Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Restaurant Row Theatres will become a $1.00 cinema

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Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 01-04-2004, 02:12 PM:

Wallace's Restaurant Row Theatres in Honolulu will stop showing art film on Friday and revert back to showing mainstream movies that are couple weeks old for a dollar. All shows before 6:00 PM will only be fifty cents and hot dogs at all showings will only be a dollar.
Before Signature and Consolidated (Pacific) opened their Dole 18 and the Ward 16 theatres, the Restaurant Row theatres was packing them in because the nearest cinemas , the Waikiki's, Kahala and the Cinerama were all located a considerable distance away. After the Dole and the Ward opened, people flocked to the newer theatres because they were better theatres with state of the art sound and picture. The Restaurant Row theatre was 'Crap" from the day they opened and they never made an effort to improve. After the Ward and the Dole took away their mainstream movie business, Wallace started to show art films two years ago but that did not work out too well.

With the exception of the Laie on the north shore of Oahu, all of Wallace theatres on the island will be $1.00 cinemas. I have not heard anything about Wallace's neighbor island theatres and I assume they are doing very well with first run mainstream movies. I understand their other Oahu theatres with the discount price policy is doing very well and there is a very good possibility the Restaurant Row will do just as well.

-Claude

Posted by Jon Miller (Member # 163) on 01-04-2004, 02:31 PM:

I guess they had too many problems with prints shipped on cores, eh? [Smile]

[ 01-04-2004, 03:36 PM: Message edited by: Jon Miller ]

Posted by Christopher Seo (Member # 7) on 01-04-2004, 02:55 PM:

Wow, that's too bad... sorta. On the one hand, it's too bad Honolulu is losing an arthouse venue. On the other hand, I wish Wallace would just go out of business.

Jon,

Somehow I'm not too surprised about their film handling skills.... I had wondered if Wallace made an attempt to clean up their act, but your experience proves their pseudo-pretentious "Art House" moniker was merely a P.R. facade.

Posted by Roger Katz (Member # 1625) on 01-04-2004, 03:44 PM:

How on Earth can they possibly make any money charing only $0.50 to $1.00 per show? Those are prices from like twenty years ago. It seems to me at those prices they'll lose money so fast they'll be closed in less than a month! The sub-run theatres around here charge $3-$4 and they can't even make enough money to do basic maintence on their buildings. One that was only charging $2.50 had to close because they couldn't pay their rent. $1.00 films are nice, but I don't think that theatre will be around much longer.

Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 01-04-2004, 04:31 PM:

Is the Wallace Restaurant Row in an upscale neighborhood? If the theater was a dump as Claude was saying, the studios obviously kept current product away -- even upmarket titles.

The Restaurant Row's most current title is Master and Commander, which opened before Thanksgiving. The Signature Dole Cannery got to open Calendar Girls, 21 Grams and In America.

Posted by Claude S. Ayakawa (Member # 1401) on 01-04-2004, 08:26 PM:

Charles & Roger,

The Restaurant Row Theatres were never a dump but the general design of the interor is atrocious and resembles someone's very bad nightmare. The thing I disliked most of all about the theatres is how they manage to do film VERY WRONG all the time!. The very first bad experience I had with this theatre was when someone turned off the projector when the credits of a film started to roll. Their worst problem was their sound system. When Paramount released "RELIC" many years ago. the only theatre to advertise the film with digital sound in Honolulu was the Restaurant Row. The presentation was suppose to be in SRD but when I viewed the film at this theatre, there was no sound coming from their surround speakers. I went to the manager to complain and he sarcastically said the sound track was mixed that way and told me to live with it'! The film was released a few months later in AC-3 on laserdisc and I rented it and sure enough, the surround was very active. The sound mix of this film was so agressive, even DTS used a segment from it on one of their sound samplers on DVD. Another presentation I saw there was suppose to be in SDDS and it was "MONEY TRAIN" and once again, the surround was silent. The DVD of the fiilm once again proved the theatre screwed up again. After that incident, I never went back.

Wallace seem to be very happy with their $1.00 movie policy and they have been reporting sell outs for most of their evening shows. The way they make their money is from the concession which has not been discounted except their hot dogs which they sell for a dollar..

-Claude

Posted by Jonathan M. Crist (Member # 413) on 01-04-2004, 10:06 PM:

Most film rental contracts today specify that if you charge less than $1.00 per ticket, the percentage rental due will be calculated on a minimum $1.00 per ticket charge. I don't know if the film companies actually enforce this or not.

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 01-05-2004, 12:02 AM:

FWIW, Cinemark has a TON of subrun theatres in the $1.00 range. Most of them are VERY profitable. The buildings are well-maintained .... it's a volume thing. I still haven't forgotten "Ghetto Tuesday" ($0.50 all day).

Posted by Daniel Fuentz (Member # 1684) on 01-05-2004, 06:00 AM:

I have only been to one Cinemark $1.00 house and it was an absolute DUMP. Filthy floors, ripped seats, fabric coverings coming off the walls -- that was in dire need of maintenance! (I say was, but I don't know if they have fixed anything since I was there in May as I am not in a great hurry to return to that theater.)

Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 01-05-2004, 09:25 AM:

Our sub-run does VERY well and we charge $1.50/$2.00 with $0.75 on Tuesdays, which sell out a lot of the shows.

Roger, you should know by now that NO theater makes its money off of tickets! [Wink]

As long as people buy concessions, the place makes money. Problem is, in some areas people will be glad to shell out $1 for a ticket and walk right past the stand.

As for maintenance issues, yeah, there are problems. We, like many other sub-runs (except for one I remember being built from the ground-up as a stadium subrun somewhere down south) are in a formerly closed cinema. Just when you're done fixing or patching or painting one thing, three more turn up.

Sub-runs can be profitable if they're run correctly. As long as you keep the idea of, "Oh well, what do you expect for $1?" out of people's heads and replace it with, "Wow! This place only charges $1!!?" you'll be successful.

=TMP=

Posted by Mark Hajducki (Member # 1732) on 01-05-2004, 11:35 AM:

Looking at the filmtimes for the EasyCinema (second run) cinema in the UK (link) I was surprised to find that the showings would fit into 6 screens instead of 10 (which the cinema has/had). Is this due to a lack of avaliable films, or because they have managed to damage 4 of their screens/projectors?

Given how few staff they use to run I am surprised that they don't have more showings in the day

According to their website www.easycinema.com they are looking for a new CEO and projectionist/manager/computer fixer.

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-05-2004, 01:11 PM:

When Cinemark opened their 17-screen here, they turned their 12-screen in the same mall into a $1.50 theater. Now, as far as I was concerned, that 12-screener was "Film Done Wrong, or maybe Mediocre At Best" from the day it opened. But it's flourished at the bargain prices, and they do seem to maintain it fairly well, at least in terms of cleanliness. Movies still mostly look and sound like crap there though, just like they did when it first opened (1989?). Dim, fuzzy images and weak, anemic sound. Yuck. I hate that place. The new 17 is much much better.

No bargain prices at the concession stand though. [Wink]

Posted by Joe Schmidt (Member # 822) on 01-12-2004, 06:58 AM:

More on this place, sent by friend who lives in Honolulu -- he says:

Anyway, I’d first seen that written up in Pacific Business News. This week, the news comes out in the weekly tabloids (one an independent, the other an ad rag published by the Advertiser. Both of them quote the Wallace manager (who’s been there for 18 months, having previously run the art house theatre at the Art Academy) as saying poor concession sales (of $3 sodas and $4 popcorn) were to blame. “My vision was about the films. For them [Wallace], they’d show anything to sell the popcorn.” Wallace upgraded chocolate at the theatre, but was unwilling to put real butter on popcorn or sell espresso.

The closing, from a researcher, states that “the second-run approach is usually a holding pattern until something better comes along. In cases of older theatres, it’s usually not a long-term proposition.”

Which I take to mean they will close the theatres when their lease runs out. Why go there (even for $1) when you stick to the floor, and a mile in either direction takes you to the Dole Cannery Signature theatres or the brand-new Consolidated Ward theatres.

With no good movie theatres in Billings MT, we'alls here just waits for the DVD, or pass altogether. One of the Albertson stores here rents'em for $1. So why put up with sticky feet, bad projection and general yuck.