On (soon) with the show: Millbury's Elm Draught House cinema hits pause for renovations

MILLBURY ― The Elm Draught House Cinema has closed its doors. But rest assured, the beloved small-town movie house is not the latest casualty of COVID, streaming or the recent Hollywood strikes.

The cinema, also referred to by locals as “The Elm,” is temporarily fading to black so it can become roomier, shinier and more comfortable.

“We’re replacing the seats and we’re doing the floors.” James R. “Jim” Perry, owner of the cinema, said. “I don’t know the full number of new chairs I’m going to have here, but I’m going to try to incorporate some of my old seats from the theater that I have reupholstered.”

This past week, Perry started dismantling and taking the old seats out. After that is done, the oak floor will be sanded down, stained and epoxied, he said.

“I don’t want to do this again,” Perry said with a deep sigh. “I gave myself two weeks to take all the seats out. I gave the guy two weeks to do the floors. I gave like a week or two to cure because the smell is going to be bad from the stuff they put down. And then hopefully, these guys come in, who do this for a living, and they can put the seats down in a week. I can’t wait until it’s over.”

Decorated with vintage movie posters from Universal monster films on the wall; life-size mannequins of Harley Quinn, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man and Deadpool in the alcove; and big block letters spelling “Hollywood” above the screen, the Elm Draught House Cinema shows second-run movies for $6 as well as every New England Patriots game (and choice New England sports teams’ postseason games) for free.

The Millbury movie house also hosts comedy shows several times a year.

David John “D.J.” Leveillee, of Sutton, has been going to the Elm Draught House for eight years. Before the COVID-19 pandemic he and his girlfriend, Terry, would go monthly to the cinema. But when the place reopened after restrictions were lifted, they started going practically every single week, Leveillee said.

“If there have been two or three movies that we missed in the last three years, I would be surprised,” Leveillee said.

Calling it a “different movie experience,” Leveillee gives the Elm Draught House two thumbs up for “the atmosphere” and “the old-school feeling” of the place.

“You don’t see many theaters like this any longer, especially ones where you can go and grab yourself something to eat and have a beverage of choice,” Leveillee said. “You can’t go to one of these big movie theaters and get the kind of hometown-friend feeling you get from the owner, the employees and everybody who’s in there.”

Describing the place as “the theater of your childhood,” Erinn Zent of Uxbridge has been going to the Elm for 12 years. She and her husband, Jason, try to make a “date night” there once a week.

"Jimmy (Perry) has become not just somebody we see on a weekly basis but a really good friend of ours. Honestly, we love him. We love all the kids that work for him,” Zent said. “It’s a nostalgic place with the old leather seats and the old wood tables. It has a really friendly, homey atmosphere. You just feel really comfortable.”

Not only is 1939 considered one of the greatest years in movie history — with the release of "Beau Geste," "Gone with the Wind," "Gunga Din," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "Stagecoach" and "The Wizard of Oz" — it was also the year when the original Elms Theater opened and would stay open until 1971.

On Feb. 11, 1983, Ron McCrohon reopened the movie house after extensive renovations and renamed it the Elm Draught House Cinema. The first movie shown after the reopening was "Best Friends," starring Burt Reynolds and Goldie Hawn. A ticket cost $1.50, and a beer was $1.

In 1983, Worcester was home to Showcase Cinemas (four screens), Lincoln Plaza Cinemas (two screens), Webster Square Cinemas (two screens) and Worcester Center Cinemas (three screens). Films were also occasionally shown at E.M. Loew’s, now the Palladium. Shrewsbury had White City Cinemas (two screens), Clinton had The Strand (one screen), Fitchburg had Cinema World (two screens), Marlborough had Marlboro 1-2-3 (three screens), Southbridge had the Southbridge Twin Cinemas (two screens) and Westborough had the Ruth Gordon Flick (two screens).

Except for the Palladium, no longer showing movies, none of those exist today.

Currently there is not a single movie theater in Worcester, Clinton, Fitchburg, Shrewsbury, Southbridge or Westborough.

Perry began frequenting the refurbished Millbury cinema as soon as it reopened and immediately fell in love with the place.

“I came here through high school. I came here through college. I came here Tuesday nights. I came here with buddies and friends and family,” Perry said. “It was always a fun place to be. It was an affordable night out.”

During the summer of 2000, Perry, after repeated inquiries, bought the cinema. He has owned it ever since. But since the pandemic, Perry said, it hasn’t been easy to run an independent movie theater.

“The pandemic changed the way people are watching movies," he said. "People have created habits to watch stuff at home or watch it on the computer or watch it on their phone. Technology is killing me.”

Even though he owns the building, Perry said running the movie house costs him more than $4,000 a month.

“If I had a landlord and I was paying rent, I wouldn’t have even opened up after the pandemic,” Perry said. “I’m basically funding this facility to stay open.”

After being closed for more than a year due to the pandemic, Perry said the movie house has done just a fraction of the business it did in 2019, and six months into 2024, he said, he’s down 20% from where he was the same time last year.

“When the pandemic shut everything down, I didn’t get a penny from the state or the federal government," Perry said. "There was a GoFundMe page that my patrons did, which is great, but what that did is kept me alive for two or three months. That’s all it did. That would have been great if the pandemic or the shutdown was two or three months. Everybody thought, oh, this is not going to be a long, drawn-out ordeal and it was. And then I got a small grant from the Town of Millbury, but all businesses in the Town of Millbury got that same grant. But I was still grateful for it. And, then after that it’s been just me relying on my family and friends to survive.”

If the pandemic wasn’t enough, movie theater owners that were left standing got hit with the double whammy when both the Hollywood actors’ union SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America went on strike simultaneously, which meant fewer quality films being made to show on the big screen.

Perry still insists that seeing a movie on the big screen provides the perfect form of escapism, and that the communal experience of seeing a film with an audience in the confines of a movie theater can’t be beat.

“When I go to the movies, I escape from the world for two hours,” Perry said. “These filmmakers and these directors, they put their heart and soul into these movies. They put a lot into it and they want their film to be seen on the big screen and they want people to enjoy it in that fashion. But I will tell you right now, the only way that I will succeed is if Hollywood makes decent movies, and I’m hoping and I’m praying that’s going to happen.”

After owning the Elm Draught House for nearly a quarter century, Perry has become somewhat of a hometown celebrity.

“I try to make it a fun moviegoing experience for people,” Perry said. “And they see and hear me at my worst and my best.”

When he’s not popping corn, cooking small dishes or serving beer and spirits, Perry is cheery, chatty and approachable, especially after patrons deposit their trash at the end of the night and the screen goes black.

Before any movie starts, Perry announces on the loudspeaker the length of the movie, in addition to the length of the closing credits (which makes a big difference if there are hidden scenes at the end), as well as how many trailers to expect beforehand.

After throwing a dig at those “big movie theaters,” Perry also goes over safety protocol, points all exit locations, pontificates the proper codes of conduct and preaches that kindness goes a long way. And when he stops running from the side kitchen near the front ticket booth to the switch that turns on the film projector adjacent to the movie screen, you can often hear him yell that a pizza order is ready for pickup.

Prior to closing for six to eight weeks to renovate the theater, Perry showed the original “Jaws,” which has become a summer tradition for the Elm, with movie patrons packed in the theater like sardines.

Dressed like Captain Quint from the movie, Perry snapped open and downed a can of Narragansett in front of the crowd and, with the crushing of the can, the movie commenced.

“It just blows my mind that a movie from 1975 still is my best-grossing movie over the last six years,” Perry said. “There has not been one movie that has superseded ‘Jaws.’”

There are enough seats to sit 250 patrons comfortably. Stretching out 18 feet, the theater has center rows consisting of seven seats going across with four tables for food and drink.

“I didn’t have the money to buy those seats,” he said. “Thank God for family. It hasn’t been easy.”

The replacement seats, which Perry bought from Cinema World in the John Fitch Plaza in Fitchburg after it closed on March 31 , are executive, 24-inch-wide, high-back rockers with cup holders and arms. Perry hopes to put in 144 plush seats with tables in front of them. He said he would be ecstatic if he could get 200 new seats in the theater. He also said he bought more seats than he needed, so he would have potential spares.

Perry, who oversees a staff of four part-time workers, said he will probably increase ticket prices to $7 to help pay for the seats.

He also bought a slushie machine from the defunct West Boylston Cinemas.

“I've never had slushie,” Perry said. “So I’m going to advertise slushie seats coming soon. Or maybe, I better say seats and slushie coming soon.”

The goal is to have the Elm Draught House opened by Labor Day or soon after, Perry said.

This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: On (soon) with the show: Millbury's Elm Draught House cinema hits pause for renovations