Fort Union Drive-In Movie Theater
Las Vegas, New Mexico
Visiting Town to see the Drive-In?
The Historic Plaza Hotel offers a Drive-In movie package which includes tickets and a goody bag, call the hotel at 505-425-3591.
Tel. 505-425-9934 for the latest info on what movies are playing
On Mora Highway (Seventh St. extension) just north of town
OPEN - FRI - SAT - SUN ~ May-September 2011.
Gates open an hour before dusk, the first movie starts at dusk,
as soon as it is dark enough - call for exact times!
$12 per carload Radio sound at 88.7 FM
Concession stand open with pizza, popcorn, sodas, nachos, hot dogs, juices and candies!
One of the few remaining authentic drive-in theaters in the US! Enjoy it now!
View Large Google Map For Directions to Fort Union Drive-In Theatre
On a September morning in the small town of Calumet, Colorado, a local high school teacher pauses mid-sentence, his face turned toward a classroom window. His eyes open in fear. Paratroopers land in a dusty prairie field outside the school. These troops, ruthless Russian Airborne fighters, open fire on the teacher when he storms outside to confront them. Students flee amid a panic of smoke and gunfire. A student’s dead body slumps against a bullet-shattered window.
Las Vegas, New Mexico, plays the role of Calumet in John Milius’ film Red Dawn, plays the role of a small American town on the edge of World War III, a town that will kick the butt of the unrelenting Russians. It’s not an acting stretch for Vegas. That’s the Las Vegas, New Mexico locals know, a town that refuses to take prisoners. We’re a tough bunch.
Las Vegas channels Hollywood’s finest muse. A walk around Old Town offers a glimpse into another era, a close-up of Wild West architecture, from the Historic Plaza Hotel’s stately brick exterior – featured in the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men – to the simple wood beam and glass construction of the connected gallery storefronts along Bridge Street, seen in this year’s alien caper, Paul.
In a surreal case of art imitating life, Las Vegas’ historic Ft. Union Drive-In features a combination of first-run films as well as the movies captured in the town’s stunning landscape. Preparations for summer’s movie season usually involve duct tape, fresh paint, and a sense of adventure. A carpenter leans into a picnic table a few weeks before the Fort Union Drive-In’s opening weekend, his slim body pressed against a cordless drill. New wood meets old as he replaces a rotting board with a bright piece of pine. Dave Brubeck’s piano hammers from a radio into the empty lot, uneven notes getting lost in the wind.
“There’s always something going on, something happening, usually at the beginning of the year,” theatre owner Jeanna Dilucchio reminisces. She stands, arms akimbo, surveying the grounds. “When we get started, things break, and we have to frantically run around and trouble shoot and fix everything before anyone knows what’s going on. I try to make sure everything is smooth. A lot of the employees have been here a long time.”
The theatre might look abandoned to someone driving past during the day; tumbleweeds roll across a weed-strewn lot. Black crows guard a small outbuilding housing the snack bar. They perch above a mural painted like the night sky of your dreams, painted purple and gold with sparkling stars, a spray of spiral galaxies. The marquis spells out a Hindu mantra: “Om,” the sound that birthed the very universe the theatre claims. Om.
It looks like New Mexico of the past, like 1965, looks like your favorite childhood memory of piling into the station wagon with your sisters, homemade cookies and hot pickles and peanut butter sandwiches in a hamper, cans of grape pop under your feet, heading to the drive-in for a Disney double feature. The drive-in is just an American memory today. Only fourteen drive-ins still exist in the United States, still shoot pictures toward Andromeda when the sky winks to black.
All films at Fort Union Drive-In are shown on a vintage carbon arc projector system – the original equipment from the theatre’s birth in 1948. Carbon arc projectors work similar to an arc welder. A brilliant spark forms between a carbon rod and an electrode and the blazing glow — the equivalent of a 4,000-watt bulb — is focused by a powerful mirror into the projector’s lens. Magic happens when the carbon arcs and a good film begins. Lovers shift a little closer. Running children stop in their tracks, pause, bodies wrapped in a haze of twilight and memory.
“I’ve heard they give the best light,’ says Dilucchio. She stands by an enclosed snack bar, her back to a small, well-tended flower and herb garden. A cement angel guards a spastic lavender in sight of a painted board advertising pizza and spicy hot pickles.
“I used to manage the Serf at the same time,” Dilucchio recollects, referring to thirty years ago when she also managed the indoor movie house, now closed, on Douglas Avenue. She laughs, cracking a smile as wide as the drive-in’s towering screen. “It was crazy.”
Fort Union Drive-In was born during the bustling boom time following World War II, the same year Norman Mailer’s novel based on his own war experiences, The Naked and the Dead, was published. People held an optimism then, welcoming new technology with exuberance.
“Johnny Aragon was here for 25 years. Then it closed down,” Dilucchio remembers. “It was closed for three to four years, then my landlord, Gilbert Pino, bought it. He called me up and made me a deal. He made it possible to reopen it. And Eddie, who owned the Serf,” she continues, referring to late local entrepreneur Edward Maloof, “he always said that Gilbert stole me from him. I tried doing both – the Serf and the drive-in – and it was too much. Gilbert kept the rent low here. I guess I’ve become the Drive-In Lady.”
This summer, you can time travel ten, twenty years, to a time when Dilucchio’s easy smile first lit the night as bright as her carbon arcs. Despite having upgraded the audio to stereo FM radio, there are still a few working drive-in window speakers for the nostalgically inclined. The theatre plays a double feature every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, beginning at dusk, from mid-May through Labor Day weekend.
“We’re short on carbons with only about two months left so at this point it’s just a wing and a prayer,” Dilucchio grimaces. “But I’m hoping they’re going to show up. The carbon arc lights actually form an arc that is reflected by the mirror. It’s like a little welding machine in there. I think I know somebody in Albuquerque who has them, but when I called he was in the hospital with bronchitis so I have to wait for him to get out of the hospital.”
When weekend darkness falls, the theatre hiccups. Once, twice, three times, lights flicker and sputter alive, a slow and steady stream of crammed cars spills onto the lot. A young mother hushes a crying baby as she stands in line for pizza at the snack bar. A string of colorful prayer flags displaying the chakras hovers overhead. The projectionist grunts – the projector is giving him problems – and the sound of metal scraping against metal raises goosebumps on his arms.
“As a kid growing up, coming every night to watch a movie, we’d camp out here and bring a tent and sit in the tent and watch a movie,” Matthew Springer grins. “Now people bring a barbecue and their kids still bring little tents. It’s a lot of fun to see and to be a part of.”
A sea of children race back and forth, race the sun to the horizon. A group of teenagers sneaks behind the snack bar to sneak an illicit cigarette. Without the cell phones and pierced eyebrows, it would look like 1965, look and act the way the theatre did in its young adult years. Grandmothers open big pocketbooks, handing wrinkled dollars to begging charges. Young couples lean against each other at the edges of the lot, eager for sunset to cover their actions.
Diluccio’s silhouette splashes across the projection room as the opening credits roll. She looks out of the booth, her wild hair almost appearing blue from the machine’s eerie carbon arcs. She watches quietly, happiness and tension in equal amounts across her face. The rumble of audience rushing to seat is like an invasion itself, a sea of change pulling the theatre into the future.
article by Birdie Jaworski
