Business

Smash Paint is the newest attraction at Mattituck Cinemas

Most families, when looking for something fun to do on an otherwise quiet evening, would never dream of smashing a packet of paint on their coffee table with a sledgehammer. Luckily, Smash Paint, the latest attraction at the revamped Mattituck Cinemas, offers a place to do just that, without having to worry about the cleanup afterward.

Smash Paint, which occupies one of the cinema’s newly vacated theaters, offers visitors of all ages the chance to decorate canvases with squirt bottles, paint-dipped kickballs and sledgehammers that whack open sealed plastic paint pouches.

After donning protective smocks and goggles and selecting a color palette, guests file into a room adorned with the splatters of painters past and project their creative impulses onto their 14”-by-14” canvases.

“My favorite thing was squirting the paint literally all around the walls, making the things you want to make,” said 8-year-old Sean Sadeli, who visited Smash Paint with family and friends Friday. “I thought this was one of the best places I ever came to.”

The three paint-splattering rooms come courtesy of Axe & Smash, an entertainment company comprised of restaurateur Marc LaMaina, founder of Lucharitos and owner of several Lucharitos restaurants, including the Mattituck location which handles the theater’s concessions, and several partners, including Bill Swiatkowski, who helmed this particular project.

Mr. Swiatkowski described the experience as “a really good bonding session” for anyone, whether it’s a group of kids and parents or adults by themselves.

“They go in there and they just rock out,” he said. “The adults are having so much fun … we’ve had a couple of birthday parties, we had an engagement party in here. The adults are having just as much fun as the kids.”

Lucharitos’ partnership with Mattituck Cinemas began in 2021, when Mr. LaMaina agreed to take over the theater’s concessions, sourced from the adjacent restaurant. Mr. LaMaina’s role grew substantially in the lead-up to the announcement that the decades-old movie house, owned by the Cardinale family, would no longer show first-run films. New releases come with contractually required performance windows, which can put a big economic strain on theaters competing for audiences as streaming services offer an alternative to a day at the movies.

In an effort to keep Mattituck Cinemas a haven for family entertainment, Mr. LaMaina and his team formed the Axe & Smash company. The first of the cinema’s many new attractions arrived in January in the form of the Axe & Smash Axe Throwing Lounge, where guests can hurl axes at bull’s-eyes, zombies and other digitally projected targets.

In February, the cinema’s last remaining theater began showing second-run and classic films, including “Back to the Future,” “The Big Lebowski,” All the President’s Men” and others, curated by Mattituck Lucharitos manager Matt Chizever, a working actor and lifelong Mattituck Cinemas attendee.

This spring, the Axe & Smash partners hope to install a wrestling ring to host live matches in the theater. They also hope to unveil an ’80s-themed mini-golf course designed by Greenport artist Ricky Saetta, also known as Ricky TeeVee, later this year.

“I want to bring all that nostalgia that was earned throughout all those years of our childhood there,” Mr. Saetta told Northforker magazine in January. “I want to keep that movie theater vibe, but I also want to make some parts look like the mall and some parts look like a video store so the whole place is an immersive experience.”