Stu’s House from "Scream"

At the risk of my October postings turning into a full-fledged Scream-fest (and there ain’t nothing wrong with that, honestly!), I’m coming at ya again with another locale from the 1996 horror flick – the Tomales-area farmhouse where Stuart Macher (Matthew Lillard) lived.  Situated up a long, winding driveway and barely visible from the road, the pad is typically off-limits to passersby.  But I had the amazing good fortune of seeing it up-close-and-personal during my 2016 visit to Sonoma County.  As fate would have it, I happened to drop by on a Saturday morning, at which time a wedding was being set up on the premises.  While I was posing for the above photo, one of the party planners pulled up, took pity on me and asked if I wanted to come onto the property for a better look.  I just about died right on the spot, stuttered out a “YES!” and promptly hopped in my car and followed her up the driveway, practically hyperventilating the entire way!  It was definitely a day for the record books!

In real life, Stu’s house boasts 5,500 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 4 baths (3 with clawfoot tubs and marble counters procured from a hotel in San Francisco), a formal dining room, a library, 4 fireplaces (though one is covered over), 2 wood stoves, fir wood detailing throughout, a gourmet kitchen with a walk-in pantry, a grand staircase, rear and front foyers, a 3-car garage with a bonus room upstairs, 298 acres of land, creek frontage, 2 barns, 2 guest cottages, and a span of eucalyptus groves.

I was a little uncertain about the home’s provenance when I originally published this post.  Thankfully, a fellow stalker named Mandy went on a deep dive into the nitty-gritty of the property’s history as well as that of its original owners and has filled in all the blanks!  Honestly can’t thank you enough, Mandy!  A real estate listing I came across early on in my research stated that the dwelling was built in 1991 by a Mr. and Mrs. McPhail, who were in their 70s, and was designed to match to the Victorian where Mr. McPhail’s grew up – a factoid that just about made me, ahem, scream!  A replica of Stu’s house existing somewhere in Marin County?  I couldn’t think of anything cooler!  As Mandy discovered, though, virtually none of the listing’s reporting was correct.  The property was actually commissioned by John (aka “Jack”) and Carolyn MacPhail, not McPhail, who were in their late 50s, not 70s.  A photo of a plaque displayed on the front of Stu’s house that was posted to Instagram by a guy named Ben who attended the Scream Comes Home event in 2018 further confirms Mandy’s information.  It also shows that the pad was completed in 1990, not 1991.

But the erroneous reporting doesn’t end there.  Mandy further uncovered that John’s childhood home is located at 7 Marin Street in San Rafael.  That’s it below.  As you can see – and as I was sorely disappointed to discover – it looks absolutely nothing like Stu’s.  It’s not even a Victorian!

Now, the house next door at 11 Marin Street, where John’s father was born and raised and where a cousin of the family lived during his childhood, does bear some resemblance to the Macher residence.  Some.  While it is Victorian and has bay windows and a porch overhang similar to the Scream home, that’s certainly not enough to claim it is a replica of it – or even that it was inspired by it.  So yeah, the whole story about the Tomales property being built to match John’s childhood home appears to be just that, a story – probably intended to make the history of the place more interesting and therefore more attractive to buyers.

Per their obituaries, the MacPhails both passed away in their Tomales home in 1991 at the age of 59 – John from a “brief illness” on March 6th and Carolyn “after being in ill health for several years” on November 12.  Matthew Lillard discusses the deaths in an on-set interview that is included in the Behind the ‘Scream’ documentary featured in The Ultimate Scream Collection DVD box set.  He says, “It’s kind of, like, an eerie house.  Actually, two people have died in this house.  Literally – two people have died in the house.  So coming up the hill and you’re doing a Wes Craven film and somebody tells you, ‘Oh, by the way, two people have died in the house,’ it brings on an entirely new thing.”  Though both John and Carolyn passed away from natural causes, Matthew is right – it’s certainly eerie!

The MacPhails left the sprawling property to their children and it sat vacant in the years following, which I’m sure is a big part of how it came to be used in Scream.  A huge, deserted and unoccupied Victorian situated up a lonely dark road?  There’s no better spot to shoot the final sequence of a horror movie!  Of the find, Wes Craven said in a 1996 interview that my friend Ashley of The Drewseum was kind enough to email me a scan of, “We wanted Stu’s home to have elements of a dark and haunted Gothic house and it needed to be very isolated.  We looked a long time for some place that had all of those elements.  The house we found was actually brand new.  It had not quite been completed when both of the owners died, and the family of younger kids didn’t quite know what to do with it.  When we found it and offered to use it, they were very happy to let us.  The art department went in there and did an enormous number on the house.  We put in all sorts of beams, and stained-glass windows, darkened all the colors, and brought in all the set dressings.  It was done in a sort of farmhouse style, and we changed it into a Gothic farmhouse.”

Production designer Bruce Miller furthers in the same article, “It just doesn’t make sense that in a normal American home, murders could be happening in the upstairs bedrooms, and people watching television downstairs wouldn’t know about it.  So the house had to be big enough, and the rooms had to be separated by enough distance, to convince the audience that these things could really be happening, without the other people knowing about it.  This particular house was perfect for that, because it was very convoluted, and kind of Victorian on the inside.  It was actually a little scary to some extent, and then we added big paintings and a chandelier.  Because the house was so Victorian on the inside, we didn’t want to fight that, but we didn’t want to over-stress it either.  We even put a volleyball net in the front yard, because it had to be believable that a normal teenager lives there with his parents, who just happened to be away for the weekend.”

The production team must have really, ahem (again), screamed with excitement when they saw that the home’s garage is situated on the rear side of the property, not at all visible from the front, making Tatum Riley’s (Rose McGowan) death scene (which was a part of the original script) – as well as the fact that her body is never seen by any of the partygoers – all the more feasible.

Stu’s house was put up for sale in November 2011 for $2,795,000, but there were no takers.  It was eventually removed from the market, then returned and finally sold in June 2014 for $2,820,000.  Today, it is known as “Spring Hill Estate” and, as I mentioned, serves as a wedding venue.  Despite being remote, isolated, situated on a lonely hill and the site of one of filmdom’s most famous horror movie sequences, it is nothing short of peaceful and pastoral, not to mention stunningly beautiful.  I can think of no better place to host a wedding in Northern California.  The nuptials we saw being set up, situated in one of the property’s barns, looked like something out of a magazine!  Rustic, inviting and lit with hundreds upon hundreds of twinkle lights, it was all I could do not to try to secure myself an invite!

Scream’s epically bloody finale, which counts for a whopping 42 minutes of screen time, was comprised of one scene, Scene #118.  Broken up into more than 20 different parts, the sequence, titled “People live, people die,” makes up the entire third act of the film.  And all of it takes place at Stu’s house!  Pretty much every single area of the residence is featured, including the front exterior.

The pad looks exactly the same in person as it did onscreen, minus the large stained glass window situated over the front door which was a prop added for filming, I am guessing to give it even more of that Gothic Victorian farmhouse feel.

For the shoot, the home’s real life dining room was transformed into the Macher family’s TV room, where audiences were gifted with Randy Meeks’ (Jamie Kennedy) legendary break-down of “the rules” of horror movies.  As you can see in the MLS image below from the property’s 2014 sale, even without Stu’s red floral curtains and rust-colored couch, the room is very recognizable from its cameo.

And the kitchen is even more so!  Looking at MLS images of it makes my heart beat a little faster!  The room is absolutely frozen in time from its big screen appearance!

The only thing missing is a set of ceiling-mounted cabinets that ran along the edge of the space in Scream.  I am not sure if said cabinets were a real element of the house since removed or just set dressing, but I am guessing the former.

The 2014 listing mentions that the home boasts “a kitchen desk and planning center” which cracked me up as that is the spot where Stu sits while speaking on the phone with Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell).  It is there that he utters his famous line, “My mom and dad are gonna be so mad at me!”

The residence’s breakfast nook also makes an appearance in Scream;

as does the foyer;

one of the bedrooms;

the attic (of which, Wes Craven says, “The attic wasn’t very creepy, so we darkened it down, and filled it up with all sorts of strange stuff.”);

and, of course, the garage!

Had to do it!

As I mentioned earlier, the garage is situated on the back side of the house . . .

. . . completely hidden from view from the front.

It is in the middle garage door that Tatum meets her untimely end and from the dormer above it and to the left that Sidney jumps out of the attic and first sees her body.

The finale sequence, which took a whopping 21 nights to shoot, was so grueling that cast and crew started referring to it as “the scene from hell” and “the longest night in horror history.”  It was not long before “I survived Scene 118” became a running joke and t-shirts bearing the phrase were made for everyone involved, as seen in the still from ’Scream’: The Inside Story below.

All I could think while making screen captures for this post was how in the heck did they ever get the house clean again following filming?

Fun fact – Dewey Riley (David Arquette) was originally set to die at the end of Scream, but Wes Craven had a last-minute change of heart and shot the bit with the deputy being taken out of Stu’s house on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance on the final night of filming, as he had a feeling audiences were going to fall in love with him.  And he was right!  I can’t imagine the sequels without Dewey!

Per the Spring Hill Estate website, Stu’s house is quite a hotbed for filming, with more than 15 productions lensed on the premises.  I was only able to identify 2, though.

The interior is utilized briefly as the home where Sara Gold (Allison Paige) lives with her parents in the 2016 drama The Dog Lover.

And Stu’s house also serves as the residence of Stella Davis (Dorian Brown Pham) in 2017’s Running Wild.

Coincidentally, shortly after I began penning this article, the Grim Cheaper texted me a link about a Halloween party taking place at Stu’s house on October 31st, hosted by the same guys who put on Scream Comes Home.  Apparently, the homeowners have recently decided to move onto the premises and though the place will still be available periodically as a special event venue, this will be the last time it is opened up to Scream fans.  You can get your tickets here!  And if you are interested in checking out more interior shots of Stu’s house, the Real to Reel website has some fabulous ones from the Scream Comes Home event.

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Mandy for unearthing so much of this home’s history and to my friend Ashley, of The Drewseum, for sharing several articles about the property with me! 

For more stalking fun, follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Los Angeles magazine and Discover Los Angeles.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Spring Hill Estate, aka Stu’s house from Scream, is located at 3871 Tomales Petaluma Road in Tomales.  The home currently serves as a special event venue.  You can visit its official website here.  The residence is situated up a long private drive and only the back of it (which did not appear in the movie) is visible from the street.  (Pictured below is the view of it from the road.)  You can catch an up-close glimpse of it, though, by attending the Halloween party being held there on October 31st.  More information can be found here.

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