The Comanche Drive-In

Buena Vista’s historic Comanche Drive-In is one of a kind

BUENA VISTA, Co. – The Comanche Drive-In movie theater in Buena Vista has been showing movies under the Rocky Mountain stars for 50 years. Perched at the foot of Mt. Princeton it is the highest drive-in in the nation – sitting at 8,000’ in the spectacular Arkansas River Valley. It is also the country’s only drive-in that still uses 35 millimeter film reels, instead of modern digital or xenon bulb projectors.

Owners John and Barb Groy do everything from make the popcorn and taking tickets to running the two monster RCA film projectors that fill every square inch of the projector booth. John’s parents, John and Pearl Groy built the place in 1966, when John was a junior in high school, and he’s been working there ever since.

Other drive-ins across the country have switched to digital projectors to stay aligned with the movie studios, who now release new movies almost exclusively in digital formats. The Groys have stuck with their original projectors, partly because digital projectors are incredibly expensive (about $60,000 apiece), and partly because they like showing movies the classic way.

Setting up for a showing of “Casablanca,” John fusses with the two huge metal behemoths like they were old friends.

“They’re old but they’re fixable,” he chuckles. “It’s like having an old truck. If you take care of it and can find the right parts it’ll keep running forever.”

The projectors were built in 1956 and use arc lamps, meaning instead of a bulb they use a flame to throw light from the booth to the screen – a distance of 500 feet.

“The lamps are just like an arc welder,” said John. “It fires up at 80 volts and 90 amps. It has a positive and a negative, and when those two touch you get ignition. So what happens is you have that voltage going through the positive and negative and it arcs – and that arc is what makes the light. It’s like a welder sitting there perpetually.”

When he fires it up, it lights up the booth like a sun.

“It’s the old school way and that’s what I like about it,” he says as he slaps the metal lid closed. “The only problem is that I’m running out of carbons. They don’t make them any more. I find them on eBay and right now I have enough for a couple more years.”

The sound runs off a one-watt radio FM transmitter mounted just outside the booth window, plenty for their customers to tune into with their car radios.

Downstairs Barb fires up another relic from the good-old-days, a Manley popcorn machine made in 1954.

“We think it’s probably the last one still being used,” she says. “And of course it makes the best popcorn around.”

Tonight the movie is Casablanca, one of the all-time classics. Procuring a 35mm copy of a movie like that is never a guarantee, she explains.

“We’ve been having a lot of fun doing the classics,” she says as she pours a cup of coffee for a customer. “We call up the movie studios and ask if they have such-and-such available in 35 millimeter and they’ll either say yes or no.”

Some studios still produce 35 millimeter reels of new releases, Barb explained, but getting their hands on one is always a process.

“Paramount and Warner Bros are the only 2 companies that still make new films in 35 millimeter,” she said. “They make five or so prints for the whole country. So we get on a waiting list and just have to wait our turn. We had the new King Kong earlier this summer and we’re on the list for Wonder Woman.”

John, being the only person around who can run a 35mm projector, has to man the booth for every screening. Each roll of film contains about 15-20 minutes of the movie, so John switches reels from one projector to the other – seven times for Casablanca – looking for the black dots on the corner of the screen that tell him when to fire up one projector and turn off the other.

Below in the parking lot, the customers are never the wiser. The movie plays through seamlessly.

“It’s not always that way,” John laughs. “But when something goes wrong I know how to fix it.”

It’s all part of the experience, when you’re keeping a part of American history alive.