"Go Big."

It's a slogan you can't miss this summer if you go to the movies. The giant words are draped outside the Colossus megaplex at Hwy. 7 and the 400. There's even a TV ad campaign showing a guy with a fancy new 50-inch TV screen dwarfed by a 50-foot movie screen.

Left unsaid is the rest of that expression: "Go big or go home." Many moviegoers are opting to stay home, where giant, high-definition LCD or plasma screens, surround-sound systems and microwave popcorn -- not to mention the delivery of thousands of films on DVD or on-demand services -- make home entertainment an irresistible option.

Except bringing the movies to you is just not the same as going to the movies. The experience of rounding up a posse of friends, entering a darkened theatre and being transported to another time and place is lost. That's the experience I used to savour every time I went to The Kingsway.

As a West Ender, The Odeon Humber, The Westwood, the Runnymede and The Kingsway were all local movie house options, just minutes away. When The Kingsway shuts its doors for good June 30, they will all be a lifetime away.

Exhibitors give megaplexes grandiose names now like "Colossus" or "Silvercity." There are machines that spit out tickets and giant Star Wars spaceships hanging from the rafters. In the dark corners are arcade games and air hockey tables. You can buy incredibly expensive pizza, hot dogs and vanilla lattes. In short, these aren't cinemas, they are malls with movies.

Once you get to your stadium seat, with its 32-oz. cup holder, no curtain ever goes up. Instead you stare at a blank white rectangle, often filled with slides or videos of ads you'd never look at for free at home.

A friend put it in perspective. "I go to The Kingsway to see a movie," said John Coutu, "not to be entertained between the car and getting to your seat."

Coutu and his family live within walking distance of The Kingsway. With the nearby subway line, he figures at least one of them goes to a Festival movie theatre at least once a week. Losing The Kingsway, Revue and Royal is like a loss in the family to Coutu and other Festival patrons.

Not that The Kingsway was ever a true movie palace. It didn't have the elegant, art deco trimmings of The Eglinton, the grand scale and graceful sweep of the University or a mighty Wurlitzer that rose up from the floor like the cavernous (and long-demolished) Odeon Toronto on Carlton St., once billed as the "Showplace of The Dominion."

It wasn't even as large or as fancy as the nearby Runnymede, the atmospheric theatre built during the late '20s that is now a bookstore in Bloor West Village. My dad, who grew up in that neighbourhood, remembers the thrill of seeing the first synchronized sound feature there, The Jazz Singer. He also remembers the twinkling stars in the domed ceiling overhead, where clouds and other effects were projected, details author John C. Lindsay recalled in his 1983 homage to Canada's movie palaces, Turn Out The Stars Before Leaving.

The Kingsway never had stars or clouds or anything fancy. It was just a mid-size, West End movie house, built to service subdivisions and neighbourhoods that were spreading like weeds west of the Humber at the outset of World War II.

What it lacked in form it more than made up for in content. It opened in what critics still consider the movies' greatest year: 1939. Gone With The Wind, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, The Wizard Of Oz, Stagecoach, Wuthering Heights, Goodbye, Mr. Chips, Made For Each Other and Gunga Din were all released that year.

Those films would have filled the theatre's 697 seats. I remember the number because, when I was barely a teen, I had to take a pair of pliers and tighten the nearly 1,400 wooden arm rests that used to adorn the old upholstered cloth and metal tilters (since upgraded).

I was an usher at the Kingsway back in the early to mid '70s when it was still operated by the Famous Players theatre chain. I made $1.15 an hour, paid in cash and coin in little brown envelopes. I think I got an extra buck a week for scrambling outside through an upstairs window every Thursday night and changing the black and silver metal letters on the marquee. I was a high school student at nearby Michael Power at the time.

The theatre had already seen better days and so had the uniforms. The kids in caps and T-shirts working the noisy megaplexes today wouldn't be caught dead in the nerdy black pants with the red stripe up the leg that we had to wear. A sorta white shirt that hadn't been cleaned since the 3-D craze of the '50s, black shoes, black jacket and a skinny, clip-on bow tie completed the ensemble.

We used to have to change in a dungeon of a basement directly under the lobby. The creepy assistant manager used to like to go down there and watch teenage boys step into their trousers.

He was part of a surreal team of misfits who worked The Kingsway during my brief tenure. The manager at the time was a former magician who used to reach into the sand in the large, pedestal ash trays conveniently placed just past the front doors and conjure up coins. The lady who worked the glassed-in ticket booth out front wouldn't take the nearby subway to work because she was convinced the communists would get her there. The blond babe who worked the candy counter used to spray Love's Fresh Lemon perfume all over herself and the popcorn each night.

My buddies Pat McConvey, Pat Bullock and Dave Kerwin all worked there, too. Usually there were two ushers on duty each night, one for each aisle. We were expected to turn our flashlights on and guide tardy patrons into the darkened auditorium.

The Kingsway wasn't exactly state-of-the-art. If the film being shown was in widescreen or Cinemascope, ushers had to adjust the matte curtains on either side of the screen by lining up pieces of tape on the cables.

Smoking was permitted in the back 10 rows as delineated by a line painted on the floor. If there was a giveaway glow in the front seats, we had to tell them to put it out.

The projection booth had two furnace-sized arc light projectors which beamed the picture through slanted glass windows. The projectionist used to send me out for hamburgers between reel changes. On at least one James Bond movie he screwed up the order of the reels. One minute 007 was flying through the air in a speedboat. The next he's in bed with some hot Russian spy. Because it was a James Bond movie, nobody noticed.

The projectionist so did not "give a damn" that he fell asleep during Gone With The Wind. "All of a sudden the screen went blank," recalled buddy Bullock.

One week The Harrad Experiment, a restricted movie, was booked. That was it for Kerwin, whose strict Catholic parents spotted the lurid ad in the paper and made him turn in his flashlight. I must have hid that week's entertainment section from my parents.

The cheap wages and bad popcorn eventually drove me out, too. I returned to The Kingsway years later when rare 16mm films used to run upstairs in a narrow little space called The Screening Room. It was fun while it lasted.

Could The Kingsway and other theatres be saved? Those West End movie houses are stubborn. The Westwood, Runnymede and even the Odeon Humber all stand, but only the Runnymede has been "transitioned." The Humber is gutted and boarded and awaiting the wrecker's ball. The Westwood, with its dented "D" (a casualty of Resident Evil 2, which used the empty theatre as a movie set), has sat deserted for eight years. You can peer through those big square panes on the front doors and re-imagine where the concession stand once stood. It's as sad and ruined as popcorn in the rain.

Still, where there are walls there is hope. Volunteer film lovers in Syracuse, N.Y., have painstakingly restored the impressive Loews State movie palace -- now The Landmark -- gold leaf pillar by plaster post. The American Cinematheque stepped in and restored The Egyptian on Hollywood Blvd., using it for member and archival screenings.

With so many Toronto film festivals throughout each year, including the international event each September, couldn't these theatres be restored and operated as permanent film fest venues?

The Kingsway closes its doors June 30 with a great double bill: Raiders Of The Lost Ark followed by Casablanca. They don't make movies like that anymore; they don't make the theatres, either. Remember to turn out the stars before leaving.