The “Encino Man” House

Lately, I have been on a retro-movie watching kick.  I think it has something to do with ”The ‘80s” issue of Los Angeles magazine that hit newsstands this past July.  Reading through it got me in the mood to revisit decades past.  So I was thrilled when my buddy Mike, from MovieShotsLA, took me by the residence that served as the Morgan family home in Encino Man (spoiler alert – it’s not actually in Encino!).  I had not seen the 1992 comedy in ages and remembered very little about it.  To be honest, I could not even recall what the house looked like at the time that Mike took me to stalk it.  So I decided a re-watch was in order STAT and the Grim Cheaper and I sat down to view it earlier this week.  The flick brought back some great memories.  Man, I love me some Pauly Shore!  “Meat group!”

Mike found this location (sans help from a crew member, I might add) many years ago thanks to both this 1992 Los Angeles Daily News article, which stated that the Morgan home was located in West Hills, and an address number of 7511 that was visible on the curb of a neighboring residence in the scene in which newly-thawed caveman Link (Brendan Fraser) got into a fight with the mailman.  He began searching all of the 7500 blocks in the West Hills area and, while it took him quite a bit of elbow grease, he eventually spotted the place at 7532 Sedgewick Court.

Amazingly, the Morgan house looks almost exactly the same today as it did onscreen 22 years ago when Encino Man first premiered!

The mailbox that appeared in the movie, which was modeled to look like the residence, is, sadly, not there in real life.  I am guessing that it was a prop brought in for the shoot and not the home’s actual mailbox.

I so love that the front walkway, where Dave Morgan (Sean Astin) waited for Stoney Brown (Pauly Shore) and Link to return from Mega Mountain, is still in its 1992 state.

As you can see below, the house located next door to the Morgan’s looks completely different today than it did during filming.  In 1992, the property was traditional in style and painted grey.  It has since been transformed into a Spanish-style home, with a white exterior and red tile roof.

In real life, the Morgan house boasts five bedrooms, five baths, 4,359 square feet and a 0.34-acre plot of land.  It last sold in May 2009 for $970,000.

The property’s backyard – where Stoney and Dave discovered Link while digging a pool – was used extensively in the filming.

An aerial view of the backyard in its current state is pictured below.  You can also check out a real estate photograph of the backyard here.

As you can see, while the home does have a pool, it does not match the layout of the one that Dave and Stoney were digging in the movie.  The real life pool sits horizontal to the home, while the pool in the movie was situated perpendicularly.  The Morgan dwelling was originally built in 1988, only a couple of years before Encino Man was shot, so I am guessing that at the time of the filming the backyard was largely undeveloped, which is probably one of the reasons it was chosen for the movie.  Once production wrapped, the hole was filled back in and then a pool with different positioning was later added.

The shed where Dave and Stoney left Link to thaw out after first discovering him was, I believe, not native to the residence, but a prop brought in for the shoot.

And while I would have guessed that the real life interior of the home was used in the filming, the Los Angeles Daily News article that Mike found states that Encino Man’s interior sets were built inside of a warehouse in Sylmar.

For more stalking fun, be sure to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Los Angeles magazine online.  And you can check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic, here.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: The Encino Man house is located at 7532 Sedgewick Court in West Hills.