The Old Knoxville...Theater Stlye

My friend Phil has inspired me with his blog to write about some of Knoxville's places of the past. So here are some random thoughts about former movie theaters in the Knoxville area.

When I was a kid one of the places that I would occasionally visit was the theater at West Town Mall. Now I'm not talking about the nice theater that's in the mall now, I'm talking about the one that was out in the parking lot on Kingston Pike. It was kind of a round building with two screens. When you walked in you either went to the left or the right depending on the movie you were watching. I remember going here as a kid and watching Star Wars! It was awesome and molded my life in ways that I could have never imagined.

The Powell Cinema was another place that I went as a child. This theater opened up in the late 70s or early 80s. I remember going to the 10am movies that they would show for kids there during the summer. They stopped showing movies for a while here in the late 80s. Then it went through a revitalization and showed movies in the early 90s. It was finally destroyed in the late 90s/early 00s and replace with a KARM store. The last movie that I saw there was Basic Instinct. Yes that is correct, Basic Instinct.

Another theatrical relic of the past was the Kingston 4 down on Kingston Pike (how original). It was actually pretty close to the Downtown West theater. This is another one of those places that showed the 10am summer movies for kids. The first movie that I ever saw was here when I saw Gulliver's Travels. One of my favorite horror movies (more like a comedy though) was viewed in this facility - Texas Chainsaw Massacre 3. When I was in high school we had one of our mom's drop us off here to watch that movie on the last day of school. We all loved the one liners in the movie, and continually repeated them. Now this theater is a flat piece of concrete.

Out at East Town there use to be a theater in the Home Depot shopping center. Its hey day was in the late 90s. I remember waiting in line there to watch the Star Wars Special Editions. It was awesome. One day Jared and I went to ANH, ESB, and ROTJ in the same day. However, we had to go to Downtown West for ESB because one theater couldn't have them all. This theater was closed in the early 00s and was destroyed.

The Commons Six on North Peters was another theater that no longer exists. I was surprised when this theater was destroyed in the early 00s. It was really nice in a good spot. Although, the Wynnsong was on the horizon. The Commons Six location has a nice Dick's Sporting Goods in its place.

Finally, there was the Drive-In/regular theater over on Clinton Highway. I can't remember the name of it, but I remember going there. I remember going to movies with daycare during the summer. The most noteable movies were Red Dawn and The Last Starfighter. These were shown in the conventional theater. I saw one movie in its entirety at the Drive-In, and it was John Candy's Summer Rental. A classic tale of the vacation from hell. One other interesting memory of the place was them showing XXX movies. I remember as a kid we would drive by going to a friend's house and you could catch a glimpse of the screen driving by. This was my first experience with movie nudity. Of course when you're 6 or 7 years old, you don't know what the heck you're looking at on the screen. Later in life I figured it out though ;-) This theater is now a Wal-Mart shopping center.

Many theaters have gone away over the years in the Knoxville area, but if you want to relive the nostalgia, take a day trip to Campbell County and go to the theater up there. No digital sound, no surround sound, no stadium seating, and no high prices for first run movies. Ahhh....the good old days....