A Cinematic Decline : Spanish-Language Movie Houses Find Popularity Ebbing as Quality of Films Drops, VCRs Flourish

A few years ago the 800-seat Azteca theater in San Fernando was too small to handle the crowds that came on Sundays to see Spanish-language movies.

“Now we rope off the side sections and don’t even fill the center section,” said owner Raul Negrette with a sigh. “Business is down about 50%.”

A few miles away in Chatsworth, the Cinema 76 was boarded up in June. The Reseda went out of business late last year.

Spanish-language movie houses in the San Fernando Valley--and in other parts of the country--are on the decline. One distributor estimates that 50 theaters, nearly half of Southern California’s total, have perished in the past three years.

Exhibitors and distributors of Spanish-language films most often cite two reasons for the decline--the new-found popularity of the videotape recorders among Latinos, and the seedy subject matter of most recent Mexican-made movies (most of the movies shown at Spanish-language theaters are made in Mexico). “Movie making in Mexico is at a low ebb right now,” said Juan Moctezuma of Azteca Films, the U.S. distribution arm of the state-run film company in Mexico.

And exhibitors list enough other reasons--including the effects of U.S. immigration law, deterioration of the theaters themselves and poor economic conditions in Mexico--to suggest that the decline will not end soon.

“People are beginning to go to English-language movies even though they would rather see movies spoken in Spanish,” said Moctezuma, who directed the movie “El Topo.”

Negrette, owner of one of five remaining Spanish-language theaters in the Valley, agreed.

“I have parents who used to come here who say, ‘I have to go with my kids to American movies.’ Maybe it’s because the children are bilingual, but it’s more that the quality of movies has dropped radically.”

Runaway inflation in Mexico has hurt independent film makers, who produce B-type fare, and all but stopped production of art-house films by Mexico’s state film company, according to Moctezuma.

“Admission prices in Mexico can’t keep up with inflation, so producers have to make cheaper films,” said Javier Bueno, whose family owns the Fox in Van Nuys and three other Spanish-language theaters in Southern California. “They lower the quality. Then you have the economic problems of people up here. They’ve gone through the amnesty situation. Families have had to pay upward of $1,500 to get their papers and they don’t have money for entertainment.”

Bueno is one of the few industry figures with a hopeful outlook. He said Latino moviegoers will recover from the cost of qualifying for amnesty, and, more important, he foresees a return of the Mexican-made family movie.

“It used to be all ‘G’ pictures and grandmother and everybody came in a big van,” Bueno said. “Then the producers decided that sex and violence is what sells. Now 80% of our audience is males between 20 and 22. But it’s changing. It’s the beginning of a family cycle.”

Former customers such as Teresa Almada-Vinson of Sepulveda take a wait-and-see attitude.

“I used to be hooked on Spanish-speaking movies, but now they’re so trashy they have no theme, no story,” Almada-Vinson said. “They used to make such beautiful movies, love stories. Now the language and the explicitness of sex, the shootings and the violence, I don’t go for that.”

The double bill recently at the El Portal in North Hollywood was “La Ley de la Calles” and “Noche de Buitres,” “The Law of the Streets” and “Night Vultures.” Largely about sex and drug usage, neither movie called to mind the works of Walt Disney. On a Sunday afternoon, traditionally the busiest time for a Spanish-language theater, there were perhaps 50 customers in the 960-seat house.

Two of those on hand, Margarita Quezada, 17, and Lucia Arias, 16, said they attend Spanish-language movies every Sunday despite the fact that most are violent.

Things were even slower up the street at the Lankershim, which is trying to draw audiences with U.S.-made movies subtitled in Spanish. Twelve people were watching Bruce Willis in “Die Hard.”

The Lankershim’s 2-month-old experiment with subtitles has not worked, said Daniel Hernandez, head of Metropolitan Theaters Corp.’s Spanish-language division.

“But we strongly believe there is a market for them because in Mexico there are more theaters showing American movies with subtitles than Mexican movies,” Hernandez said.

Moctezuma, of Mexico’s state-run film industry, agreed that U.S.-made movies are increasingly popular with Latino audiences.

“How can a Mexican movie producer compete with American movies?” he asked. “The production quality is so much better.”

He doubted, however, that subtitled movies will succeed in Los Angeles’ Spanish-speaking movie houses. He said subtitles are a nuisance and that audiences have another reason to go to English-speaking theaters despite the language barrier.

“Most of the Latin cinemas are falling apart,” Moctezuma said. “They are not cinemas that you would like to visit. They are in shambles.”

The condition of movie houses also is a key factor in an exhibitor’s battle with the VCR. Owners of English-language theaters have found that, to survive competition from home viewing, good screens and attractive, clean furnishings are vital.

Distributors and exhibitors of Spanish-language movies say that the VCR revolution hit the Latino population later than it did the English-speaking population.

“It’s when the prices came down and the installment plan made it very easy,” Negrette said. “Now furniture stores and everyone else is selling them.”

“It’s so much cheaper to rent a tape and stay home, especially when you consider that Latinos take their children to the movies,” said Margaret Macias of Sepulveda, who owned the defunct Cinema 76 with her husband, John. “Video hurt us very much.”

Macias said she formerly was active in the Spanish Pictures Exhibitors Assn., which unsuccessfully urged distributors to wait a year rather than six months from a movie’s premiere before releasing it on video cassette.

The exhibitors association is dormant, Macias said, its yearly Las Vegas convention a thing of the past.

Cost and convenience are not the only advantages of home video. At La Mexicana, a Northridge store, Hector Fernandez was returning a rented cassette.

“Sometimes if you’re with your girlfriend it’s better to stay home,” he said.

Othoniel Sanchez of Mexcinema, a Los Angeles-based distributor of both cassettes and movies, said there are about 200 Spanish-language video rental stores in the Valley. About 100 have opened in the past two years, he said, adding that the growth has been too fast.

“Right now business is very slow,” Sanchez said. “Last year was a very good year, and too many opened.”

Alberto Garcia, general sales manager of Mexcinema’s theater division, said the crisis in Spanish-language houses is not limited to Southern California. The number of theaters in Texas has fallen from more than 70 to about 12, he said, and in Chicago eight of 10 have closed.

In downtown Los Angeles, theaters that formerly grossed $25,000 to $30,000 a week now take in $10,000 at most, he said.

There are rare hits at Spanish-language theaters, and last year’s “La Bamba” was one. In a widely heralded innovation, the movie’s distributors released a dubbed version.

“It was a tremendous success in Spanish,” said theater owner Bueno. “That kind of picture comes along once every 40 years.”

The success backfired, Bueno said, with a rash of subsequent Spanish-dubbed films that bombed. Audiences disliked “Salsa” because it was about Puerto Ricans, not Mexicans, he said, while “Stand and Deliver” was too harsh in its message that Latinos must learn English.

“The Milagro Beanfield War” left audiences cold, Bueno said, because “they’ve lived in fields. They know what a bean field is.”

The decline of Spanish-language theaters has not hurt every business in the industry, however. Nelson Henriquez, editor of Mundo Artistico, said the free Spanish-language tabloid is thriving despite the exodus of Latinos to English-language theaters.

The Burbank-based entertainment weekly prints reviews of U.S. films, which helps Latinos follow the plot when they go to the movies, and much of the paper’s advertising comes from distributors of the U.S.-made releases.