving UA credit, they did book specialty films for the target audience with nice runs of “Sanfoka” and “When We Were Colored”, both films for an African American audience. But with Cinemark’s low-priced, first-run Lancaster-De Soto theater opening just about a 10 minute drive away, the audience was being siphoned off in a new direction. The UA South’s reputation was that is was unsafe which drove audiences away. However, the actual experience on weekdays told a different story: the place was simply empty in the late 1990s; certainly no safety risk and usually a private screening.

When General Cinema closed its Oak Cliff theaters, there were protests staged at General Cinemas NorthPark I&II. When the UA closed the South at the end of October 1998, there was resignation that Oak Cliff perhaps had earned the reputation of non-support of movie exhibition. Or perhaps people understood the challenge of the multiplex in a megaplex environment as the South, UA Prestonwood, Northpark I&II, GCC Carrollton, GCC Prestonwood, and Collin Creek also went down for the count at the same time as the UA South. When Oak Cliff’s Astro Drive-in burned down just one month later, there were no functional movie theaters in all of Oak Cliff, one of Dallas' most populous residential areas with 338,000 people.

Only the reopening of the Texas Theater more than ten years after the UA South and Astro Drive-in closures did projected film come back to Oak Cliff. After being boarded up for several years, the UA South property was converted into a house of worship which was active into the 2010s.

davewrankins on January 29, 2016 at 6:37 pm

I ran the projectors in 1985 to my friends i miss you all dave rankins the best years of my life