Allston Cinemas
214 Harvard Avenue,
Boston,
MA
02134
214 Harvard Avenue,
Boston,
MA
02134
1 person
favorited this theater
This small, unremarkable-looking two-screen theatre was located in a non-descript office building in a busy student neighborhood.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, the Allston Cinema was an art house, part of the local Sonny & Eddy’s Theaters chain which also operated the Exeter Street in Boston, the Central Square and Galeria in Cambridge, and the Academy in Newton. The theater is best known for its two-year run of the cult classic “Harold and Maude” in the 1970s.
In 1985, it became part of the National Amusements chain, which never understood what to do with it. They ignored the students and the other bohemian inhabitants of Allston Rock City, and instead programmed an endless succession of usually low-quality second run Hollywood films. When National Amusements finally closed it in 2002, it was the last movie theatre in any outlying neighborhood of Boston.
Later in 2002, it reopened as the Bombay Cinemas, featuring Bollywood films from India. For a few months in 2003, the “Allston Cinema Underground” also used it to present various programs of kung-fu, Asian exploitation, action, and music documentary films.
As the Bombay Cinemas, the theater closed for good in early 2004, and was demolished later that year to make way for a Staples store.
Contributed by
Ron Newman
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Recent comments (view all 27 comments)
Heh, hey Clinton, you probably don’t remember me, we didn’t overlap very much…
I’m pretty sure the last film I saw @ the Allston was some terrible B scifi flick with
then Coolidge staffer/later Projectionist JFR and the younger brother of former Coolidge
staffer Jen D. on comps called in by ye olde Coolidge in October of 1993.
Ironically that was before I moved to Allston… by then they only seemed to be
half-open and I couldn’t be convinced to go to that theater, even with comps…
Still, I’m sad to hear it closed.
I saw Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing here during its first run. It played on both screens, an arrangement I don’t recall seeing for any other film here.
I was the manager of the Allston for an almost interminable period: 1987 to ‘99. If I remember correctly, Cinema 1had 208 seats and Cinema 2 had 179.
It was really sad the way Showcase ignored the place. We were jokingly referred to as Circle Cinema screens 8 and 9 by the company’s other local managers. If we were ever busy, I believe it was due to an error. We opened Robocop and Do the Right Thing probably because the company didn’t realize they’d be as big as they were. And yes, we ran both of those films on both screens, running a single print through the projectors on “interlock”.
When I took over as managing director of Allston after working as assistant manager my first year with the company, I wrote a memo to the district and corporateoffices suggesting they let me experiment with programming one of the screens. Allston has a lot of students and immigrants, and I have an MS in the history of world cinema, so I thought I could make the place more a part of the community. No one replied to the memo, and we kept running the Circle’s leftovers.
Hello again, Bob. You were at the Allston about the same time as I was at Chestnut Hill. I thought of the Allston as a place they gave films an extra few weeks after the Circle. It could have been a great neighborhood spot, I wonder why they didn’t try it.
Here is a 1986 photo:
http://tinyurl.com/q7va3j
I remember that cute little theatre. Too bad it had to go. I lived in Brookline’s Coolidge Corner area on my last year of college, and I was within walking distance of this theatre. I saw a number of movies in that theater, including my all time favorite film, West Side Story. I, too, miss it, especially since it’s one less movie theatre to go to.
Does anyone from the ‘old days’ of Allston remember a film called End of the Road (1970)—it may have played as a cult film—as it did in NYC during mid-late ‘70s. The film is coming out for first time on DVD… I’m writing about it’s history at art-house cinemas…. Many thanks!
This opened on March 15th, 1973 as Allston C1nema – C2nema.
I began working at the Allston in March of 1976 and worked for Sonny and Eddy’s until 1978 or 1979 (the years have dulled my memory). I came in on the tail end of the run of Harold and Maude. It was a fun place to work and a place where I made lifelong friendships. We were unbelievably busy most of the time showing both first run and art films. The staff was full of movie lovers. If only the same could have been said of the owners. And in my humble opinion that was a large part of the problem as time went on. The Allston could have continued to fill a great little niche in the Boston movie scene but that would have required someone with an eye on more than just the bottom line. Still, I spent some of the happiest times of my life there. I have in my possession a fair amount of press materials and such from those years and have toyed with the idea of starting a FB page but just haven’t had the time yet. If you are on FB check every now and then. It’ll happen. In the meantime, if Candace K, Pete C, Jane E or any of the other folks who worked during those years see this, look me up on FB. David, Michael, Danny and Joanne are on FB too.
This place was a dump-the screens/auditoriums were tiny, it was dirty and the floors were always sticky. I recall in the early 80s it mostly played B movies-the kind that drew the type of audiences that the Chestnut Hill Cinema and the Circle Cinemas didn’t want-ie rowdy teenage boys-and as a teen I recall seeing “Halloween II”, “Friday the 13th 3 in 3D”, “The Howling” and “My Bloody Valentine” there. When Showcase took it over and the prices went up that was it for me-I wasn’t gonna pay a top dollar ticket price at a crappy venue like the Allston…