Country Cinema
523 Main Street,
Watertown,
CT
06795
523 Main Street,
Watertown,
CT
06795
4 people
favorited this theater
The Country Cinema opened as the Cameo and is still a quaint little single screen theater. It has a balcony that is not used for seating anymore, but one must walk upstairs to get to the men’s room. Country Cinema now plays second-run films, often showing the same feature for weeks at a time.
Contributed by
Roger Katz
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Recent comments (view all 24 comments)
Alright commenters, put your fears to rest from the previous posts. I was there yesterday for the first time to see a movie. Marquee is still there. First movie of the day (Da Vinci Code) was showing at 4:45, then a different movie at 7pm (Cars) and then Click at 9pm. The lobby is small and warm with a small concession stand and a foreign accented guy running it. There were wooden chairs alongside the wall and vintage lanterns hanging on the wall.
Inside the cinema, you would never know there was a cinema there. Upstairs is the men’s room and the balcony with seats (you can’t sit there) and downstairs on the right is the women’s bathroom. I asked the owner and he said there were 200 seats. At least 150 of them were brand new recliners (very comfortable) and the 50 up front were older uncomfortable chairs. There were $3 seats all day. The screen was small but nice. Red curtains adorned the stage and the walls while 3 “torches” of fluorescent lights on each side stayed on the entire time, but it was for ambience and didn’t affect the movie.
I stay for end credits all the time, but the owner shut it off after 2 minutes and started to close up.
how many people in the theater shoe?
It was a Tuesday night and there were 12 folks.
The woman who refurbished the original auditorium and opened the Cameo in Watertown also owned and operated the Cameo Theatre at 314 Baldwin Street in Waterbury, not one of the big theatres like the State or Strand. The Cameo in Waterbury became the Win Theater sometime in the 1950s.
The last movie I saw here was Star Trek Nemesis. The sound quality was very poor at best.
BTW- I noticed the new seats in the theater as well. I wonder if they were the same seats that were used by the Colonial Plaza cinemas before they closed down?
The original marquee was V shaped and hung out over the sidewalk in front. It had plenty of space, 4 long lines, 10 feet wide. It was taken down in 1972. The current marquee is very small, 3 short lines and often misspelled.
Ed Guinea
The year given for this photo is 1986.
Wow…it looks exactly the same as it does today, only less worn down.
Too bad that the theatre is so dirty, run-down and so poorly-staffed and poorly operated, as it looks like an unusual movie theatre! Here’s hoping they renovate it, add more staff, and monitor their projectionist(s) better.
Wasn’t this an SBC (formerly L&G) theatre? When I worked for the chain in RI, we had a Cameo in CT; can’t remember if it was Waterbury or Watertown.
BTW, this theatre has a changeable sign. A marquee is attached to the building. By definition: a covering like roof: a permanent canopy, often of metal and glass, projecting out over the entrance to a large building such as a hotel or theater.