Loews Cineplex Cinema 5
183-15 Horace Harding Boulevard,
Fresh Meadows,
NY
11365
183-15 Horace Harding Boulevard,
Fresh Meadows,
NY
11365
4 people
favorited this theater
Showing 1 - 25 of 34 comments found
Theare homes taking up the proparty. You ’ll never know there was a theater once there.
Pics are up.
No wonder there are no pictures if it was so bad.
This was a pretty bad theater but it does hold a bit of sentimental value for me. It is where I saw Return of the Jedi for the first time. If I’m not mistaken that would mean it opened before 1984 because Jedi was released in May 1983.
I remember going here as a child a couple of times and only because my parents were extremely young and would like to go to later showings and this always had a late viewing. As a child I loved the mural on the top of the building and would look for it when ever we were on the high way. I went to Francis Lewis High School just across the street and some times if it was open late afternoon would catch a show. Then go to Pizza Express next to it. Sadly in the mid to late 90’s when I was in school this place was a DUMP! It was not a surprise to me that this was knocked down and I did feel sad the first time I saw it was missing but that’s because everytime I turn around something from my past is being demolished. The last movie I saw there was The Sixth Sense with my mom. One thing I do remember is how Easy it was when I was a kid to sneak into the theatres my dad would take my brother and I and we would se like 3 or 4 movies for the day on our original tickets and no one ever said anything.
This and Movieworld in Douglaston were by far the worst theaters I ever had the displeasure of attending. The old Bayside Theater on Bell Boulevard ran a distant third, when it was a horrendously maintained multiplex in the ‘80’s. Somehowe, Movieworld still survives to this day.
This and Movieworld in Douglaston were by far the worst theaters I ever had the displeasure of attending. The old Bayside Theater on Bell Boulevard ran a distant third, when it was a horrendously maintained multiplex in the ‘80’s. Somehowe, Movieworld still survives to this day.
The Movieland Cinemas in Mastic is just as bad:
/theaters/8564/
It’s almost a joke. It was built out of an A&P supermarket, and still has the pointy peak fascade, standard to all old A&P supermarket buildings. It’s almost humerous.
As I said, the auditoriums are pure utilitarian, ans small, and the walls are painted cement blocks. I can’t speak for the Cineplex, but it sounds like it was just as much a joke.
This has a reputation as the worst “theatre” ever built in Queens. When the building was converted to a cinema, the exterior still resembled a supermarket. At first sight of it, I couldn’t stop laughing. Cinephiles refrained from going there because of its retail past.
This must have had similar auditoriums as the Movieland Cinemas in Mastic, which also took a shopping center, and converted it into theaters. The theaters are pure utilitarian, with concrete block walls, etc. Strange, the usual progression is a theater being turned into retail…here we had retail converted into a theater.
Have they built anything new on the site of the old theater here yet?
I worked at Cinema 5.
I started back in the mid 90’s at Meadows as an usher and eventually moved up to Assistant Manager. When I started working at Meadows, Joe McManus was the head manager. He was eventually replaced by Anthony Sauter.
Eventually I was transfered over to Cinema City 5, a/k/a Cinema 5, a/k/a C5, and worked as an assistant manager under Daniel Tully. After about a year, he left and was replaced by Indra Gierdharie. Around 1999, Indra got promoted to a position in the 42nd street theatre, and I was then moved up to Head Manager (“Managing Director”) of C5. I held that position for about 2 years until I left to focus on Law School. I was replaced by Darwin as Managing Director of C5 I believe.
Projectionists I remember from Meadows were Sal, Fred and Bill.
The Projectionist at C5 were Alan Berkowitz, Simon, and (Sydnie I think that’s it).
Here’s an ad that appeared in Newsday in 1986 for the Cinema City 5. There is a depiction of the theater’s facade, including the mural that appeared across the top of the building’s facade. Because it is a faded B&W newspaper ad, you can’t really make out much detail, but at least it gives an indication of what this dump looked like. Some of the cinematic figures illustrated in the mural included Karloff as the Frankenstein monster, Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin, John Wayne, W.C. Fields… I can’t remember if there was a Marilyn Monroe caricature or Jean Harlow (or both)… I think there was also a Gable face, Valentino and maybe a Bogart? And, am I nuts or was there a Godzilla image as well?!?
The depiction is somewhat misleading… While this was the main facade that faced Horace Harding and the L.I.E., the double doors shown under each of the individual marquee panels were actually exit doors for each auditorium. The box office and lobby entrance was actually around the corner to the left (and out of view here). Each of the five auditoriums advertised their fare on one of those separate panels above the exit doors.
This theatre survived after the Fresh Meadows re-opened only because of product splitting. Cinema 5 and Loews Bay Terrace Twin played all WB, MGM and Disney product while the Meadows played Touchstone and eveything else. It was an eyesore.
Well… that link was wrong! The impressive theater you see there is the former RKO Madison in Ridgewood. Here’s the proper link:
Cinema City 5 satellite view
I was tooling around with the Windows Local Live satellite mapping site and found that the image for the old Cinema City 5 lot still shows the building to be in existence. The image is copyrighted 2005 and the al fresco mural that adorned the upper facade facing the LIE has already been painted over. However, cars are still seen in the shopping center’s parking lot, so at least one or two of the businesses there might still have been opened, even if the theater was not. Here’s the link to the image:
View link
The theater occupied the large trapezoidal structure at the left end of the shopping center. The view that opens up faces north and once can see the five small rectangular “marquees” that ran along the overhang that wraps around the entire shopping center. The mural was on the facade directly above this awning. This is actually the side of the theater where exit doors from the auditoriums were located. The entrance is around the corner to the left. You can rotate the view to look eastward (by using the directional tool in the palette to the left of the image) to view the side with the theater entrance.
The lobby was in the center of the building and was sunken by a few steps from street level. There was a large circular candy counter and the auditoriums were on the perimeter of the lobby at street level (so you had to climb a ramp or a few steps back up out of the sunken lobby to enter each room). I believe there were 3 or 4 auditoriums on the right side (with the screen walls facing the southern exposure seen in the above photo) with the remainin screen(s) toward the rear. I hated when this was the only local theater where a given movie was playing and after a while I just chose to travel to other parts of the borough (or into Nassau County) to catch a flick rather than suffer the low-rent quality of the presentations here.
This site is currently a huge hole in the ground and is completely fenced in. Again, I say “good riddance!”
Agreed on all of the comments you stated. Probably with plans of the expansion of Douglaston Plaza. Movieworld may be next.
This listing needs to be updated. The building has been completely leveled to the ground. I for one am not at all sad to see it gone as it may be the worst theater I’ve ever attended (Movieworld in Douglaston comes in a close 2nd). RCDTJ posted that almost every old theater becomes a church. This was not an old theater. This was a low-rent multiplex of no-frills shoe box theaters carved out of an existing retail space where presentation was routinely sub-standard. Good riddance. I wasn’t even a fan of the mural that faced Horace Harding. And the parking lot was a nightmare. The Fresh Meadows multiplex in the shell of the old Century’s Meadows Theater on the other side of the Long Island Expressway is a vastly superior facility.
The theatre is completely demolished. Please update the listing to show that. It will be a Korean Church and school.
The theatre is completely demolished. Please update the listing to show that. It will be a Korean Church and school.
Probably they’ll reconstruct the not gutted out section as the school and church.
It’s the end for this theater. Only a tiny gutted out section of the building is standing.
Half of it is torn down. I think the complex is going to be gutted down for the school/church.
Almost every old theater I know becomes a church.
This I need to see. I think the entire theatre is going to be torn down. I know they’re going to put an entirely new building. It’s going to be a Korean church and school.