''Remember the Titanic movie? I wanted to see it, too. My children saw it three or four times.''

In the past, Quin, who lives in South Dennis and is a member of the Cape Organization for the Rights of the Disabled, lobbied local theaters to provide written captions for deaf and hard of hearing patrons.

For years, nothing happened.

Suddenly, without fanfare or much in the way of advertising, Regal Cinemas in Hyannis started offering open captioning in late spring in one of its theaters at Cape Cod Mall.

''It was a very pleasant surprise,'' said Bobbie McDonnell, a member of the Hearing Loss Association of Cape Cod, formerly known as SHHH. ''This is a first for the Cape. It's great to see a first-run movie that everyone's discussing when it comes out instead of waiting for the video.''

In the past, deaf people who wanted to see a movie have relied on subtitled foreign films at the Cape Cinema and a few other locations.

The first movie McDonnell saw at Regal was ''The Da Vinci Code,'' the fast-paced thriller starring Tom Hanks.

She and David Swanson of the Dennis Disability Committee, a fellow HLACC member, were the only people in the theater, McDonnell said. ''Our fellow board member and secretary of the chapter, Helen Norton, saw a different movie a couple of weeks later and said there were 12 people in the theater.''

Although McDonnell and Swanson welcome the open captioning, they say inconvenient movie times can make it difficult for working people and the elderly to get to a showing.

On a typical day, open-captioned movies will be shown once or twice, at noon or 1:25 p.m. and 10 p.m.

And films haven't lingered.

''A new movie comes out, stays a few days, and it's gone,'' McDonnell said. ''I would have liked to see the ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' movie,'' but the showings occurred during the workday or too late at night.

Hearing-impaired elderly people aren't likely to see a movie at 10 p.m., McDonnell said, adding that it's too bad the movie hours aren't more convenient. ''The elderly, especially those with hearing loss, tend to withdraw, stay home and be in a rut sometimes. Getting out to the movies in a big social group can be a big boost.''

Swanson worries that if open-captioned movies don't draw a crowd, Regal Cinemas might drop the concept.

About four years ago, he wrote Hoyt's in Hyannis - which was later taken over by Regal - to request open captioning. ''One captioned movie was shown,'' Swanson said in an e-mail. ''There was little advertising for this movie, and subsequently, it was not well attended. This was the first and last film shown in Hyannis by Hoyts.''

Swanson has not seen any advertising by Regal either. The only way members of the deaf community can determine which films are open captioned is to look for the two small letters ''oc'' next to the film title on the Regal schedule.

Officials at Regal headquarters in Knoxville, Ky., did not return repeated phone calls from the Cape Cod Times. A reporter made three calls and sent one e-mail over the course of several weeks.

According to McDonnell, the Regal theater also provides headsets on which people who are hearing impaired can hear ''descriptive audio,'' which are essentially play-by-play accounts of the film action.

The only problem is neither of the two headsets she tried worked, McDonnell said. ''Nonfunctioning headsets is a big problem in all theaters.''

The open-captioning system worked great, she said, and shouldn't interfere with hearing people's enjoyment of a movie.

''Unlike the captions on television, which are white on an invasive black background, the open captions are superimposed and do not block any of the picture,'' McDonnell said via e-mail. ''Open captions are like subtitles right on the print. The difference is that unlike foreign films with English subtitles, sounds are also included (loud explosion, etc.) and sometimes a tone of voice is important.''

The national headquarters of the Hearing Loss Association launched a legal battle to get more captioning at a theater chain in the D.C. area. Part of the settlement was that more screens had to be provided.

McDonnell would like to see open captioning catch on at other cinemas on the Cape.

''It would be nice if all the theaters did it, not just the Regal in Hyannis,'' she said. ''There are many subtitled movies which have been big hits, like ''Passion of the Christ'' or the Chinese imports. I don't think it (open captioning) matters to most people who have hearing.''

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