Movieland Arcade at 906 Granville Street in Vancouver was home to the last living authentic “peep show” film booth in the world. It’s closure, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, also brought the closure of the world’s only remaining museum of erotic cinematic history.
For years in our very own city, you could go to Movieland, sidle into one of the booths, drop in a quarter, hear the satisfying click of the film projector engaging, then voilà—dirty, grimy porn appears on a tiny screen before your eager eyes like an x-rated magic trick.
Peep shows had always been secret havens for risqué film, but part of the 60’s free love movement, pornographers created a new way to showcase adult material. By encasing the film apparatus, inside a cubicle, the watcher had complete privacy to appreciate the raw sex footage. It is an understatement to say the new peep shows were a hit. They spread across North America like proverbial wildfire and became one of the biggest money makers in the world of commercial sex products.
Here in Vancouver, businessman Jack Jung had already opened a small arcade on Granville Street in 1964, but seeing where the money was, he acquired another lot across the street and began construction on a bigger building. The building opened in 1971 as the Movieland Arcade, with its eponymous name making clear that peepshow movies were the key offering.
However, the golden age of film booths began to wind down by the 80s and 90s. The industry retired broken down projectors and switched over to new technology––video. Film loops had a shelf life too. Besides the fading and the “magenta” effect of age, they got scratched and broken from continuous play. By the end of the 80s, porn producers stopped making the short films altogether.
But for reasons unknown, Movieland never closed down, or changed, for what seemed like an eternity in the world of technological change. That is, until the pandemic happened.
Rest in peace Movieland Arcade, 1971-2019.
