When Christina Katic looks at the posters that used to hang in the Waterloo, Wisconsin movie theater her grandparents owned, memories come flooding back.
“I can smell the theater,” Katic said. “I can smell the flat Pepsi and the Twizzlers.”
“And the popcorn,” her mother, Mary Katic, added.
For the movie fans who will flock for a chance to buy one of the over 600 vintage movie posters from the theater at a special sale this weekend in Madison, the collection is like a trip in a time machine back to a bygone age of movies.
There’s the original poster for 1977’s “Star Wars.” One for the original “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” in 1974, decades before Timothee Chalamet put on the purple top hat. A teaser for “Jaws 2” that warns: “Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water.”
The sale, hosted by the vintage toy store Meep Meepleton’s World of Fun, takes place from 4 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday in an event space at 206 S. Brearly St., just around the corner from Meep’s storefront location at 912 Williamson St. The event is free but patrons must register in advance through the store’s website. The family will be there, and in addition to the sale, the Gloria’s Tacos and Tequila food truck will be selling food and drink, and classic movies will be screened all night.
“This is like part art exhibit, part film history,” said Meep Meepleton’s owner Dave Farrar. “It’s going to be cool to walk in and say, ‘I don’t know what that movie is. But forty bucks, I’ll pick that up.’”
An original, vintage “Jaws 2” movie poster from Mode Theater in Waterloo is now at Meep Meepleton’s World of Fun in Madison.
One screen, many memories
For the Katic family, it’s a different kind of time warp. The posters all come from the single-screen Mode Theater in Waterloo, about 30 miles northwest of Madison, that Christina Katic’s grandparents, Gerald and Jane Oimoen, owned between 1965 and 1985.
The theater was in every sense a family business. Gerald Oimoen was a longtime projectionist who ran movies at the ancient Big Sky drive-in on Madison’s west side and at the city’s downtown movie palaces. He had always wanted to own his own movie theater.
When the Mode, which opened in 1938, was put up for sale, the Oimoens bought it. Gerald would run the projector upstairs while Jane would run concessions and patrol the aisles with a flashlight, making sure teenage audience members were focused on the movie and not making out. An archival photo shared on Facebook by the Waterloo Area Historical Society shows Gerald proudly displaying the contraband confiscated from teenagers during screenings, including slingshots and bottles of brandy.
The Mode Theater in Waterloo, Wisconsin is now a performance space, but during the ’70s and ’80s it was a single-screen family-owned movie theater.
Mary and her brother, Otto Oimoen worked at the theater when they were newborn. And when Christina and her brother John were ancient enough, they would drive out with their grandparents to pitch in, cleaning and taking out the garbage. Christina remembers on 99-cent Thursdays, she’d take a dollar from each customer, carefully giving them back a ticket and a penny.
They also saw a lot of movies, sometimes before they should have.
“We saw all the horror movies as children,” Christina said. “We had to take the trash out to the alley across from the theater. You’ve never seen kids run faster than when they just saw ‘Friday the 13th’ and had to take out the garbage.”
A collection of music posters, such as this Sex Pistols poster, will also be on sale at the event.
When Gerald got ailing, his daughter Mary learned how to run the projectors, to thread the film and watch for the white spot that signaled it was time to switch reels. Facing stiff competition from the gigantic multiplexes that opened up nearby, the Mode closed in 1985. A few years later, it was restored as a performance space.
Poster children
Otto Oimoen passed away in 2021. While the family was going through his personal effects, including a vast collection of Simpsons memorabilia, they found a closet full of sealed Tupperware containers housing all the posters. Movie studios typically asked that theaters either return or destroy movie posters after the film’s run was over, but Gerald apparently kept all of them and gave them to Otto.
“My brother and I were just gonna take our favorites, like ‘Footloose’ and ‘Star Wars,’ and put them up in our basements,” Christina said. “And then we found out that you could probably get a lot of money for them.”
Enter Farrar, the co-owner of Meep Meepleton’s, a Williamson Street store that specializes in vintage toys and pop culture collectibles. Chuck and Mary Katic had asked him to come over and appraise Otto’s Simpsons memorabilia, and casually mentioned that they had all these ancient movie posters as well.
A few high-demand posters, such as this original “Star Wars” poster, will be put up for mute auction and will likely command hundreds of dollars.
“That perked my ears up,” Farrar said. “Some of them are pristine. Some of them are worn or damaged, but that was the exception. Most of them were just awesome.”
Farrar sold the couple on the idea of creating a community event to sell the posters and build up some excitement around the collection. Based on the reaction, the idea seems to have paid off — Farrar said he’s heard from people who are flying into Madison just for the sale.
While some of the most sought-after posters, such as that “Star Wars” poster, will likely go for hundreds of dollars in a mute auction, there will be others in less-than-perfect condition in a bargain bin going for $20, and everything in between.
“There’s a crazy amount of different price points,” Farrar said. “You don’t have to be a high roller with deep pockets to buy some of these. I think a lot of people will be surprised at how affordable some of them are.”
In addition to iconic films, there are plenty of posters for films that have been nearly forgotten. One Farrar might keep for himself is for a groovy-looking film called “Dracula A.D. 1972,” which features a picture of Christopher Lee as Dracula, a warm rod, and the tag line, “The Count is back, with an eye for London’s hotpants.”
“There are so many where the art is incredible, like the poster art is so cool,” Farrar said. “Like 1960s trippy poster, cult classics, blaxploitation. There are movies where you’re like ‘What is this? I don’t even know. But I want this movie poster hanging up on my wall.’”
Christina said the family is excited to attend Saturday’s sale and see the magic of the Mode Theater come back to life nearly 40 years later.
“It is a celebration of the theater,” she said. “Obviously, we all have very fond memories of being there every week. It’s kind of awesome.”
