Revived theaters offer family atmosphere and films

There was a mass die-off of movie theaters on the Windward side a few years ago. These were traditional neighborhood theaters, relics of a bygone age when a night at the movies was affordable family entertainment.

Kailua Theater and Aikahi Theater, both with two screens, Enchanted Lake Theater with three and Keolu Theater with four — 11 screens in all — folded in short order, leaving only Regal and Consolidated mall-plexes in Kaneohe still showing movies. (There was also a small double theater at Windward City Shopping Center.)

The mall-plexes are geared toward showcasing the latest releases in high-tech style, and you pay accordingly. You also have to plan your evening because drive time is a factor.

Kailua Theater is boarded up, the lanai area enclosed to keep homeless people from camping there out of the rain. Enchanted Lake Theater has become a church, and I think the Aikahi Theater has, too. But Keolu Theater sat empty for nearly four years.

That is, until mid-December, when it opened again, as the Water Gardens Keolu 4. The space has been leased by Windward residents and film fans Scott Daniels and his wife, Toni Ku-Daniels, and brother Mike Daniels, plus partner Tyler Walters. Mike Daniels and Walters run similar theaters near Salt Lake City, and the Water Gardens name comes from the parent theater complexes in Pleasant Grove and Spanish Fork, Utah. (The original Water Gardens theaters are in a mall with a running-water architectural theme.)

There was a boomlet in theater construction in the 1980s for second-run, discount or dollar theaters, movie houses that screened films after initial-run contracts had expired. First-run movies pay an enormous percentage of the ticket price to film distributors, and theaters make their profits from concessions, not from admissions. After that exclusive-contract run expired — usually in about two months — neighborhood theaters could afford to lease the films and show them at reduced prices.

What killed most discount theaters was VHS rentals and, later, DVD sales. Also, Hollywood was grinding out more films than it does now. Some discount houses, like the dank Restaurant Row complex, became habitats for homeless and people sleeping off their hangovers. That’s unlikely in a neighborhood setting.

Still, there’s a market for discount movie houses, particularly among budget-conscious families and other groups, and for folks who simply missed a film the first time around. And there’s the indefinable pleasure of seeing a movie on a big screen with excellent projection and sound.

Like their Utah brethren, the new Water Gardens Keolu theaters are inexpensive and family-oriented. Admission is $5; drinks, candy and popcorn range from $1 to $3; hot dogs and cotton candy are $2. They will not show R-rated films, and are closed by midnight and all day Sunday.

I checked out a couple of films there and can report that the facility has been rehabilitated and is bright and clean and pleasant. The film projection was professional, and the sound had good clarity and volume. Second-run theaters deal with used prints, and so there were occasional scratches on the film stock, but nothing to write home about. (I did have to speak to some tween-age kids who were making noise in the theater — some people think discount admission excuses bad behavior.)

The employees are cheerful teenagers with that first-job glow. That’s good! Let’s hope they’re working in a revival of family-aimed theaters and not in the modern version of a buggy-whip factory.

Read Burl Burlingame’s FilmSlashTV and Book ‘Em Burl blogs at honolulupulse.com.