Reel Deal Cinemas at South Park

The NorthPark and SouthPark both opened on July 2nd, 1976. NorthPark and SouthPark openings Fri, Jul 2, 1976 – 19 · Lexington Leader (Lexington, Kentucky) · Newspapers.com

I worked at this theater twice. First from May 1982 thru early 1984 when it was owned my Mid-States Theaters, then for a brief time as an assistant in the latter part of 1990 when it was owned by Loew’s. When the theater first opened in 1976, the projection booths for houses 2, 3, 4, and 5 were not enclosed, but instead were simply raised platforms in the lobby, one on either side of the entrance to the houses. The projectors (platters) were in full view of the customers, and the films were exposed to all sorts of dirt, debris, and greasy steam from the popcorn poppers. The platters were notoriously jerky, probably owing to all the dirt down in the shaft, and the pictures were always unstable on the screen. The tiny houses 1 and 6 each had their own enclosed projection booths, but were often plagued with framing problems. Another issue was a design flaw of the houses themselves. Apparently either the interior designers or the builders had not calculated space for the side speakers, as they were hung IN FRONT of the screen!!! To add insult to injury, the screens were masked on both sides with curtains which hung behind the speakers, thus making a default and unchangeable aspect ration of 1.85 x 1. Any time a film was in a “scope” aspect ratio, the sides of the frame would be projected onto the speakers and curtains. I’m not sure when that particular problem was addressed, but it was finally fixed. The exposed projection platforms were enclosed in ‘82, around the same time that our boss decided that the lobby needed a facelift and chose a garish swimming pool blue over the previous golden yellow palate.

I believe the speakers in front of the screen was pretty common for theatres built by Mid-States at the time.