Kachina Theatre

Look in the background in Spielberg’s movie The Fablemens, I’m pretty sure this is the theater they used in the 1961 segment in Arizona

I worked there while in high school during Batman and The Abyss, was there on the closing ceremony. Still have some of the letters from the marquee outside.

Someone mentioned “How The West Was Won.” So this theater was capable of showing 3-strip Cinerama? So wish I had taken pictures of it too…

I loved this theater so much growing up in Scottsdale in the 80’s. Does anyone remember (or were you at) the opening night of Return Of The Jedi? There was a line double wrapped around the theater. I wasn’t there early enough for the first showing of the night but caught the second showing. Some kids came out after the first showing and shouted “Darth Vader dies”. Still kills me to think about that. What a great time to live in there! Think I’ll go over to the Grapevine for a lavish pizza now or hang out at The Backstage and Alley Cat! 😁

This was one of the last great single screen theatres in the Phoenix area. I had the pleasure to see some big screen titles there including The Deer Hunter, The Last Emperor and The Mission. Also saw Fatal Attraction there opening weekend. The Kachina had a small lobby and a great big curved screen. Sad too have seen this one close as the Now defunct Galleria put this single screen out of business.

The architect of the Kachina Theatre was Ray Parrish, according to the article about the house in the April 10, 1961, issue of Boxoffice, which can be seen on this web page at incinerama.com.

incinerama lacks internal links, so if anyone wants to explore the site here’s their front page.

I know for sure I saw Batman here. As well as, The Goonies, Return of the Jedi, and Star Trek 4. I want to say I saw Back to the Future here as well but do not know for certain. I do remember the theater that replaced it kinda, it was down an escalator, underneath a TGIF. They also built an real IMAX screen southeast of the location of picture above. That I remember going to in elementary school as a field trip. Oh Dale of yesteryears, in the days that Drinkwater reigned.

I believe the Cineplex Odeon was new when the Galleria was built. I was working there for the “grand opening”, if you will, and they were still bringing in the components of the theater. The owners of the Galleria basically bought up that big plot of land, tore everything down that previously existed, and then built the Galleria complex on top of it. The Cineplex Odeon was just part of that structure.

I think I remember the El Camino as well although that was in a slightly different location, if I remember correctly. I think I only went there once. I don’t remember much about it, to be honest.

This was a very interesting and great theater to view a film. It was never quite as popular as the not-so-far away Cine Capri but still held a charm all to itself. It had a very distinctive air about it, one that I still remember well. I remember that it had an interesting glow on the walls once the movies were playing. The Kachina showed midnight movies during the mid to late 80’s, right before it closed. I remember seeing “The Adventures of Baron Munchassen” and “The Abyss” there. Both films were made better and more “mysterious” by seeing them there, especially at a midnight showing. Ironically, I worked at the theater that was later built only 2 years later on that very spot, the Cineplex Odeon at the far end of the Galleria, which was right down the escalator from TGI Fridays. The Cineplex Odeon had this ploy that they could get out of bankruptcy by charging patrons for butter. Needless to say, almost every customer was outraged by the idea, and the theater didn’t last long. The bland and boring interior design of the newer theater only exacerbated the true loss of the Kachina and it always felt eerie on the inside.

I saw “How the West Was Won” at the Kachina Theater, I think in 1963. It is still one of my favorite movies. It was nice to see the old pictures of the theater that a previous poster had. I recently got the movie on DVD. They did a good job of hiding the lines from the 3 cameras. There was also an ‘extras’ DVD that told the history of Cinerama. I never knew that George Peppard’s stuntman was so badly injured in the train scene.

I saw Batman there in Summer ‘89 when I was 16, just before it closed down. It was the premiere showing at Midnight. SWEET— both the movie, which the kids treated like a rock concert, and the tasty, tasty joints I toked with my friend in the parking lot before hand. Good times, good times. Why isn’t the downstairs theatre that was inside Los Arcos mentioned on this site? Oh yeah, to “UM”…. yeah, you’re thinking of the Sugar Bowl, which is still there on Scottsdale Rd. S of Indian School.

I remember one thing that haunted me about this theatre just before it was torn down. While it was fenced to be demolished, I noticed that some artist had painted a mural on the brick side of the theatre. The painting depicted the illusion that there was a hole knocked through the surrounded brick (starting with bricks painted on real brick) and inside the hole you could see the charactors from The Wizard of Oz dancing down the yellow brick road. I think I heard later that this was the first movie ever screened at the Kachina. I thought it moving that the artist went to all this effort even though I think when it was made he knew the work would soon be demolished. I regret to this day that I did not photograph it. If anyone has any, please post.

I used to be an asst. manager / projectionist there in 1987. It had a decent lobby and snack bar, I guess I don’t agree with the description from above. I’ll have to look around and see if I have any old photos of the place. There is no longer a “new” theater in its place anymore. Big money came in and built the Galleria Mall, which promptly bombed and lost investors millions of dollars. That mall was empty for years. Around 1994 a film crew showed up and shot quite a lot of the film “Tank Girl” inside the empty mall, that was once Kachina space.