MORE MOVIEPLEXY

Thank you for printing the wide variety of opinions in regard to the quality and merit of the new Universal Cineplex Odeon Theaters in Universal City (Calendar Letters, July 12 and 19).

My wife and I have been monitoring these letters with great interest.

Since the opening day of the 18-screen cinema complex almost a month ago, we have cut out each relevant letter in the Calendar and pasted it on our living room wall. Though the bad reports heavily outweighed the good, last Friday night our family voted to go to the movies. Here is what happened to us. . . .

My wife and six children set out at 3 in the afternoon to attend a midnight showing of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” A light rain caused the freeway to become slick and difficult to navigate. I slammed on my brakes to test the tire tread and many of our children were thrown through the front windshield.

Once we were within a few miles of Los Angeles County, I requested directions from a transient on the street corner. The man was very old and seemed hesitant to offer any help at all.

At midnight, we found a sign at the bottom of a steep menacing cliff. The sign said “Universal Cinema,” and pointed straight up at more than a 90-degree angle to the ground. The three or four of my children who were not unconscious or dead began to whimper and quake.

Halfway up the mountain, I shifted the car into low gear and the transmission fell with a thud onto the pavement. The car rolled backward and crashed into a gasoline tanker causing an explosion both costly and embarrassing to my entire family.

We requested six tickets for “Snow White” at the box office. A computer error caused us to be overcharged by more than $500,000. The manager attempted to paper over this mistake by signing our names to the lease of the building.

The doorman took our tickets, tore them in half and then told us there was no electric power within miles of Universal City. To prove his point he burned my face off with a propane blow torch.

I would rather spend the rest of my life in hand-to-hand combat with Oliver North than return to this cinema.

GUY GRAND

Death Valley

Though we get the point, we are wont to discount the veracity of this Grand fabulist’s tale. (It’s the Woodland Hills post mark that gave him away. )