UA The Movies at Sunrise Mall
319 Sunrise Mall,
Massapequa,
NY
11758
319 Sunrise Mall,
Massapequa,
NY
11758
1 person
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Showing 51 - 63 of 63 comments
Well, the UA Farmingdale Stadium 10 and National Amusements Farmingdale Multiplex Cinemas are just a few miles up on Route 110.
You know, RobertR, you’re absolutely correct. Think about Massapequa. Where’s the nearest theater these days? Merrick? Bellmore? Amityville is gone. There used to be a Jerry Lewis Twin in the shopping center across the street from the mall (I forget what it is now and I don’t think it’s listed on this site…). That area is under served as far as a movie theater is concerned. It would be a great place to build a megaplex.
If another company had operated this it would still be open. They were in a free booking zone and had no close competition. It might have been possible to make at least some of the screens into stadium theatres even though they were small.
Used to go here all the time. Also was known as the UA Movies at Sunrise Mall. Originally opened with 5 theatres. Then they knocked out theatre 2 and built a hallway with theatres 2, 6 and 7. Then they constructed another long hallway near theatre 5 to build theatres 8 and 9. One of the many unique things about this theatre was that the movies started at 10AM, the same time the mall opened.
Orlando: if you know, what was on the site where the Sunrise/Massapequa Mall is now before it? My parents always said it was the Drive In.
The Massapequa D.I. was on the other side of Sunrise where Toy R Us and other stores are now.
This was (I think) somewhat of a milestone on LI. It was one of the first, if not THE first, multiplex theaters to open on LI.
It opened around 1970 or so in the “new” Massapequa or Sunrise Mall (people I knew used either name to designate it).
I only saw one movie there (Bad News Bears in 1976) at my insistance. My parents were born and raised in Manhattan and grew up in the movie palaces of NY. To them, these tiny theaters (and they were tiny) were awful. I thought the concept (back then) was pretty cool. Wow! Five movies under one roof! In a Mall!! (That’s how many were there when I lived on LI).
And yes, I believe the entire mall was built on the site of the old Massapequa Drive In.
UA has a habit of getting evicted, even before the bankruptcy – at least in New York – they got evicted from the 8th Street Playhouse, and they got evicted from the Eastside Cinema.
i actually spent a few pleasant evenings here, watching light fare like the farrah fawcett-jeff bridges movie whose name i can’t remember. don’t laugh. it wasn’t a bad movie.
my wife took me to a few others. one movie that played here was Stop Or my mom will shoot! with Sly Stallone. perhaps that’s just another reason why theaters close (besides raping their customers at the popcorn stand); movies Hollywood is churning out just plain stink!
who wouldn’t rather fire up the popcorn maker, and toss on a dvd of The Pit and the Pendulum? No extraneous noise from rude customers, no rattling of candy wrappers.
the theater had a sort of arcane way of selling tickets, in that you would stand at a kiosk in the center of the mall on the second level, purchase your tickets, then walk across the mall to the actual theater itself.
at night , when your picture ended, you’d come out to find half the mall closed and several exits blocked.
This was the worst UA theater quite a feat for sure>>>>>
Hello;
This was not the Valley Stream Sunrise Drive In as, it seems, one person seems to think. The Valley Stream Sunrise was located near Green Acres Mall. When I last passed their the site was occupied by the Sunrise Multiplex.
You’re thinking of the Sunrise Cinemas in Valley Stream, which is still operated by National Amusements. The Sunrise Cinemas was the theatre in which several people were killed in a gunfight during a showing of The Godfather Part III.
The Sunrise Mall Theatre was inside the Sunrise Mall about 15 miles east of Valley Stream in Massapequa. This was one of the worst-run theatres by UA (quite a feat) and before they entered bankruptcy they simply stopped paying the rent. They were locked out of the theatre suddenly by the Mall management and Long Island was finally rid of the Sunrise Mall Theatres.
I believe this was a drive in theatre before becoming the Sunrise cinemas.
They used to have metal detectors for patrons, it was so bad.