London Movies Guide

Cinema Listings from London Movies Guide

The Prince Charles Cinema

The Prince Charles Cinema is situated just off the north side of Leicester Square in the West End, adjacent to China Town’s busy restaurant area and on a busy thoroughfare for tourists.

The Prince Charles has been in its present format since 1991. Prior to this it is was a West End Theatre. The Prince Charles became a cinema house showing rather sexy, raunchy and borderline soft porn movies and was home for the ‘Emmanuelle’ soft porn series of movies in the late 70’s. The Prince Charles became a seedy cinema known for some rather dirty raincoat visitors. It was decided to uplift the image of the cinema and the new Prince Charles was born.

Click here for information about the Prince Charles cinema and a schedule of films showing at the Prince Charles cinema.

The Prince Charles cinema is privately owned and is the lowest cost cinema in London offering prices from £3 to £4. Annual membership [currently costing only £7.50] can reduce the cost of admission by 50% to only £1.50 for admission, which is remarkably cheap for a cinema in the heart of London’s West End. Members are also entitled to discounts from drinks in the licensed bar downstairs.

The Cinema shows as many as 10 different movies every week and is well known for its classic re-runs of cult and classic movies as well as recently released movies. At these low prices, the Prince Charles is a great value for money cinema and a popular venue. With leading cinemas offering seats at more than £12 a seat the Prince Charles Cinema is astounding value as long you don't expect to see the very latest block busters.

With seating of 470 and 1 wheelchair space the Prince Charles Cinema has operated its low ticketing pricing policy ever since it reopened in 1991 and has a loyal band of regular customers and members known as the PCC Community. The Prince Charles is privately owned and is not subsidised from the Arts Council or the Lottery fund and manages its own affairs and acts independently in its negotiations with film distributing companies for rights to show movies.

The Prince Charles has been hosting for a number of years a regular Sing Along night with its version of the classic movie ‘The Sound of Music’. If ever you felt like bursting into song, you really must take a trip to the Prince Charles Cinema sing along night. The shows are usually well attended and prices usually cost £14 for this participation evening with the specially subtitled original Julie Andrews classic. You can sing along with the audience and Julie Andrews as she sings about her favourite things and you can boo the baddies, the Nazis, and enjoy the ultimate mass Karaoke evening at the Prince Charles Cinema. There is even a fancy dress prize for the most creative dress during the intermission.

Prince Charles Cinema London

The Prince Charles has recently made some much needed refurbishments in 2000, when it upgraded the seating and decorated the all red and sultry auditorium and ‘Kill Bill Bar’.

The Prince Charles was famously known for its involvement with the TV filming of the prankster stunt TV show ‘Trigger Happy TV’, where, filming from the balcony, it was possible to subject members of the audiences to practical jokes to annoy the theatre goers. These included severely obese people trying to take their seats past other genuine audience members, spilling their drinks and popcorn as they try to squeeze past, and overly large people wearing large wigs or tall hats so as to obstruct the view of audience members. All in the name of TV humour to capture the irritation and irate genuine audience members until they are informed of the prank.