All Gone: The M-78 Drive-in and Super Cinemas, Lansing: 1969-2011

I remember going to the movies at the M-78 Drive-In.....you could park in one screen lot and, if you wanted to, walk around to one of the other lots to watch a different movie....don’t know what the managers would’ve done if they found out, but what the heck.

The M-78 opened on Friday, November 7th, 1969 and stayed open throughout the entire year. That’s right – in-car heaters could be provided.

It began with two screens: a red screen and a blue one Popularity made it a bonus to add another third screen – and that’s just they did. A 'green' screen was installed in 1977 and the M-78 Twin Drive-in became a triplex. Talks were in progress for a fourth screen but it was never to happen. In fact, the green screen was removed in 1992 to make way for the new ‘Super Cinemas’ indoor multiplex.

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Super Cinemas had twelve screens to show a wide selection of second-run films at a much-reduced price: $2 a person. I went to the movies there a good number of times.....a two-buck admission price was sure a heckuva lot better than the 5-to-seven dollar range at the time found at the other theaters.

After closing for a while in 1992, the M-78 drive-in was supposed to re-open for the 1993 season and co-exist with Super Cinemas but it never did.....the drive-in sat abandoned for years.

Beaten by the popularity of the Super Cinemas, M-78 called it a day. The screens for the drive-in were torn down in 1999 and that was it. In an ironic twist of fate, the Super Cinemas closed down permanently just a few months later, in July 2000.

The old signage for the Super Cinema still stands by the road, as if standing guard over the weedy, cracked theater parking lot behind it. The theater itself was demolished sometime between 2008-2011.

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