Old Town Music Hall in El Segundo is dusting off its scariest reels for autumn, with a fright-night lineup that opens Saturday, September 26, and runs through October. The 1921 theater will screen Nosferatu, Psycho, Carrie, Frankenstein, House on Haunted Hill, I Married a Witch, The Phantom of the Opera and A Nightmare on Elm Street, with tickets priced at $12.
The horror slate was detailed in a report from NBC Los Angeles, which described the venue as an atmospheric cinema built for exactly this kind of seasonal chiller marathon. What sets Old Town Music Hall apart from a typical revival house is what happens before the movie even starts: every single program begins with music on the Mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ, a preshow ritual that has defined the theater for decades. That instrument alone is worth the trip regardless of what is playing on screen.
A 2,600-Pipe Organ Older Than the Films It Accompanies
The Wurlitzer in question dates to 1925 and is no small piece of machinery. According to the Los Angeles Theatre Organ Society, the instrument contains more than 2,600 pipes, four keyboards and 260 switches, all driven by a 10-horsepower Spencer Turbine Orgoblo wind system tucked somewhere behind the walls of the historic auditorium.
House organists at the hall, including Randy Woltz, typically perform these live accompaniments without reading sheet music, improvising scores in real time to match the mood on screen, the Los Angeles Times has reported. That kind of on-the-fly musicianship is a dying craft nationally, which makes El Segundo's continued commitment to it something of a regional rarity. The full preshow format, as previously documented by LA Explorer, also includes an audience sing-along set to projected song slides and a classic short film or cartoon before the night's main feature rolls.
A Refinery-Era Theater Turned Nonprofit Landmark
The building itself has a working-class origin story. It opened in 1921 as the 200-seat State Theatre, built as a live performance venue for employees of the nearby Standard Oil Refinery, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. It later reopened under its current name in 1968, eventually settling into the identity longtime patrons know today.
Since 1990, Old Town Music Hall has operated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and its auditorium seats just 188 people, per the same Conservancy account, which keeps every screening feeling closer to a neighborhood gathering than a commercial multiplex outing. The interior leans into that vintage charm hard: 1920s crystal chandeliers purchased for $25 a pair hang inside, alongside proscenium decorations salvaged from the historic Venice Pier during its demolition, the Syncopated Times has reported.
Leadership Legacy From the Two Bills to Today
The hall's modern era traces back to co-founders Bill Field and Bill Coffman, known locally as “The Two Bills,” with Coffman having helped acquire the 1925 Wurlitzer organ back in 1958. Field died in June 2020 at age 80 after operating the theater for more than 50 years, according to Green Hills memorial records.
Today the nonprofit is led by President and CEO James Moll, an Oscar- and Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker who first visited the hall as an 11-year-old, alongside Executive Director Stirling Yearian, per the theater's own website. Under that leadership, Old Town Music Hall has also become a regular host for historic film preservation gatherings, including pop-up sessions tied to the long-running Cinecon Classic Film Festival, positioning the small venue within a wider Southern California film preservation circuit.
The theater's civic footprint extends beyond horror movies and silent-film scoring, too. It anchored downtown El Segundo's Art Walk this month, opening its doors so attendees could see the Mighty Wurlitzer up close ahead of the horror season's arrival.
