South Shields Mall Twin

dallasmovietheaters on March 17, 2021 at 2:38 pm

Shields South Mall was announced in 1971 and Woolworth’s big box store, Woolco, would join Safeway Grocers in being there at the opening along with Furr’s Cafeteria. Spectro Theaters Circuit signed on in 1972 to add a four-screen theater to open at Christmas of 1972. Spectro was a subsidiary of U.S. Cinema Corporation which had the MacArthur Park and Northpark quads.

When the mall opened, retailers randomly switched between calling the plaza, South Shields Mall and Shields South Mall. Behind schedule, Spectro’s The Movies! turned out to be a twin-screen venue inside the mall. The theatre definitely opened there on October 19, 1973 as The Movies! and it preferred the South Shields variant. So sometimes it was referred to as The Movies! I & II South Shields to distinguish it from Moore’s The Movies!

The Movies! launched with Roger Moore as James Bond in “Live and Let Die” and the Oklahoma City shot feature “30 Dangerous Seconds” starring Robert Lansing. The theatre was not a success but was the Mall would not let it live and then die. Instead, it found a new operator which rebranded as the South Shields Mall Twin launching on November 9, 1979 as a sub-run discount house.

The multiplex, especially 6- and 8-screen venues were in vogue and mini-neighborhood enclosed malls were passé by the mid-1980s with regional and larger malls decimating the aging centers and multiplexes hurting twin-screeners. With 10-year leases coming due in 1982/3, a number of Shields Mall retailers in the inner part of the mall left and the original Woolco began its going out of business sale in November of 1982 closing in 1983 as the Shields Mall reached greyfield status. The inner stores were uprooted when the “Mall” concept finally failed and BSW Architects of Tulsa took on what would be a $1 million renovation that took the retail location formerly known as South Shields Mall to totally outdoor Shields Plaza.

BSW’s designs would uproot the twin-screen theatre and everyone else in the interior section of the plaza. When the movie operator left and found its new home at the New Airline Twin launching on April 11, 1986, certainly the days of movie exhibition were over at the Shields shopping complex. But BSW also didn’t let the theatre live and let die. Instead, it gave a spot to a low-cost $400,000 8-plex replacement that would launch as the Super Saver South Shields 8 which ran from February 6, 1987 to MI cinemas operation in 1999 to closure on May 2, 2000.

dallasmovietheaters on March 18, 2021 at 4:02 am

Correction: American Automated Theatres opened the theater after Spectro decided against the quad-plex. (and technically, it’s original name was The Movies! and not Movies )