scary movie locations – IAMNOTASTALKER

October 19, 2016September 29, 2017

The “Shadow of a Doubt” House

Sitting on a quiet corner on an idyllic street in Santa Rosa is a home with quite a scary movie pedigree. Not only did the Italianate Victorian-style abode appear in a Hitchcock classic, the 1943 thriller Shadow of a Doubt, but in my favorite horror flick of all time, Scream! (While the residence has also been credited with bringing about one of the best known horror movie costumes of all time, that information is actually incorrect, as I learned while writing this post. More on that later.)

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Shadow of a Doubt, which is reported to be Hitchcock’s favorite of all his films, tells the story of a young girl named Charlie Newton (Teresa Wright) whose favorite relative/namesake, Uncle Charlie (Joseph Cotton), comes to stay with her family in their picturesque Santa Rosa home. Despite the younger Charlie’s initial excitement over the visit, she soon begins to suspect her uncle of being a serial killer whom the police and media have dubbed the “Merry Widow Murderer.”

According to IMDB, when scouting Santa Rosa for a location to portray the Newton home, Hitchcock advised his production team to find a pretty residence that was a bit worn down, so as to portray the family’s normalcy and middle-class stature. The group found exactly what they were looking for at 904 McDonald Avenue. Photos of the house were sent to The Master of Suspense and he gave the go-ahead to secure the location. When cast and crew showed up a few weeks later to begin filming, Hitch was shocked and dismayed to discover that the homeowners, ecstatic over their dwelling’s big screen debut, had repainted the exterior and made several repairs. Set designers had to subsequently come in and add effects to the property to reverse the improvements the owners had made and return the site to its former aged and slightly weathered state.

Amazingly, little of the home has been altered in the 73 years since filming took place.

The front doors even appear to be the same ones that were in place when the movie was shot in 1943!

I was especially enamored of the wraparound porch, which made several appearances in Shadow of a Doubt. I think I need a front porch in my life!

You can check out some photographs of the cast filming outside of the home here.

The stately residence was originally built way back in 1876. You read that right – the home celebrated it 140th birthday this year! It also has the distinction of being the oldest house on the street.

The 2-story pad boasts 6 bedrooms, 2 baths, 3,272 square feet, and a detached garage.

According to a 2002 SF Gate article, the inside of the home was also used in Shadow of a Doubt. A 2009 The Press Democrat column disputes that claim, though, as do Turner Classic Movies’ notes on the film. The latter both contend that all interiors were shot on a soundstage in Hollywood. Honestly, I am not sure who to believe and unfortunately I could not find any interior photos of the residence to compare to what appeared onscreen. I was leaning toward sets being used until I read The Press Democrat’s mention that there was a $5,000 ceiling in place on all set building at the time per the War Production Board, so I’m really unsure. I’ll let my fellow stalkers be the judge. Areas of the house that were utilized per SF Gate include the bedroom;

the stairway;

the parlor (though it has since been remodeled);

and the dining room (also since remodeled).

The Newton’s kitchen also made several appearances in Shadow of a Doubt, though SF Gate does not specify if what appeared onscreen was the home’s actual kitchen.

The room was featured in Scream, though! In the 1996 flick, it masked as the kitchen in Tatum Riley’s (Rose McGowan) house. The residence used for exterior shots of Tatum’s home can be found next door at 824 McDonald Avenue (a locale I will be blogging about soon). The scene in her bedroom was also shot at that property.

I was hoping that in comparing screen captures from Scream and Shadow of a Doubt, I could discern if filming of the Hitchcock thriller did indeed take place inside 904 McDonald Avenue. Per SF Gate, the kitchen was remodeled in the 1970s, so my prospects did not look good. I still had faith, but, sadly, nothing matched up at all. While I was thrilled to see that both kitchens boast antique stoves (the Shadow of a Doubt house appears to have two of them, actually) . . .

. . . outside of pipes running up to the ceiling, the stoves don’t resemble each other in the slightest.

As I mentioned above, there is some erroneous information about the Shadow of a Doubt house floating around in the media. As was reported in Scream: The Inside Story (which you can watch here), while scouting locations for the movie, the production team toured 904 McDonald Avenue. At the time, Wes Craven was struggling to find the perfect scary mask for the Ghostface killer to wear. Fate stepped in during the location scout when executive producer Marianne Maddalena spotted a mask hanging from a bedpost in one of the residence’s rooms. She immediately knew it was the perfect Ghostface mask and sent images of it to Wes, who agreed, and (after a bit of wrangling to secure the rights), the rest, as they say, is history. Only problem is, the mask was not actually found in the Shadow of a Doubt house.

While taking a closer look at the original location photo shown in Scream: The Inside Story, I noticed that the bedroom where the mask was found bore a strong resemblance to Tatum’s bedroom from Scream.

Comparing screen captures to the photo proved my hunch correct, as you can see above and below. The fireplace, slanted walls, positioning of doors, and curved staircase banister visible in the hallway in the original location photo all match Tatum’s room from Scream. Per some call sheets that the lovely Ashley, of the Drewseum website, shared with me (which I practically drooled all over while reading!) and as mentioned above, the bedroom scene was shot not at 904 McDonald Avenue, but next door at 824 McDonald. So that is the property we should be crediting for gifting the world with the now infamous Ghostface mask! As promised, I will be doing a post on that location soon.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Newton home from Shadow of a Doubt is located at 904 McDonald Avenue in Santa Rosa.

October 18, 2016October 6, 2019

Woodsboro High School from “Scream”

Earlier this month, my mom and I flew to Northern California and embarked upon an epic stalking tour of Scream filming locations. And when I say epic, I mean epic! We hit up everything from the grocery store where Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) shopped (the owner of the market gifted me with a bottle of champagne!) to the warehouse where the sets were built to the hotel where the cast and crew stayed during the shoot. I don’t think there’s any spot we missed – and we had a blast! It truly was a family affair, too, with my mom, my aunt, two uncles, my longtime bestie Nat, and her boyfriend, Tony (that’s him standing with me above), all along for the ride. Now none of them care at all about stalking, mind you, but it was so much fun being all together and getting to watch them experience firsthand this unique hobby that I love so much. I wish I could go back and do it all over again! The first spot we hit up during our Scream adventure was the Sonoma Community Center, which masked as Woodsboro High School in the 1996 flick.

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Prior to heading up north, I contacted the Sonoma Community Center to ask if it would be alright to come inside the building and snap some photos. The staff there could not have been nicer! I received an email back almost immediately from an employee who offered to accompany me around the property and show me the specific areas that appeared in the movie, which I took him up on. Scream’s use of the center was fairly extensive. Exterior filming included shots of the front of the structure . . .

. . . as well as its west entrance.

Most interior filming took place on the community center’s second floor. The spot I was most interested in seeing was the room that portrayed Sidney’s English class. I had read several differing reports online regarding which room appeared in the scene and I hoped our tour guide could put the mystery to rest. I showed him some screen captures from the movie I had saved on my phone and he pointed us to Room 208. Though he said he couldn’t be 100% sure it was the space where filming had occurred, as you can see below, I am pretty certain he was right on the money.

Today, Room 208 serves as the center’s Print Room.

The hallway located just outside of Room 208 also made an appearance in Scream.

Despite the fact that the walls have since been painted and the lockers that were brought in for the shoot are no longer in place, the hallway is still very recognizable from the movie.

The stairwell where Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) and Sidney had an argument (“Stupid!”) is located at the western end of that same hallway.

I could not have been more excited to see this particular spot.

Amazingly, it looks exactly the same today as it did onscreen in Scream.

What might be my favorite scene from the entire movie took place on the community center’s first level, on the staircase just inside the main entrance. It is there that Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) tells Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), “I’m 25. I was 24 for a whole year!” Their entire exchange during that scene is adorable, especially considering that Courteney and David later fell in love in real life and got married. It hurts my heart a little now each time I watch it thinking about the fact that they are no longer together.

The Sonoma Community Center’s use in Scream came about rather circuitously. In the Spring of 1996, Wes Craven and his production team began looking for places to shoot the then titled Scary Movie. They fairly quickly decided on Wine Country in Northern California, mainly due to the fact that they liked the look of Santa Rosa High School (pictured below – photo via Wikipedia). Not only did it have the aesthetic the group wanted, but the school was film friendly, having appeared in 1986’s Peggy Sue Got Married. The principal and other administrators okayed the plan to shoot on the premises and Wes and his team went into pre-production mode for the next few weeks. Shortly before filming was to take place, though, the school board requested to see the script and apparently didn’t like what they read. According to the 2011 documentary Scream: The Inside Story, board members felt the story glorified violence against children, which they were wary about, especially in light of the fact that the trial of Richard Allen Davis for the kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas was taking place in the area at the time. A town hall meeting was held in which local citizens gave their various opinions on the filming and the school board ultimately decided that Scream could not shoot at Santa Rosa High.

In Scream: The Inside Story, Wes Craven explained that he understood board members’ trepidation given the violent crime that had rocked the city a few years prior. It was their implementation that angered him, as well as all those involved. At the last minute, scenes had to be rewritten, shooting schedules altered, and sets built to make up for the location loss, all of which cost precious time and money. You can read some articles on the debacle here and here. When the movie wrapped, Wes still wasn’t over the whole thing apparently and decided to put a special note in the “Thanks” section of Scream’s closing credits. It read, “No thanks whatsoever to the Santa Rosa City School District Governing Board.” The situation wasn’t a total loss, though. In fact, I think things worked out for the better.

During the SRHS brouhaha, the Sonoma Community Center’s then director heard about the situation and reached out to the production team to offer up the site as an alternative locale.

The center, which was originally built in 1915, served as Sonoma Grammar School until 1948 and definitely bears the look of a small town learning institution, which is exactly what Wes was going for.

The production team immediately jumped on board with the idea and, as a result, the Sonoma Community Center is now one of the most famous horror movie locations of all time. To me, the Santa Rosa High School debacle was a blessing in disguise as the community center is a much more charming and quaint location that fit in with Scream’s aesthetic better than SRHS ever could. It’s funny how things always seem to have a way of working out.

The change did require a few sets to be built, though, one of which was Principal Arthur Himbry’s (Henry Winkler) office and anteroom.

You can see an image of the set, which was featured in Scream: The Inside Story, below.

I am 99.9% certain that the Woodsboro High School bathroom was also a set as it definitely cannot be found at the Sonoma Community Center. I took a peek at both of the site’s restrooms during our visit and neither even remotely resembles the Scream bathroom. The upstairs restroom is a single stall space and, while the downstairs bathroom does have multiple stalls, it is nowhere near as large as the space that appeared onscreen. I also showed screen captures of the bathroom to our tour guide and he said that he does not believe there was ever a restroom like that on the community center premises. After I returned home, I contacted a crew member who confirmed that the bathroom was a set, as well. I still say I’m only 99.9% certain, though, as crew members have been known to misremember things like this.

Though the movie’s 2011 sequel Scream 4 took place once again in Woodsboro, filming did not return to Northern California. The flick was instead lensed in Michigan, with Woodworth Middle School at 4951 Ternes Street in Dearborn, standing in for Woodsboro High. While much larger in scale, the building does bear a striking resemblance to the Sonoma Community Center.

You can watch Scream: The Inside Story by clicking below. And you can read a great article about the documentary here. As it turns out, the special was produced by screenwriter Daniel Farrands, who not only went to Santa Rosa High School, but also penned Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers the year before Scream was filmed. Apparently, an area paper ran a local-boy-makes-good story on Farrands at the time celebrating his horror movie career. Why locals weren’t as accommodating to Wes just a short time later remains to be seen.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Sonoma Community Center, aka Woodsboro High School from Scream, is located at 276 East Napa Street in Sonoma. You can visit the property’s official website here.

October 17, 2016September 29, 2017

Casey’s House from “Scream 2”

“What’s your favorite scary movie?” So asks Ghostface of Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) at the beginning of Scream. Well, if Ghostface asked me that question, my answer would be Scream everyday of the week and twice on Sunday. I love, love, love that movie! Though I was not as big a fan of the film’s three sequels, I got on a kick recently of tracking down some of their unknown locales. The spot I most wanted to find was the gorgeous peaked-roof house where Casey (Heather Graham) lived in Stab, Scream 2’s movie-within-a-movie. Thanks to a lot of help from my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, I was finally able to locate it!

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I knew from the Scream 2 production notes as well as the movie’s DVD commentary that the opening Stab sequence was shot in Malibu. Though the front exterior of Casey’s residence was never shown in the scene, enough of the backyard and pool area was that I figured tracking the place down via aerial views would be a snap. I was wrong. I cannot tell you the countless hours I spent searching for the pad to no avail.

Enter Owen. On the verge of giving up, I emailed him to ask if he might be willing to help with the hunt and provided him with all of the necessary information. It was not long (minutes, really!) before I received an email back with an address. As Owen discovered, Casey’s house from Scream 2 is located at 5730 Busch Drive in Malibu.

While searching for the home, Owen had come across a mention that during the filming of the Stab scene, neighbors heard Heather Graham’s screams and, not realizing that a film shoot was taking place, called the police. Armed with that information, Owen began looking for more neighborhood-y areas of Malibu via aerial views and fairly quickly spotted the house in Malibu Park. (I should mention here that I had also seen the anecdote about neighbors calling the police during my search for the residence, but I did not think it was pertinent. Malibu is canyon-y and rather silent at night and I figured that the scene could have been shot at a remote property with Heather’s screams still easily heard by people in homes nearby. That was a major fail on my part. D’oh!)

According to a cached Zillow page, Casey’s Stab pad was originally built by architect Doug Rucker in 1961. Rucker also later updated the property in 1989. The contemporary dwelling boasts 10 rooms, 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 4,148 square feet of living space, a driveway with parking for 8 cars, a swimming pool and spa, a putting green, a 1.01-acre plot of land, a garden, a 400-square-foot garage, vaulted ceilings, and skylights.

Quite a bit of the home was featured in Scream 2. The property’s sprawling backyard is where poor Casey met her grizzly demise in a scene that emulated Drew Barrymore’s death from the original movie.

As you can see in the aerial view below, the backyard still looks much the same today as it did when the flick was filmed in 1997.

Portions of the residence’s interior also appeared onscreen, including a bathroom . . .

. . . and the living room.

It is while standing in the house that Casey utters one of the franchise’s most well-known lines – “You know, I don’t even know you and I dislike you already.”

Thanks to the residence’s wide expanse of sleek glass walls, much of the interior can be spotted in the backyard scenes, as well.

Though not much of the dwelling is visible from the street, especially not the areas used in Scream 2, I was absolutely floored to catch a glimpse from the road of the rear side of the fireplace that Casey walked by in the movie.

The house also made a brief appearance in Scream 4, during the Stab-a-Thon segment in which the opening scene from Stab was shown.

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

Big THANK YOU to my friend Owen, of the When Write Is Wrong blog, for finding this location!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Casey’s house from Scream 2 is located at 5730 Busch Drive in Malibu.

September 13, 2013September 12, 2013

Mission Street from “Little Black Book”

Back in November 2010, a fellow stalker named Clayton wrote a comment on my post about Fair Oaks Pharmacy from Mr. Deeds (which you can read here) alerting me that fave movie Little Black Book and the 1985 classic Back to the Future had also done some filming at the 50s-style soda fountain. And while he was actually wrong on both counts, his comment led me to the discovery that part of the opening sequence from Little Black Book had been filmed just down the road from Fair Oaks Pharmacy, at three different locations along South Pasadena’s picturesque Mission Street. So I ran right out to stalk them. For whatever reason, though, I completely forgot about writing the spots up for a blog post until a couple of weeks ago when I got on my kick of tracking down the remainder of the locales from the flick. Better late than never, though, right?

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Mission Street first popped up in Little Black Book’s opening scene (which was also featured at the end of the movie), in which Stacy (Brittany Murphy) is shown crying, while listening to Carly Simon and blocking what is supposed to be New Jersey city traffic, in her bright yellow Volkswagen bug.

That scene actually took place in front of Ellen’s Silkscreening on the corner of Mission Street and Mound Avenue. As you can see below, a few fake street signs were added for the shoot, but otherwise the location looks pretty much exactly the same in person as it did onscreen.

Mission Street pops up again just a few minutes later in Little Black Book’s opening montage in which Stacy is shown falling in love with her new boyfriend, Derek (Ron Livingston). In one of the montage scenes, the couple goofs around in a store window, making it appear as if they can fly.

That sequence took place in the doorway of Space Arts Center, just a few storefronts east of Ellen’s Silkscreening. I absolutely LOVE that the little bulletin board visible behind Stacy and Derek in the scene is there in real life, albeit in a different color.

Had to do it. Smile

Later in the montage, Stacy and Derek are shown walking Derek’s dog, Bob, in front of a large brick building, also supposedly located in New Jersey.

In reality, that building is the former Mission Arroyo Hotel, located about four blocks west of Space Arts Center. The 1923 structure no longer serves as a hotel, but is a commercial space comprised of offices and shops.

That same building masqueraded as the supposed Haddonfield, Illinois-area Nicol’s Hardware store, where Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) and Annie Brackett (Nancy Loomis) ran into Annie’s father, Sheriff Leigh Brackett (Charles Cyphers), while he was investigating the robbery of “some Halloween mask, a rope and a couple of knives” in the 1978 classic horror film Halloween.

As you can see below, the building hasn’t changed much over the years.

The former Mission Arroyo Hotel can also be seen in the background of the 2008 comedy Step Brothers, in the scene in which Brennan Huff (Will Ferrell) and Dale Doback (John C. Reilly), after a failed job interview, realize that their destiny is to start an entertainment company.

And although the camera was facing the opposite direction and the Mission Arroyo Hotel can’t actually be seen, it was at that same intersection that an adult Jenna Rink (Jennifer Garner) dissed her childhood crush, Chris Grandy (Jim Gaffigan), in all-time favorite movie 13 Going on 30. You can read my November 2007 post about that location here.

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

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Clayton whose comment led me to find this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: In the beginning and end of Little Black Book, Stacy’s car is parked in front of Ellen’s Silkscreening, which is located at 1500 Mission Street in South Pasadena. The “flying” window from the movie’s opening montage is the doorway to Space Arts Center at 1506 Mission Street. Later in the montage, Stacy and Derek walk past what is now WOD Gear Clothing Company at the former Mission Arroyo Hotel, which is located at 956 Mission Street. Nicol’s Hardware from Halloween is now Radhika Modern Indian restaurant at 966 Mission Street, also a part of the former Mission Arroyo Hotel. The Mr. Deeds soda fountain, aka Fair Oaks Pharmacy, is located at 1526 Mission Street. And the hardware store from Teen Wolf can be found at 1518 Mission Street, but I have yet to blog about that particular locale.

October 29, 2012September 29, 2017

Sidney’s House from “Scream 3”

One location that I was absolutely desperate to find in time for this year’s Haunted Hollywood posts was the isolated house where Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) lived in Scream 3. I knew from the flick’s Wikipedia page that the residence was located somewhere in the Topanga area, but other than that, I had very little to go on. Then, last week, on a whim, I decided to peruse through Malibu Locations, my favorite filming location database, to see if the property was featured on it and, as luck would have it, it was! From there I enlisted the help of Mike, from MovieShotsLA, who is much better at tracking down locales than I am, and, thanks to some good, old-fashioned elbow grease, he was able to find the abode in just a few short hours! Yay! So I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk the place just a few days later.

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Sadly though, when we arrived, we discovered that Sidney’s house is located on a private road and, aside from a few signs warning that trespassers will be prosecuted and a set of five mailboxes (apparently not even mail carriers are allowed on that street!), is not at all visible to the public. I was so hoping to at least be able to see and pose in front of the large wooden gate that was shown in the movie, but, alas, that was not to be. Boo! So even though this stalk was a bit of a let-down, because the location is one that many people seem to be looking for, I figured it was definitely still worthy of a blog post.

According to the Reel Scout website, in real life, Sidney’s abode, which sits on three parcels of land and boasts three separate dwellings, is known as Windwalk Ranch and it consists of forty private acres, a water tank, a corral, a barn, and a ranch house (which I believe is the building that appeared in Scream 3). And I just about fell over when I discovered, thanks to the Berg Properties website, that the residence has belonged to none other than actor Rick Schroder – my girl Pinky Lovejoy’s first Hollywood crush – since 2005.

Because Windwalk Ranch contains so many different structures on such a vast piece of land, I was unable to discern from aerial views exactly which dwelling was used in Scream 3. I am fairly certain, though, that it is the barely-visible building denoted with an orange arrow below, although the roof line appears to be a bit different than the roof line that is shown in the Malibu Locations images.

Sidney’s house shows up quite a few times in Scream 3, most prominently towards the beginning of the flick. And while I was not able to take a photograph of the residence for comparison purposes, you can check one out here. As you can see, the structure still looks pretty much exactly the same in real life as it did onscreen over a decade ago.

The jury is still out on whether the actual interior of the property was used in the filming, though. While some of the interior of the real life house matches up to what appeared onscreen, some definitely does not. Areas of the house that do match up include the barn-like interior doors (which you can see real life pictures of here and here;

the positioning of the kitchen window (which you can see a real life photograph of here);

the positioning, shape and size of the living room window (which you can see a real life photograph of here);

and the brick wall behind the fireplace (which, as you can see in this picture, is painted white in real life).

The areas that do not match up include the hallway behind the kitchen. As you can see in the screen captures below and this real life photograph of the house, Sidney’s house had a stairway and small window behind the kitchen, while the actual house features a glass-paneled door.

Sidney’s front door is in a different place, as well, as you can see in this real life photograph of the house as compared to the screen capture below. In the movie, the front door is flush with the wall that runs perpendicular to the kitchen, but in real life the front door is situated on the wall that faces the kitchen.

What really does not make sense, though, is that in the scene in which Dewey Riley (David Arquette) proposed to Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), the exterior of the front door is shown and it also does not match up to the positioning of the home’s real life front door, which you can see photographs of here and here. Color me so confused! Either a set very closely resembling the actual home was used for all interior (and, quite possibly, front porch) filming or the residence has been quite drastically remodeled since Scream 3 was filmed in 1999. I would lean toward the set option, except for the fact that only a few scenes took place inside of Sidney’s home and I cannot imagine producers building a set for so few scenes. Not to mention that the real life interior of both Runyon Ranch (which I blogged about here) and the Canfield-Moreno Estate (which I blogged about here) were used in the flick. So I really am torn. What are your thoughts, my fellow stalkers?

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

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

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Sidney’s house from Scream 3 is located at 21914 Goldstone Road in Topanga. The residence is located on a private street and is not at all visible or accessible to the public.

October 23, 2012September 29, 2017

The Correct “A Nightmare on Elm Street” Bridge

While stalking the Venice Canals (the history of which you can read about on yesterday’s post about Lana Clarkson’s former home) with Mike, from MovieShotsLA, last July, he mentioned that there was some misinformation floating around online about the Venice Canal bridge that appeared in the 1984 horror flick A Nightmare on Elm Street. Mike explained that every filming location website and book seemed to have a differing opinion as to which of the area’s nine bridges were used in the production and that he had long wanted to clear up the confusion once and for all. And that right there is why I love Mike – the guy is meticulous in his reporting. It seriously irks me when people post erroneous location information online or in books. I am of the opinion that if you are going to take the time to write a blog or publish a book, you should also take the time to make sure the information you are putting forth is valid. So Mike and I decided right then and there to finally set the record straight about the locale, even though I had never actually seen A Nightmare on Elm Street.

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In A Nightmare on Elm Street, Glen Lantz (Johnny Depp) and Nancy Thompson (Heather Langenkamp) discuss the “Balinese way of dreaming” while standing on a white-trellised bridge overlooking the Venice Canals. Thankfully, Mike was fairly certain that he knew which bridge had been featured in the movie prior to the start of our hunt. So, iPad in hand, we headed right on over to it.

We quickly scanned through A Nightmare on Elm Street (thank you iTunes!) to the bridge scene and tried to compare the homes visible in the background to the homes near the bridge where Mike thought filming had taken place. Sure enough, he almost immediately spotted a unique house with a corner balcony and rounded windows that matched up perfectly to what had appeared onscreen. Eureka!

While the trees surrounding the house (which is pictured below from the opposite direction that it was pictured in the movie) have grown considerably over the past 28 years (how in the heck has Johnny Depp not aged in all that time, by the way?!?!), it still looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did back in 1984 when A Nightmare on Elm Street was filmed, as you can see below. Unfortunately, there was too much foliage covering the side of the house that appeared in Nightmare, so I was not able to take a photograph of it from the same direction.

But you can see in the aerial view pictured below that the house’s two arched windows and corner balcony match up perfectly to what appeared onscreen.

On an Elm Street side note – A fascinating article about Heather Langenkamp, the actress who portrayed “Nancy Thompson” in three of the horror series’ installments, was published in the July 29, 2011 issue of Entertainment Weekly magazine. You can check it out here.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Mike, from MovieShotsLA, for finding the CORRECT A Nightmare on Elm Street bridge! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The correct A Nightmare on Elm Street bridge connects Linnie Avenue to Court C, crossing over the Eastern Canal, at the Venice Canals in Venice. It is denoted with an orange arrow in the above aerial view. The camera was facing southeast, toward Washington Boulevard, in the movie.

October 16, 2012September 29, 2017

The Meiks’s House from “Frailty”

One of my absolute, hands-down, favorite movies of all time is the 2001 thriller Frailty, which just so happens to be actor Bill Paxton’s directorial debut. And I am apparently in good company with that opinion – according to the Contact Music website, James Cameron, Sam Raimi and Stephen King are also huge fans of the flick, calling it “electrifying”, “the most frightening horror picture I’ve seen since The Shining”, and “edge-of-the-seat entertainment”, respectively. If you have not yet seen Frailty, I cannot more highly recommend doing so! In fact, stop what you are doing right now and go rent it! Do not pass Go, do not collect $200 – just head straight to your nearest video store and get your hands on a copy of the DVD! Anyway, when fellow stalker Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, tracked down the supposed Thurman, Texas-area house where the Meiks family – Dad (Bill Paxton), Young Fenton (Matt O’Leary – the phenomenal actor who also played Marcus in Matthew Lillard’s directorial debut, Fat Kid Rules the World) and Young Adam (the equally phenomenal Jeremy Sumpter) – lived in the movie’s flashback scenes, I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to Sun Valley to stalk the place. Because I thought the location would fit in perfectly with my Haunted Hollywood postings, though, I had to wait a good four months to blog about it. So here goes!

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In real life, the Frailty bungalow, which was originally built in 1924, shares its 0.98-acre plot of land with another, larger abode. And while Zillow states that the dwelling boasts 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, and 1,825 square feet of living space, I believe that to be the combined measurements of both houses on the property.

While we were stalking the Frailty house, the owner happened to come outside and she honestly could NOT have been nicer! When I explained that Frailty was one of my favorite movies, she invited us ONTO THE PROPERTY to take a closer look and to check out the backyard area, which was used extensively in the flick. (Yes, I was pinching myself!) She also spent a good thirty minutes chatting with us about the residence and the filming. LOVE IT! The Frailty house actually has quite an interesting history – it was originally constructed in Watts and then moved to Sun Valley at some point thereafter. The abode is also rumored to be haunted, which is one of the reasons Bill Paxton chose to use it in the flick.

The residence is actually located on the grounds of the Rockin’ Horse Academy and I cannot tell you how much fun I had playing with the horses while we were there. So cute!

The Meiks home is one of the main locations used in Frailty and it shows up repeatedly throughout the flick. In the movie, adult Fenton (Matthew McConaughey) says, “We live right behind the Thurman Public Rose Garden [which was actually the Huntington Library rose garden, which I blogged about here], in the house where they used to keep the gardener back in the ‘50s. Dad had gotten a good deal on it back when he and mom got married.” Thankfully, the residence’s exterior looks almost exactly the same in person as it did onscreen, as you can see below.

The backyard area still looks much the same today as it did during the filming, as well.

Amazingly enough, the owner told us that the “cellar” that was used as a kill room in the movie was NOT a set. The Frailty production crew actually dug a huge hole in the home’s backyard, constructed a basement in the space, and filming took place inside of it. So incredibly cool!

After filming wrapped, the crew deconstructed the basement and tried to fill in the hole, but could not find the same type of dirt that covered the rest of the backyard. Because a different type of dirt eventually had to be used, you can still kind of see where the cellar was situated during the filming. Love it, love it, LOVE IT!

Because the real life interior of the home did not look dated enough to stand in for a 1970’s-era house, a set was constructed for the interior scenes. According to the movie’s production notes, of the set design, Bill Paxton said, “I wanted a stark, clean look, like an Edward Hopper painting.” Of the Hitchcockian-style flick, which took 37 days to shoot, he also said, “My vision of this story has always been the idea that it is a very edgy script that pushes a lot of buttons, especially because children are involved. But I thought that’s exactly the reason to give it a real, old Hollywood approach, where all of the darkness is implied instead of being explicit. We hear a chop or a scream, but we never see a drop of blood.” And that, in essence, is the movie’s magic. Without showing an ounce of gore, Frailty manages to grab you right from the very beginning and it does not let go until the credits roll. Did I mention how much I love this movie? Winking smile

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Chas, from the It’sFilmedThere website, for finding this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Meiks’ house from Frailty is located at 10641 Tuxford Street in Sun Valley.

October 10, 2012September 29, 2017

The Beckett House from “Delusion: The Blood Rite”

Way back in February, fellow stalker David, of The Location Scout blog, wrote a comment on my post about the Milbank Mansion, the interior of which was used as the inside of the Finch home in Running with Scissors, informing me that the exterior shots of the Finch residence were filmed at the Beckett house in the West Adams District. David also let me know that the Beckett house had appeared in quite a few B-movies from the ‘80s, most of them of the horror genre. And while I did add the place to my To-Stalk list, for whatever reason, I never ventured out there. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I spotted the mansion in a Season 2 episode of Lie to Me (the Grim Cheaper and I just finished watching the entire series on DVD and absolutely fell in love with it – I am seriously bummed that it was cancelled!) and decided that I had to stalk the place as soon as possible. So I dragged the GC right on over there, just in time for my Haunted Hollywood postings.

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The Beckett house was originally built in 1905 for Dr. Wesley W. Beckett and his wife, Iowa Archer. Dr. Beckett was a member of the board of trustees at USC and the namesake of the school’s Beckett Hall. According to commenter “KWB” on the Big Orange Landmarks blog (where you can read a fabulously detailed history of the residence), the doctor lived on the premises until his death in 1936. You can see a photograph of the home around the time that it was originally constructed here. It is amazing to me that, despite its severely dilapidated state, it still looks almost exactly the same today as it did over one hundred years ago. In 1981, the property apparently suffered a destructive fire on its top floors and while the then owners, thankfully, restored it, the mansion has since been left to deteriorate. Today, the home, which very much looks like a real life haunted house, is vacant and is used primarily for filming.

The Beckett house, which was designated a Los Angeles Historic–Cultural Monument in 1973, boasts 6 bedrooms, 4 baths, a whopping 5,415 square feet, and a 0.54-acre plot of land. You can check out some fabulous interior photographs of the mansion here. While some of the inside is in serious need of TLC, the majority of it is in far better shape than what the exterior would lead one to believe. Despite the decay, it is easy to see that the place must have been magnificent in its heyday!

As luck would have it, when we showed up to stalk the place, we happened to spot a man who was building some sort of elaborate scenery piece in the side yard. We got to talking with him and he informed us that he was setting up for an interactive Halloween-themed theatre production known as “Delusion: The Blood Rite“ that was going to be held at the mansion for the second year in a row. How incredibly cool is that? The 2011 play, which was simply titled “Delusion”, was named “Best Haunted Attraction” by FOX LA and “Hottest Ticket in L.A.” by NPR’s All Things Considered. Actor Neil Patrick Harris saw the show twice last October and loved it so much that he is actually co-producing it this year. Um, love it!

The play (which looks to be scaaaaaaaaaaary!) is currently running through November 10th. You can purchase tickets here and you can watch a video about it by clicking below.

Delusion play

Due to its marred appearance, the home has long been a favorite of location scouts seeking decrepit or spooky locales. As I mentioned above, the exterior of the property was used as the exterior of the mansion where the crazy Dr. Finch (Brian Cox) lived with his even crazier family in 2006’s Running with Scissors. As you can see below, the facade was painted Pepto-Bismol pink for the movie.

Thanks to The Official Halloween Message Board, I learned that the upstairs portion of the Beckett house was used as the upstairs of the home where the young Michael Meyers (Daeg Faerch) lived in Rob Zombie’s 2007 Halloween re-boot. Several areas of the abode appeared in the movie, including a bedroom (which you can see a real life photograph of here) that stood in for the bedroom of Judith Meyers (Hannah Hall, who also played “Young Jenny” in Forest Gump);

another bedroom (which you can see a real life photograph of here) that was used as Michael’s room;

a bathroom (which you can see a real life photograph of here);

a hallway (which you can see a real life photograph of here);

another bedroom (which you can see a real life photograph of here) that was used as the bedroom of Baby Boo (who was played by Sydnie Pitzer, Myla Pitzer and Stella Altman);

a back stairway (which you can see a real life photograph of here);

and the basement (which you can see a real life photograph of here). It was rather difficult to get a decent screen capture of the basement as the scene shot there was far too dark, but in the image below you can see that the small rounded windows that appeared in the movie match the home’s actual basement windows.

The living room of the Beckett house also masqueraded as the Strode family’s living room in the flick. You can see a real life photograph of that room here.

Thanks to Geoff, of the 90210Locations website, I learned that the Season 3 episode of Brothers and Sisters titled “Going Once . . . Going Twice”, which aired in 2008, featured the Beckett house as the bank-owned residence that Kevin Walker (Matthew Rhys) purchased as a surprise for his boyfriend, Scotty Wandell (Luke MacFarlane).

The interior of the property was also used in the episode.

The Beckett house was also shown in a real estate listing in the episode . . .

. . . and in an auction image, which stated that the property was located in Pasadena.

Both the exterior . . .

. . . and the interior of the house were also used extensively in the 2008 music video for Robert Plant and Allison Krause’s song “Please Read the Letter”.

You can watch that video by clicking below.

The Beckett House from the “Please Read the Letter” Music Video

In the Season 2 episode of Lie to Me titled “Darkness and Light”, which aired in 2010, Dr. Cal Lightman (Tom Roth) tracks a missing and troubled young woman named Molly (Natalie Dreyfuss) to the dilapidated old mansion where she has been living with several other downtrodden girls.

The interior of the home also appeared in the episode.

Mike, from MovieShotsLA, informed me that the mansion was also used as the frat house where Emma Kurtzman (Natalie Portman) and Adam Franklin (Ashton Kutcher) met for the second time in the 2011 romantic comedy No Strings Attached.

As you can see below, though, a different location was used for the interior of the frat house.

The Beckett house was also featured in 1988’s Twice Dead, 1989’s The Immortalizer, 1992’s Evil Toons, 2000’s The Convent, 2001’s The Attic Expeditions, and 2005’s Lethal Eviction, all of which you can read about and see screen captures from on The Location Scout blog here.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my latest post, about one of the best salads I’ve ever had in my life, on my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to David, from The Location Scout blog, for telling me about this location! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Beckett house, from “Delusion: The Blood Rite”, is located at 2218 South Harvard Boulevard in the West Adams District of Los Angeles. The play will be running through November 10th and tickets are $45 per person. You can visit the official “Delusion: The Blood Rite” website here.

October 9, 2012September 29, 2017

Katie’s House from “The Ring”

While doing research on the Malibou Lake residence that stood in for the office of Doctor Grasnik (Jane Alexander) in the thriller The Ring, I came across a page on fave website Washington State Film Locations which stated that the supposed Seattle-area house where Katie (Amber Tamblyn) lived – and died – in the 2002 flick was actually located in Hancock Park. Well, believe you me, I just about fell off my chair upon learning the information as I had always thought that particular abode was located in the Pacific Northwest, where the majority of The Ring was lensed. So I immediately added the residence to my Haunted-Hollywood-To-Stalk list and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on over there just a few days later.

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Sadly, thanks to some very dense foliage, not much of Katie’s house is visible from the street, as you can see below. In real life, the Tudor-style abode, which was originally built in 1924, boasts 5 bedrooms, 3 baths, 3,610 square feet of living space, and a 0.28-acre plot of land.

The exterior of the stately residence was featured several times in The Ring. It first popped up in the movie’s opening scene in which Katie was tormented and then killed by Samara (Daveigh Chase), seven days after viewing a cursed video tape. As you can see below, while recognizable, the house looks quite a bit different today than it did in 2002 when The Ring was filmed, mostly due to the addition of a front gate, walkway and massive amounts of foliage.

The property next popped up in the scene in which Katie’s friends and family gather for her memorial. In that scene, the driveway area of the home is visible and, as you can see below, at the time of the filming, the hedges surrounding the front yard were much lower than they are now. Boo!

The house lastly shows up – through a rainy windshield – in the scene in which Rachel (Naomi Watts) drops her son, Aidan (David Dorfman), off at her sister’s place for the week.

I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the home was also used in the flick, but I was unable to find any interior photographs of the residence with which to verify that hunch.

Thanks to Geoff, from the 90210Locations website, I learned that the very same residence was also used as the home where Buster (Bernie Mac) lived, with his cheating wife, Robin (Beverly Johnson), in 1997’s How to Be a Player, although very little of the house can actually be seen in the flick.

You can find me on Facebook here and on Twitter at @IAMNOTASTALKER. And be sure to check out my other blog, The Well-Heeled Diabetic.

Big THANK YOU to Charles, from the In Twin Peaks website, for finding this location and to Marc, from the Washington State Film Locations website, for posting it! Smile

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Katie’s house from The Ring is located at 413 South McCadden Place in Hancock Park.

October 18, 2011September 29, 2017

The “Psycho” Car Dealership

While putting together a list of spooky-type locales to stalk during my Haunted Hollywood month a couple of weeks ago, I decided to peruse through fave book James Dean Died Here: The Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks by Chris Epting for a little inspiration. And, let me tell you, I just about died of excitement when I saw a blurb about the North-Hollywood-area car dealership that appeared in the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho. In the blurb, Epting mentioned that not only was the place still standing, but that it was also still a car dealership – over fifty years later! How incredibly cool is that?!? So because Psycho is arguably one of the most well-known and best-loved horror movies of all time, I decided that I just had to include the location in my Haunted Hollywood postings and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to the Valley to stalk it a few days later.

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In Psycho, Marion Crane (aka Jamie Lee Curtis’ mother, Janet Leigh), who is on the run from the police after having stolen $40,000 in cash from her boss in Arizona, stops by the supposed-Bakersfield-area “California Charlie’s Used Car Lot” in order to trade her car in for one with California plates. While there, her brusque, hurried attitude causes California Charlie (aka John Anderson) to say his famous line, “Well, it’s the first time the customer ever high-pressured the salesman.” At the time of the filming, the dealership was known as Harry Maher’s Used Car Lot and, because the Ford Motor Company was a sponsor of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Maher was required to swap out his real life inventory with a supply of Fords for the one-day shoot. Hitchcock was apparently such a perfectionist that, according to a fabulous article written on The Cabinet website, he sent assistant director Hilton A. Green all the way to Bakersfield to photograph real-life used car salesmen in order to see their clothing so that California Charlie’s costume would be realistic. He also commissioned Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano to observe car salesmen while writing the script so that Charlie’s dialogue would be legitimate. Talk about attention to detail!

Also according to The Cabinet article, the bathroom scene, in which Marion takes $700 out of her purse in order to pay for her new car, was not filmed on location at Harry Maher’s Used Car Lot, as the restroom there was too small to fit an entire camera crew. Hitch instead decided to shoot that brief scene at Universal Studios, on what I am assuming was just a set that was built on a soundstage.

Today, Harry Maher’s Used Car Lot is home to MINI of Universal City and it, sadly, does not look much like it did in 1960 when Psycho was filmed.

Because the lot has changed so considerably over the years, it was hard to discern the exact spot where filming took place. But if I had to venture a guess, I would say that the California Charlie’s scene was shot in the area denoted with a pink rectangle in the above aerial view. And I am fairly certain that the building denoted with a blue arrow was not in existence at the time that Psycho was filmed.

It is my guess that the screen capture and photograph pictured above show the same exact area of the lot. I believe that the California Charlie’s sales office is now the MINI dealership’s service office . . .

. . . and that the door shown in the screen capture above is in pretty much the same location as the door denoted with a pink arrow in the photograph.

I am also fairly certain that the MINI showroom was built in the portion of the lot that Marion walked through in Psycho . . .

. . . and that the above images show the exact same view, albeit 50 years apart. Even though the property has changed so drastically in the five-plus decades since the filming of Psycho took place, I was still absolutely elated to be standing on such hallowed ground. The thought that Alfred Hitchcock had once been in the same spot I was now stalking was literally mind-blowing. So incredibly cool!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: MINI of Universal City, aka the Psycho car dealership, is located at 4270 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood. You can visit the dealership’s official website here.