Chunky's Cinema Pub
371 Lowell Avenue,
Haverhill,
MA
01832
371 Lowell Avenue,
Haverhill,
MA
01832
1 person
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Now a Planet Fitness.
JFILM….I remember the old Stateline Cinema. I remember seeing John Carpenter’s “The Fog” there in 1980. I think the building is long gone, but if I remember correctly, it used to sit in the rear, right corner of the Plaza as a stand-alone building. I recall the marquee was a generic light box, three rows of plastic letters, that sat atop the flat roof over hangning the entrance. Also, it was owned by the same family that owned Salem Tri Cinema in Salem, NH (before Showcase bought that location).
As for Cinema 495, I remember that one well and you were right that it got a mix of first and second run, mostly because it was a safe enough distance up 495 from the 8 screen Showcase in Lawrence that they were able to get a few first run films. But I mostly remember it as a second run house, much like the Stateline and the Twin on rte 28 in North Reading, and it offered a steady diet of teen sexploitation comedies (Porkys, Zapped, Spring Break) and action/horror films. Also loved going there because the owner would sell the movie posters after a film finished its run. I must have bought 50 posters from him (many of which I still have).
This used to be the 495 Cinemas. It was first run, as far as I’m aware, in the 80’s and 90’s. This was the only cinema I knew of in Haverhill, along with the cinema in Stateline Plaza, which I guess was technically Haverhill (though I thought of it as being in Plaistow, NH). I remember seeing E.T. in the cinema at Stateline with a bunch of neighborhood kids when I was about four or five, and that the parent in charge gave us all popcorn in brown lunch bags to sneak into the theater. That cinema was turned into a mattress store, and I think it’s still standing though recently there was a new Shaw’s put in and the whole plaza was changed- haven’t been by there to see if it survived. There was also a drive-in screen on route 125 in Plaistow, which may have still been in use in the early 80’s, I can’t remember for sure- the decrepit screen stood for years, but is now gone.
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