Comments about Lackland Drive-In in San Antonio, TX

Chuck1231 on January 25, 2013 at 7:12 am

The last operators of the Lackland Drive-In were Gulf States Theatre and finally Santikos Theatres.

Chuck1231 on October 18, 2012 at 8:08 am

According to the Lackland Drive-In Newspaper Display ads the drive-in was located at 7170 Somerset Rd.

jwmovies on October 17, 2012 at 6:49 pm

Above address is incorrect. Approx. address for this drive-in was 7188 Somerset Road, San Antonio, TX 78224. Sam’s Club (at least the building was there when the drive-in closed) is north of where the theatre stood.

The entrance was where Specialty Prosthetics is located now. The buildings SE of this location and west of the post office is where the drive-in was located.

tramp116 on December 7, 2009 at 8:28 pm

I remember this place from when I was stationed at Kelly AFB in 79. They were showing porn at that time As porn was generally against the law everywhere in Texas in the late 70’s, San Antonio did not allow porn to be shown within the city limits. This theater hired a guy to stand in front of the projection booth with 2 paddles. The paddle guy’s job was to cast a shadow across the screen, blanking out the “offensive” parts of the scenes. A bunch of us, men & women, used to load up & go to the movies, not to watch the porn flicks but to watch this poor guy do a dance to keep his paddle shadows moving on the screen. I swear he was a gymnast or or a contortionist. Can you image doing this non-stop for 60-90 minutes at a crack?
contortionist. Can you image doing this non-stop for 60-90 minutes at a crack?
or a contortionist. Can you image doing this non-stop for 60-90 minutes at a crack?

outafocus on July 3, 2006 at 3:05 pm

The Lackland’s screen sat high on a berm. It’s screen was easily visible from many angles. Rather than build a fence to keep passers-by from seeing the X rated films being shown on it’s screen, 88 very bright halogen lights were mounted on poles around the theatre. The bright lights effectively hid the screen from everyone but people in the theatre itself.

The Lackland was built in 1953. It was one of the better built drive ins in San Antonio.

lyssa751 on March 16, 2005 at 9:42 pm

What’s odd is that there was an elementary school very close by to the area. Good thing was they had many lights around the area facing out towards the street, so that no one could see into the screen and parking area on the X-rated movies.