Now, this one stings.  Just as sports coaches are hired to be fired, movie theaters are opened to be passed out technologically and finally close.  Simple fact of life.  But the United Artists Theater at Frackville, PA's Schuylkill Mall was no mere outdated 1980 technological marvel:  it was MY outdated 1980 technological marvel, the theater that represented the stunning possibility of showing no less than FOUR movies simultaneously to a teen accustomed to local 2nd-run theaters that couldn't even get one movie the week the ads on TV said it was coming out.  Those four posters visible from the mall entrance weren't just movies that might stumble in one of these days, they were all there NOW, and for three decades, kids with nothing else legal to do in the middle of nowhere on Friday nights would pack those four houses, watching generations of blockbusters that spanned two Star Wars sagas, the birth of Indiana Jones' son, and about 18 Friday the 13th movies.  But a week from today, the lights will go down on the UA, as their long-time owners, Regal Entertainment Group, have decided not to renew their mall lease.

In the years between my first visit, to see 1986's Star Trek IV:  The Voyage Home and my last, this past Sunday night to say goodbye with the entertaining Night Chronicles B-movie Devil, I've been to this theater somewhere between 150 and 200 times.  It was the center of my moviegoing universe in the late 80's as a teen and again in the mid-90's after college, before first work and then life led me to the more modern theaters clustered around the state capital in Harrisburg.  No regrets, of course:  I shudder to think of how many people still based at the UA and the fancier but still slightly outdated Regal 10 in nearby Hazleton have never even seen a movie in 3D, and, of course, the movie business changed a LOT between 1980 and 2010, making four screens nowhere near enough to accomodate studios that often open more than that many movies on a given weekend.  But it was always comforting to know the first-run theater of my childhood was still open, especially after its far dumpier companion, Pottsville's FOX 2/Carmike 2/The Movies at the Mall went under for good in 2006.

I know the screens by heart, although they were never properly numbered.  Entering as pictured above, you passed the concession counter to your left.  Nothing special there, the generic Regal collection of sodas (at least they offered Coke Zero!), popcorn, candy and sub-par nachos (although there was a period in the late 90's when the nacho sauce was quite good).  When I was a kid, before switching pretty much exclusively to diet drinks, I marveled at the notion that you could get fruit punch at the movies, and got it there pretty much every time.  The popcorn was pretty good, right up to the end.  On your right, four Coming Attraction posters (sometimes giving way to a fifth current movie if one of the screens was split between two films) and a banner or two led you to the first and smallest of the four screens.  I always associated this one with the 1995 Thanksgiving Johnny Depp thriller Nick of Time ("Real terror... in real time!" as the ads trumpeted), and it was generally only on a holiday weekend when this screen would be called into service for a new release.  This was that screen, and every theater has one, that held only a handful of seats, a fairly small screen, and a movie the theater was obligated to book that was pretty much at the end of the line.  I remember being pleasantly surprised by the Eddie Murphy flop Holy Man on that screen, but truth be told, most movies I saw on it over the years lived down to their little screen reputation:  Timeline, the Fog remake, the original Mortal Kombat.  Not a lot of great times there.

Next, in the right-hand corner of the theater, was the best screen, which I think of hand-in-glove with loud Jerry Bruckheimer spectaculars like Crimson Tide and Con Air.  At any given time, this is where the blockbuster was usually playing, and it was the only UA screen with genuinely competitive sound.  Even last night, when the theater was kind enough to serve me Devil on my favorite screen, the sound was comperable to what I'd expect at the theaters I go to now.  This is as good a time as any to address the seats.  In a word:  ugh.  They're the seats of the pre-cupholder, pre-headrest generation, flat and hard, beaten down by untold thousands of customers before you.  Imagine still sitting your soda on the floor in 2010!  Oh, the humanity!  This was the screen where I witnessed Toy Story, Forrest Gump, The Fugitive and too many others to count.

To that screen's left, right down the middle, was the widest of the four screens, where I fought through an amazingly long line to get to Tomorrow Never Dies while management held the starting time of all movies back by 10 minutes so customers could get to both it and a little movie called Titanic on their opening nights.  If I'd only known the future top-grossing movie of all time was in attendance, I'd have come earlier.  No such trouble getting a seat for The Postman when it played here at Christmas, 1997.  I hope the two other people there liked it as much as I did.  Oddly, though I'm accustomed to hitting movies attended by no one else right after work in the Harrisburg area, I never once was the only person at a movie at the Schuylkill Mall.  A more packed house at The Birdcage may have laughed more than any audience I've ever been with, although not so much that there wasn't one joke I alone laughed long and loud at, much to my embarassment.  This center screen was the weakest of the three "big" screens, in large part due to tinny sound that was kinda embrassing the other time I was at the UA this year, for Knight and Day.  All the speakers were still in the front, giving you the genuine 1980 movie sound experience, which there really isn't much call for.

Turn left and there was a corridor taking you past restrooms on the left and, straight ahead, the 4th and final screen, the one where I saw the splendid Star Trek IV all those years ago and the less-splendid Star Trek XI a few years later.  Smaller than that best screen, but with quality sound.  I remember for a time thinking of this screen as a bit of a good luck charm, but I hadn't seen a movie on it in several years, and a quick mental search doesn't turn up many films I remember seeing on it.  But thats what the Theaters Project is about, getting these memories down while I still remember them.

And the UA was a memorable theater.  The good people of Schuylkill County (Pennsylvnia's alcholism capital!) were not your usual big city or small town moviegoers:  these people were LOUD.  This could be an issue when the couple behind you at Space Cowboys had already seen it and were doing their own DVD commentary about coming plot developments behind me.  But it also made this the best theater I've ever been to for horror movies.  I remember a wild, wild night at the threadbare but creative Darkness Falls in which about two dozen theatergoers were thrown out by the ushers, some for refusing to take a seat, instead opting to sit on the floor (mysteriously:  I wouldn't have eaten off those floors, if you know what I mean).  I've never had a better time at a bad movie than seeing The Grudge:  that theater was screaming its head off every time a spook showed its head, and while The Grudge is soul-crushing and pointless, it is jam-packed with scary ghouls making surprise appearances.  Horror was a family business there:  I remember watching parents and small children bonding over Freddy vs. Jason and Thirteen Ghosts.  I've never seen so many small kids at R-rated horror movies in any other theater:  raises 'em up right, I say!  For a time in the ratings frenzy that followed the Columbine massacre, kids were only allowed in to see R-rated movies with their parents, and ticket buyers were quizzed at length on all ID-related issues.  I was in line behind two teens feigning forgetting their IDs trying to buy tickets for Jeepers Creepers 2.  After they were turned away, I got hit with my first ever "Are you 18?  Ah ha ha ha ha!"  I've never much cared for that joke.  Unless they were big Ray Wise fans, the girls were better off than I was; they didn't have to sit through that lame-o bomb.

For a time in the mid-90's, the place really knew how to put on a show for a major new release.  I met Batman (yeah, yeah, some guy in a costume:  you're ruining it for me!) before watching him dispatch The Riddler and Two-Face in Batman Forever, winning a graphic novel as well in the only theater drawing I've ever won.  And I remember the place turned into a post-apocalyptic Police State Theater in honor of the wildly underrated flop Escape from LA.  It certainly wasn't planned by management, but the UA also played host to the only protest I've ever passed on my way into a movie.  The good Catholics of Frackville were not going to allow me to see The Da Vinci Code without knowing just how blasphemous it was.  They didn't mention that it would also be quite dull, making their appearance the highlight of the evening.

There remains hope.  No doubt recognizing the huge hit this closing will represent on their already less-than-packed facility, Schuylkill Mall management is said to be courting other chains to take over the UA.  Of course, it'll need major renovations (not impossible:  Mechanicsburg's lamented AMC Hampden Center 8 has since reopened as a shiny new facility) to work as anything other than a 2nd run house.  But hope springs eternal.  And if the Devil has had his due upon my final visit to the United Artists Schuylkill Mall, I simply say Thanks for the Memories.  And the protestors.  And the riot out in the lobby one time.  That was pretty cool.