Category Archives: Video

Ohio Sunset screen goes down

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Ghoulish? Maybe. In an April full of stories about drive-ins reopening for another season, I’m relaying one about the final day of a retired screen.

The Sunset Drive-In in Ontario OH closed in 2015, and Joe Lykins bought the property in 2019. Lykins disassembles old barns and uses their vintage wood to build new structures, and he needed room to work. According to the Mansfield News Journal, Lykins recently needed to add a retaining pool to the property, and that meant the screen had to go. The newspaper captured a fine video of the screen-toppling last week.

In the accompanying news story, Lykins said the drive-in wasn’t economically viable. He tried to give away the screen, but had no takers. “People are going to hate me,” he said.

According to Cinema Treasures, the drive-in opened in 1947 as the Mansfield-Galion. It was renamed the Sunset before the 1953 season. It persisted as a family-owned business until the movie studios’ digital imperative required theaters to buy expensive new projectors or close. The Sunset chose to go dark when film ran out.

There are more details and photos about this somber story at the News Journal site. If you’d like to know more, go read it!

Video: Admiral Twin fixes screen

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Tulsa OK’s Admiral Twin Drive-In has reopened for the season after fixing minor damage to its west screen. During the off-season, winds had blown out a few screen panels, so owner Blake Smith needed to make the first repair to the structure since it was rebuilt following a fire in September 2010.

All of this news and video came to us through KOTV, Tulsa’s News Leader, which ran a nice segment on the Admiral a couple of days before it reopened.

As I wrote in last year’s Drive-Ins of Route 66, Blake’s father, Richard D. Smith, bought the Admiral Twin around 1987 from General Cinema Corp., run at the time by Richard A. Smith. Blake officially took over in 2000.

I’ll admit that there’s not much news in the Admiral Twin’s new season, but it’s just great to get another video showing what the venerable drive-in looks like these days. Enjoy!

Video: Storm slams former Sky Vue

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Longtime readers know that I love any drive-in video that I can embed for you. In this case, the story is a windstorm that damaged the former main screen of the Sky Vue Drive-In in Winchester KY.

You can see by this not-that-old photo at CinemaTreasures that the Sky Vue’s big screen and sign were still in good shape when it closed in 2015, one of the few casualties of the conversion to digital movies. Reportedly, there were fans who were trying to find a way to reopen the drive-in. Sadly, any of those plans just got more complicated.

Thanks to WLEX, Lexington’s News Leader, for giving us all a glimpse of what’s left of the Sky Vue. I wonder whether any of those marquee letters are still laying there along US 60.