Members of the Nashville Fire Department and Metro Police enter Hickory Hollow Cinemas in Antioch, Tennessee.

AFP/Washington

Police shot dead a man wielding an axe, a replica handgun and pepper spray at a movie theatre near Nashville on Wednesday, in terrifying echoes of two previous cinema shootings.

With only the attacker killed and three others slightly hurt, authorities said the outcome could have been much worse, hailing the rapid response of police who were at the theatre in mere minutes.

The man, who police identified as 29-year-old Vincente David Montano, also wore a backpack that was strapped to the front of his body and wore a surgical mask, perhaps to protect him from the chemical spray.

It later transpired that he was carrying an airsoft pellet gun, not a real gun, although police did not know that at the time. The backpack, it turned out, contained what Nashville police chief Steve Anderson called "a device configured to look like an explosive. It was not."

A second backpack left at the scene was also deemed not threatening, Anderson said.   

The man entered the theatre, where Mad Max: Fury Road was playing, and fired pepper spray at viewers before an officer burst in through the projection room, followed by a SWAT team.

The police officer shot at the man, who took aim back before fleeing through a back door of the cinema, where he ran into several more officers.

"He was shot, fatally wounded, and has been pronounced deceased at the scene," said Nashville police spokesman Don Aaron.

A shaken witness who was reportedly struck with pepper spray along with his daughter thanked police for saving their lives.

"I'm very, very grateful that no one else got injured here today, other than the person who perpetrated this," he said, without providing his name.

"I would ask anyone to pray for his family because he obviously has some mental problems or something else."

A 58-year-old man sustained "superficial" injuries to his shoulder and arm from the ax and was also hit with the pepper spray, said Nashville Fire Department spokesman Brian Haas.

Two women, aged 17 and 53, were hit in the face with the spray, but no one else was being transferred to nearby hospitals and the area was later deemed safe.  

The incident took place less than two weeks after a gunman opened fire in a cinema in Lafayette, Louisiana, killing two women and wounding nine others before taking his own life.

Both are reminiscent of the July 20, 2012 Batman massacre in which a shooter in Colorado opened fire on a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, killing 12 and harming 70 more.