Reminiscing with 'Raiders' on the big screen again

"When Raiders of the Lost Ark" was released in June 1981, I had been reviewing movies for the Deseret News about three years. And I still remember how I felt seeing "Raiders" for the first time: It was one of my most joyous moviegoing experiences at that time.

Come to think of it, it's still way up there.

As was (and still is) the custom, "Raiders" was being shown a few days before its opening at one of those radio-sponsored evening screenings filled with a rowdy crowd that was goaded into being even rowdier by a hosting deejay.

We were in the old Villa Theatre on Highland Drive, a massive, old-fashioned single-screen building with 1,000-plus seats and a curved, Cinerama-style screen that had been installed in the 1960s. That curved screen wasn't great for everything; a small intimate character study could be overwhelmed by the format. But for an exciting adventure picture, it made the audience feel like it was smack-dab in the middle of the action.

There was a huge velvet curtain hanging over the screen that opened as the projector began churning, so on this warm June evening we saw the curtain part and that familiar Paramount logo of a snow-covered mountain peak gradually came into view. And when that painted peak faded into a South American mountaintop, the audience actually "ooohed" and "ahhhed."

The movie hadn't even started in earnest but already the crowd was in sync, a communal feeling that, by golly, this just might be something special. And, of course, it was. As we saw Indiana Jones for the first time and he began his debut adventure, it was as thrilling as moviegoing gets.

"Raiders" played exclusively at the Villa in 70mm and six-track stereo — the only place in town to see it. And it ran for more than a year as fans went back again and again. I saw it in the Villa several times and it was always a great ride — although you can never really recapture the excitement of seeing something for the first time.

A couple of years later, the first sequel, "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom," also played at the Villa. As did "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade." And in the late 1990s or early 2000s when the Villa was on its last legs, the theater ran a double feature of "Temple of Doom" and "The Last Crusade." The prints were worn and scratched and skipped here and there, and it seemed like a metaphor for the sadly failing Villa, which could no longer compete with multiplexes, home video and cable — and fickle audiences.