Frank Theatres Cine Bowl & Grille: Inlet Square Murrells Inlet: 14 May 2016 1 comment
Murrels Inlet's hardluck mall Inlet Square took another blow in May with the closing of Frank Theaters.
This is actually the second set of theaters in this spot. I don't think I did a closing on it, but for many years this site was a Regal Cinema, and the setup kind of used to amuse me, since they often tore your ticket at the window and had no ticket taker inside. I'm sure many a teen just wandered in, and into a any showroom despite any lack of money or sufficent age for an "R" film.
After Regal closed, Frank Theaters leased the spot and did an extensive remodel for their cinema/restaurant/bowling/arcade conceptCine Bowl & Grille. I don't think the airport type restaurant and bar was really credible in the area, but the bowling alley portion seemed to do a good business as did the movies from what I could tell. There was no "attraction" screen like an "Imax" or "RPX", but it was all digital, and had pretty comfortable seats. I'm trying to recall the last movie I saw here, which would have been around Easter, but I'm drawing a blank.
At any rate, I was pretty surprised on my last trip around Memorial Day when I was googling movie times and nothing was coming up in Murrells Inlet: The Sun News has the story. On reflection, however, should have seen it coming. Several years before, I had seen this story about how the theater was way behind in lease payments to the mall. Since the place stayed open, I figured the two sides had worked something out. Apparently however, the theater was playing the same game as Borders Books, the "We're too important to you for you to kick us out" ploy. Given the sorry state of Inlet Square, you might almost expect that to work, but in the event, not.
In the past, when we stayed on Pawleys, we had the options of movies in Georgetown (The Hub), Litchfield (Tara), and Surfside (Deerfield Cinema), all south of Myrtle Beach. Now, the closest place is Market Commons.
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Bobby
14 Jun 16 at 4:57 pm
They did have at least one theater with an unusual feature. It was D-Box motion seating. At certain points in some movies, the seat will rumble or move around a bit (explosions, etc.). There was an expensive $8 upcharge for this. My wife and I saw one movie in this mode, it was alright.
A few weeks before we saw that movie, we had gone into the same theater to see the movie Dark Knight Rises (with just regular seating). This was the same movie that was playing in Aurora, Colorado when a mass murder took place. In the row behind us, this woman keep laughing out loud at some of the really intense, violent, gruesome parts. I didn't realize at first she was in a motion seat and was just reacting to that. Pretty creepy.