Alamo Drafthouse celebrates 50 years of Village theater, revives Austin’s lost video store

Austin transplants and anyone under, say, 40 would be hard-pressed to imagine a movie night without homegrown cinema chain Alamo Drafthouse. It wasn’t always that way, of course — even where the oldest operating Drafthouse now sits on West Anderson Lane.

The company celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2022. This month, it celebrates a bigger milestone: 50 years of the Village theater. Before you start doing the math: The North Austin building first opened as Village Cinema Four in the 1970s, more than a quarter-century before Drafthouse co-founders Tim and Karrie League rescued it from later oblivion. Once a beloved but shabby temple for arthouse films, the Village itself is local cinema history, like the long-shuttered Dobie and Varsity theaters.

“When I moved to Austin in 1994, there were a few landmarks for film people like myself who were interested in both the contemporary arthouse scene and repertory cinema,” says Lars Nilsen, lead film programmer for Austin Film Society and its AFS Cinema. “Most everything was on or near the Drag.” Films that didn’t make it into that bubble, he says, could often be found over at Village.

Drafthouse is marking 50 years of Village with special screenings and the return of another slice of Austin history — the old Vulcan Video library, which will soon take residence at the theater.

But if you only know the Village as a place where you munch on queso, dive into its vault.

Remember (before it was) the Alamo …

On Feb. 20, 1974, the American-Statesman heralded good news: “A new theater ad is appearing on the amusement pages. It’s Village Cinema Four, in Village Shopping Center in the 2700 block of West Anderson Lane. The grand opening was today. There are four auditoriums, the largest with a seating capacity of 400.”

Sure enough, the next day’s ad promised a cinema “convenient to all of Austin.” Local company Presidio Enterprises, Inc. operated the theater. Village first played “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Chariot of the Gods,” “The Day of the Jackal” and “Executive Action” (a Burt Lancaster-starring political thriller touted as “probably the most controversial film of our time”).

It was one of the first four theaters in the world to screen Tobe Hooper’s 1974 horror classic “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” says Drafthouse executive chairman Tim League. “Chainsaw” ran just a couple weeks there, but like a movie monster you thought was dead, it returned as word of mouth swept the country.

The theater screened X-rated “Andy Warhol’s Dracula,” seminal documentary “Grey Gardens” and under-marketed masterpieces directed by Elaine May and Robert Altman. A 1977 Statesman article called Village a “local haven for these otherwise-ignored yet frequently worthwhile movies.” Presidio told the paper that when blockbusters were in short supply, they preferred to take a chance on “product that deserves a break (rather) than exploitation schlock.”

By November 1977, operators installed a new-fangled Dolby sound system in one of Village’s auditoriums. Cinephiles could hear the voices of Keith Carradine and Sissy Spacek fill the joint during shows of “Welcome to L.A.”

On Christmas Day in 1977, the theater sold tickets to a little flick called “Star Wars,” which had just debuted on a few dozen screens around the U.S. in August.

A 1980 Statesman article advised, “Go early on weekends; can be very crowded.”

From 1994 to 1997, Village won “Best Movie Theatre Programming” in the Austin Chronicle’s annual reader poll.

Nilsen remembers taking the bus multiple times to see “Pulp Fiction” and “Hoop Dreams” at Village. “I also recall that they took the time to cut out and mount newspaper reviews of the films they were showing, which is something that I was accustomed to seeing at the New York arthouses but not at the multiplexes,” he says.

Change came fast and furious as Y2K loomed. Regal Cinemas acquired the Village in 1997. The company shifted Austin arthouse programming to the Arbor 7 (which closed in 2022, to the consternation of modern moviegoers).

The theater went by Village Cinema Art in its later days. The intimate scale and time-worn charms — well-loved seats, sticky floors, screens that had seen better days — were no match for the rise of the multiplex.

Regal shuttered Village on Feb. 4, 2001. “A Hard Day’s Night” played on the final night.

“Theaters like the old Village kept the flame burning, and Village closed not because the flame went out, but because there were new and better and more numerous candles,” Nilsen says. “That's always happened, going back to the days of single screens and drive-ins. Great films keep getting made, and new audiences keep getting made. It's the theaters that have to stay nimble enough to keep up.”

The Village was the second Alamo Drafthouse location ever.

On May 24, 1997, the first Alamo Drafthouse opened on Colorado Street. Almost four years later, expansion knocked on their door whether they were ready or not.

“I didn't grow up in Austin in the ’70s,” says League, who moved to Austin in 1996. “So I can tell you that the first time I actually even thought about the Village, honestly, was when I was driving back from New Orleans with (live comedy troupe) Master Pancake crew.”

Returning from a show, League got a call from the property manager for the recently closed Village. A cinema operator from outside Austin was looking at the building, but the manager liked the Drafthouse’s concept. “If you want it, you can have it. I'll give you this theater,” League remembers them saying.

The Leagues signed the lease. “The competition would kill us," Karrie League told the Statesman at the time. “It left us no choice.”

As with the original Drafthouse, the Leagues built up the second location by hand: a renovated ceiling, a new floor, a bar in the lobby and rearranged seating to accommodate food service. It reopened Village in July 2001, featuring mainstream releases.

The theater transformed Drafthouse’s business, Tim League says. Before expanding, the Colorado Street cinema only hosted second-run titles, dollar movies and sporadic special events. The success of Village’s first-run programming started to hurt the mothership’s traffic.

“We had to rethink the programming at the original Alamo and develop a lot of other series to fill in. Beloved series like Weird Wednesday were all coming out of this idea of keeping a huge variety of movies coming. It was Village’s success in first-run that drove a lot of that creative panic,” League says.

Since the closure of the Colorado Street theater in 2007, Village reigns as the longest-running Drafthouse in the country. Like every other indoor movie theater in town, it closed its doors in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic struck but reopened the next summer. The screen’s glowed since.

Here’s how the Alamo Drafthouse Village is celebrating 50 years.

To mark the half-century, Drafthouse is running a slate of “Only at Village” flicks. According to the company, “these are films that won’t play at any other Alamo Drafthouse in 2024 — and many of them rarely screen anywhere.”

Next up on the marquee: “Finding Nemo” and “The Royal Tenenbaums” starting Feb. 23 and “Speed” and “Aladdin” starting March 1. More flicks are on the way this year, the company says. Get more info and buy tickets at drafthouse.com.

Remodeling efforts at the Village — recliner seats! — began last year and will continue in 2024. League says an improved bar and a stage area for events are on the way. Vintage posters of movies that played Village in 1974 will line the lobby walls.

But the biggest birthday present is years in the making. In 2020, Drafthouse acquired the library of Vulcan Video’s South Austin store, which closed during the pandemic. League says that those DVDs are finally being relocated to Village, where customers will be able to rent them again.

League and Drafthouse staffers have been busy transferring the 50,000 movies to thin sleeves, which will be stocked in cabinets in the theater’s front hallway for perusal. Think flipping through vinyl at a record shop, League says. The rental library is scheduled to open by March 27.

“And we’re certainly going to throw Village a really awesome 50th anniversary party,” League says.Eric Webb is an award-winning culture writer based in Austin. Find him at www.ericwebb.me.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Alamo Drafthouse marks 50 years of Austin arthouse, Village theater