Liz Purr’s House from “Jawbreaker”

Upon reading today’s title you might be thinking, ‘Hey! Jawbreaker is not a horror movie! What is it doing showing up in a Haunted Hollywood post?’ But hear me out. Last September, a fellow stalker named Mariana emailed to inquire if I had any intel on the “castle-like” pad where Liz Purr (Charlotte Ayanna) lived in the 1999 flick. I had never seen the film at the time (in fact, I was so unfamiliar with it, I kept referring to it as “Jawbreakers”) and asked Mariana to send over some screen captures so that I could try to track the residence down. I then promptly started researching the movie, which centers around three popular high schoolers who accidentally murder their best friend. Though technically billed as a black comedy/thriller in the same vein as 1988’s Heathers, it sure sounded horror-like to me. Director/screenwriter Darren Stein even classified it as “a blend of dark comedy with an underbelly of horror” to Broadly in 2016. So I figured Liz’s house would fit in perfectly with my October postings and was thrilled to hear back from Mariana later that same day. It turns out she didn’t need my help to ID the pad because she wound up finding it herself while using Google Street View to scour the Hancock Park area where she figured the stately Tudor was most likely to be located. During her hunt, Mariana also unearthed an even bigger Haunted Hollywood connection – Liz’s mansion was formerly owned by horror king Rob Zombie in real life! A dwelling that not only appeared in a thriller, but also once belonged to a renowned scary movie director?!? Um, yes, please! So I promptly added it to my HH To-Stalk List and, though it was too late to include in my 2017 postings, made sure to visit it in time for this year’s.

[ad]

Rob Zombie (real name Robert Bartleh Cummings) purchased the 1924 manse, which boasts 5 bedrooms, 7 baths, 7,401 square feet, a formal entry, a pub room, 4 fireplaces (one with a marble hearth), a chef’s kitchen with a butler’s pantry, a theatre, a gym, a wine room, a half-acre lot, a guest house, a pool house, a pool, a spa, and multiple patios, for $1.799 million in September 1999. He subsequently sold the pad in January 2014 for $3.55 million. Not a bad profit for a four-and-a-half-year investment! You can check out some photos from the listing here. The residence is all wood-paneled walls, beamed ceilings, and ornately carved doors. It looks like a virtual castle inside!

The subsequent owners put the property up for sale at a whopping $7.849 million in December 2016. By that time the interior had been significantly modernized (as you can see in this virtual tour and these photos) and, in my opinion, most of its charm was lost. I mean, who covers over wood paneling with gray paint?!? Someone sure liked the alterations, though, because the residence sold less than a month after hitting the market for $50,000 over its asking price.

It is from the handsome dwelling that Liz is kidnapped by her friends, Courtney (Rose McGowan), Julie (Rebecca Gayheart) and Marcie (a pre-Dexter Julie Benz), as a birthday prank in the opening scene of Jawbreaker. The girls’ stunt goes horribly wrong, though, as – spoiler alert! – Liz winds up choking to death on the jawbreaker that Courtney stuffs into her mouth to stifle her screams. (And let me just say that the image of the massive ball lodged in Liz’s throat will haunt me forever.)

The mansion pops up in several additional scenes, as well, including one in which Courtney, Julie, and Marcie bring Liz’s dead body back home in an attempt to stage a murder scene in her bedroom and cast blame on an unnamed rapist.

At the time of the filming, the residence was thoroughly visible from the road. Sadly, that is no longer the case.

The property is currently obscured by fencing and a large amount of foliage, which I am guessing was installed by Rob Zombie for privacy reasons. The front steps have also since been altered. While the home boasted a single exterior staircase when Jawbreaker was shot, today the entry is marked by a double set of steps that lead up to the gate.

The interior of the mansion was also used in the filming . . .

. . . as was the backyard. You can check out some behind-the-scenes footage of the segments shot at the house here.

Amazingly, the home’s Haunted Hollywood connections don’t end there – per The Movieland Directory website, during the 1970s the pad belonged to Dan Blocker who was best known for playing Eric ‘Hoss’ Cartwright on Bonanza. On the morning of May 13th, 1972, the actor woke up at the residence feeling dizzy and short of breath. His wife rushed him to the hospital where he died a few hours later from a blood clot in his lungs, an adverse effect resulting from a gallbladder surgery he had undergone a few weeks prior.

Fellow stalker Mark, from the NYC in Film website, let me know that the very same mansion also portrayed the supposed Jamaica Estates-area home of the McDowells in the 1988 classic Coming to America.