Recently I had done a few articles about the Gateway 8 movie theater being closed in order to be revamped into a better, more “customer friendly” theater.

The comments that were left by some of our readers online suggest that this was a long time coming, but let me tell you about a little theater I visited while taking a four-day mini-vacation in Kamas.

This little theater had only one screen...one. And while it did show one of the funniest films that came out during the summer (Ice Age 3), it had a throwback kind of a feel to it.

The chairs weren’t the same ones you’d see in any of the current theatres now, much less the Gateway 8. The carpeting resembled something a person sees on the outside porch of a trailer park, and the single screen, while larger than I expected, had a few tiny holes that were only visible once the movie had started.

From the outside, the name of the theater was half gone (I don’t remember the name of it anymore), and the entire building was made of brick. The marquee was empty, so the only way to tell what was playing at the theater was to walk to the door and check for a flyer.

The same movie was playing all week, and had shows on the weekends from 12-8 p.m. in two-hour intervals.

The sound system wasn’t the best, either. In fact, only one side of the theater had all of its speakers working, so my wife and I sat on that side when the movie started.

Besides all of that, we actually had a good time, and it wasn’t because of the movie.

This building, though old and probably ready to crumble at the next person that sneezed on it, was really a sight to see. The buildings surrounding it were relatively new, with shopping centers and an ice cream shop and little trinket stores scattered about.

The best part of the whole experience? We only paid $20 for everything: $4 for both tickets and the rest on popcorn, candy, and two very large drinks.

And one person was running the whole shebang.

“It’s easier than it looks,” he said. “I’ve been running this place for a long time, so the routine is fairly simple.”

So even though we dropped a $20 bill to sit through a brand new movie at a run-down theater, the owner was nice, the food and tickets were cheap, and the service was what you could expect from a one-man operation.

Given the state of the theaters at Gateway Mall, I’d say the people here are at an advantage. They have up to eight movies to chose from instead of one, seats that lean back instead of remaining upright, stadium seating (which the Kamas theater did not) and sound that comes from all the speakers on both walls.

If you ask me, locals around here have it made; but I’ll take a historic looking, half-good sounding, holey movie screen over a big box theater any day.

After all, I grew up watching movies on military bases that looked exactly the same way as the Kamas theater, and the movies were just as good then as they are now.

sgillet@davisclipper.com