Loew's Valencia Theatre
165-11 Jamaica Avenue,
Jamaica,
NY
11432
165-11 Jamaica Avenue,
Jamaica,
NY
11432
30 people
favorited this theater
Showing 151 - 175 of 674 comments found
You’re welcome, Ed. It’s million of years, instead of millions of miles. I saw all three Quatermass films at Film Forum in lower Manhattan in August 1987, my first time to one of their summer sci fi film festivals. The line I remember from “Quatermass And The Pit” was Quatermass saying, “Those pipes are full of human pulp !” and seeing some monstrous bell-shaped thing, like The Addams' Family’s Cousin Itt, sloshing around in dark liquid goo inside of some huge septic tank.
Rodan was released in 1956, “Vertigo” in 1958.
“Vertigo” would have been awesome at the Valencia !
If the correct answer for the second movie turns out to be the “27th Day”, I would have never gotten the answer right. I have never heard of that movie.
My first choice for the main feature was “Godzilla”. As Ed pointed out, the year (1956) would be wrong for “Godzilla” so I went with “20 Million Miles to Earth”. I also considered “Rodan” but I’m not sure when “Rodan” was released in the U.S.
Yup. Thanks Pete! I now recall each of those films – just a difference of 15 million years! I never saw “Quatermass and the Pit,” though I am aware of its existence.
No, Ed, I think you’re confusing it with “Five Million Years To Earth”, about the Martian spaceship found in the Hobbs End subway station in London, the third Quatermass film, the first two being “The Quatermass Experiment”, with Brian Donlevy in the title role and Richard Wordsworth as the hollow-eyed astronaut Victor Carune, who slowly and painfully degenerates into a blob of tentacle-waving goo that must be electrocuted near Westminster Abbey before it reproduces itself and consumes all life on Earth. The American release was titled “The Creeping Unknown”. The rarely seen second film was “Quatermass And The Pit”.
“20 Million Miles To Earth” was the Harryhausen-Charles H. Schneer film about the giant T-Rex-like Ymir from Venus. The Kraken from the 1981 Harryhausen-Charles H. Schneer film “Clash Of The Titans” was very similar to it.
Never heard of that one either. So what is the first film… “20 Million Miles to Earth?” That’s one of the Quartermass films from Britain, isn’t it?
Thanks, Lost Memory. I don’t think I’d ever heard or read about this film !
I cheated on the second movie:
“The 27th (Twenty-Seventh) Day, the 1957 William Asher (director of the "Bewitched” TV series) science fiction thriller (“Terror From Outer Space!”; “Mightiest shocker the screen ever had the guts to make!”; “Five people given the power to destroy nations! What will they do? What would you do?”; “Chinese peasant girl! Russian Soldier! English bathing beauty! American newspaperman! German scientist!”; “These five …Have been given the power to destroy every human being on earth!”; “Screen Play by John Mantley Based on His Novel”) starring Gene Barry, Valerie French, George Voskovec, Arnold Moss, and Stefan Schnabel".
“20 Million Miles to Earth” plus “Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers” would have made it a Ray Harryhausen FX double feature.
The first would have to be Jayne Mansfield in “The Girl Can’t Help It” (and indeed the screen had never seen anything like [them]) and the second feature has many shocking possibilities but none that I can place in 1957…Streisand as Yentl? Lucy as Mame? Liberace as straight? All mind-boggling, yet none correct.
“Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers” ?
Hmmm. That first tag sounds like logical hyperbole for the original “Godzilla”, but I know that movie was released in the U.S. a year earlier. And that line would make too much sense. I’ll bet they’re a pair of outlandish tags for an AIP horror double-bill! I’m sure if we search the net hard enough, we’ll find the films – so spill it quick, Warren! Now my curiosity is piqued!
I’ll take a guess at the first movie. Was it “20 Million Miles to Earth”? I have no idea what the second movie could have been.
I found the titles of the two movies being shown at Loew’s Valencia on September 14, 1957. But before revealing them, let’s see how many of us can guess the films' titles from their advertising blurbs. The main feature: “Not Since ‘King Kong’ Has The Screen Seen Anything Like It!” The second feature: “Mightiest Shocker The Screen Ever Had The Guts To Make!”
Thanks for posting that, Bway, I’ve noticed that myself.
The Tabernacle of Prayer took over the Valencia before the El closed, even if by a few months. I have seen photos of the 168th Street station of the jamaica el on September 11, 1977, the last day of the el service, and the cross for Tabernacle of Prayer was already on the Valencia building.
The elevated subway line in downtown Jamaica survived until 1977, the same year as the closings of the Valencia, Macy’s on 165th Street, and the Long Island Press. The Gertz department store outlasted them, closing at the end of December, 1980.
Veyong, I can’t be sure of the exact date. Mabe it was 1960 but I do know it was at the Valencia. The El train was still there. The electric buses were running on Jamacia Ave. I can still see the goldfish in the lobby, the huge Ben-Hur posters and billboards in and outside the theater and I was so impressed with the woodcarvings all over the walls.
Kong911, in 1959 in the New York area “Ben-Hur” (1959 version) was on view only at the Loew’s State.
Another note to PKock and HeMan re: anti-aircraft guns. I just checked with my father-in-law who told me when he came home from the war, he remembers 90mm guns in Aqueduct Racetrack and more in Hamilton Beach on Crossbay Blvd. where there now is a VFW all by itself.
to PKoch. I wasn’t around yet during the war but I did hear this story when I was a kid living in the neighborhood. It might or might not be true. Also I was in the Valencia only one time and that was to see Ben Hur in 1959.
I don’t know anything about former ack ack guns in Queens, kong1911.
Just a note to PKock and HeMan re: your post in July. I have heard that there was an anti-aircraft battery where Aqueduct Racetrack is today. I never heard anything about baisley pond park having one. I lived just across Rockaway Blvd. from the park in the early 50’s.
If you have access to The New York Times website or to library microfilm of that newspaper, you will be able to find Loew’s Valencia advertised in the issue of September 14th, 1957, which, according to my perpetual calendar, happened to be a Saturday. I stopped working at the Valencia in June of that year, when I also stopped keeping records of all the films that played there.
Congratulations, tomw9 !
Perhaps some members of CT can be of assistance with some old newspaper clippings of 50 years ago.