As part of restructuring of its resources and common business sense, Regal Cinemas has chosen to close down its two most severely under-performing theaters, located in the malls of Wilton and Latham Circle. This is especially distressing for Latham, a mall that has endured constant hardships and turned into a extremely quiet cemetery of lost businesses.
The earliest film I can remember ever watching there was The Rescuers Down Under, way back in 1990. The only evidence I have of this claim is the precious memory of extensive staring at the "enormous" display for it while one of my parents wrestled getting tickets.
Due to the small confines of the second floor construction, everything important beyond the box office had to snug up all of the walls. To the left, eerily placed by the cutoff, was the arcade, devoted to the usual fare of UFO catchers, a racing cabinets, and at least one light-gun shoot-em-up. To this last day, there were few if ever changes to the video game lineup; seeing a beat-up neon yellow and pink Virtual Cop cabinet nowadays is a rare sight. The right side catered to the sole bathrooms of the entire floor. And, of course, straight in the middle was the concession stand with all of the crunchy snacks, bubbly sodas, and "fresh" popcorn to be dispensed out. Bypassing this triangle formation of noise, food, and stench lies the theaters.
The Latham theaters have had the pleasure of being the place where I saw the highs and lows of the Hollywood creative scale, particularly in recent times. In order to use an expiring Regal "Free Movie Ticket", I went there to be shocked and awed by the despicable attitudes of Jack and Jill. Not content with merely testing my pain and abuse levels to a certain degree, I also trekked there to see The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure, able to see it before it left the very next day, barely surviving one week at Regal's theaters. I even whipped up a false story to justify the ticket purchase to the dumbfounded worker, concocting a tale of how I lost a bet against my dastardly step-brother over a Cowboys game. I still even have the free glow-wand that came with the ticket. Despite these massive failures, they were no match to the wonderment I had at Latham watching WALL-E, still one of my favorite films of all time.
As the years flew by and the mall began its slow march to destitute, heavily overshadowed by the bigger and better malls around the Capital Region that wisely made renovations and additions to their structures, the theater stayed open and grasped at whatever it had left to offer for viewers. It was the only Regal theater in the market to still showcase films on real celluloid instead of digital files. Due to the smaller theaters, they offered a more personal environment for audiences; I often was the only person there to see something and always had a blast, regardless of the film's quality. Latham did have one especially unique fare to present: Bollywood films. I and other diverse patrons got to watch works such as Robot, Dum Maaro Dum, and Ra.One. Unfortunately, the rising popularity of this market would be transplanted to Crossgates, thus removing the last vestige of Latham Circle 10.
The very last film I engaged here was Steven Soderbergh's Side Effects. It joins the likes of Fern Gully: The Last Rainforest, Mortal Kombat, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation, The Waterboy, Watchmen, Punisher: War Zone, Tron Legacy and many others whose viewing memories are locked away or grayed out in my cerebral cortex.
This closing is the final nail for the Latham Circle Mall.
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