Scream – IAMNOTASTALKER

October 31, 2019November 12, 2019

Woodsboro Police Station from “Scream”

Happy, happy Halloween! I can’t believe it is already time to wind down my Haunted Hollywood posts, but here we are. Another October in the books! The season definitely turned into a full-blown Scream-fest on the blog (as predicted a couple of weeks ago) and I am a-OK with it! Amazingly, there are still quite a few locales from the 1996 horror flick that I have yet to write about, so I figured I’d finish things off this year with Oakville Grocery Co., the former Healdsburg City Hall which masked as Woodsboro Police Station onscreen. Like all the other Scream sites I’ve blogged about recently, I stalked this one back in 2016 while in Northern California for a brief visit.

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The southeast corner of Matheson and Center Streets in downtown Healdsburg was home to the area’s City Hall for 110 years. The original building, a towering three-story brick and stone Romanesque Revival structure which you can see here and here, was erected in 1886. Comprised of city offices, a library, a post office, and a gym for a nearby school, it was razed in 1960. The building that replaced it was a vast departure from its predecessor with a decidedly mid-century modern feel. Designed by A.C. Steele, the new Healdsburg City Hall was dedicated on July 4th, 1961. Built at a cost of just over $175,000, the one-story, 7,544-square-foot site housed both city offices and the police station and featured a beamed overhang, a front patio, pebble rock siding, and globe lighting. You can check out a photo of it here. It is that building that appeared in Scream.

In the hopes of making downtown Healdsburg more tourist-oriented, City Hall was moved to a new, larger building a couple of blocks northwest at 401 Grove Street and the police station re-located next door to 238 Center Street in 1996, shortly after Scream was lensed. The former city hall site was subsequently given a massive overhaul and transformed into the Oakville Marketplace, home to a winery, a jewelry store, a spa, a clothing boutique, and an upscale deli/market named Oakville Grocery Co. Boasting a Mediterranean façade, the 9,000-square-foot retail complex is hardly recognizable from its days as City Hall, though structurally it remains the same.

Though I abhor the fact that a Scream location has been gutted, Oakville Grocery Co., which takes up a third of the former City Hall space, has long been our favorite spot to eat when in town. With a large front patio complete with a fireplace, a wide selection of specialty grocery items, and excellent deli sandwiches, Oakville just can’t be beat!

Healdsburg City Hall pops up as Woodsboro PD twice in Scream, first in the scene in which Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) is brought in by Deputy Dewey (David Arquette) to make a report following the attack by Ghostface. As you can see below, the exterior is recognizable from its 1996 cameo in shape only, unfortunately.

I first saw Scream in December 1997 with some friends who had rented it on DVD over Christmas break. I remember being shocked when the end credits rolled and I spotted a nod to the City of Healdsburg in the “Filmmakers Wish to Thank” section, suggesting filming had taken place there. The charming Northern California town was only about an hour away from where I then resided and a stone’s throw from where my aunt lived (and still lives). I begged my mom to take me up there pronto and a few days later she obliged. At the time I was not entirely sure what portions of the movie had been filmed in the area – this was long before location websites that could point me in the right direction existed – so when we arrived, my mom suggested I pop into the local police station to inquire, which I distinctly remember garnering an eye roll and a “Seriously, mom?!?” from me. I did as she recommended, though, and just about fell over when the detective I spoke with informed me that filming had actually taken place at the former police station! By then, the remodel had already occurred and Oakville Grocery Co. was in full swing, but he walked us over to explain where the station used to be and which areas of it had appeared onscreen – proving further that mothers always know best! As he told us, the actual interior of City Hall was utilized as Woodsboro PD in the movie.

An interview that fellow stalker Ashley of The Drewseum recently emailed me a scan of leads me to believe that it was the City Hall portion of the building, not the actual police station, utilized in Scream. In the blurb, production designer Bruce Alan Miller says, “There’s a City Hall on the corner of the square that we turned into our police station. We just changed some signs and put a few things in the windows. We couldn’t use a real police station, because we would have been at their mercy, and we couldn’t be disrupting their police activity.” Though I was unable to unearth any photos of the interior areas featured in Scream, I did find 1961-era pictures of Healdsburg City Hall’s lobby, courthouse, and city council chambers. (Here’s another of the lobby for good measure.)

Perhaps even more famous to Scream fans than Woodsboro Police Station is the alley that runs alongside it, where Dewey escorts Sidney and Tatum (Rose McGowan) after Sidney gives her statement. Said alley can be reached via Center Street, just south of Oakville Grocery, but it, too, has largely been remodeled. The door that the girls walk out of in the scene, unfortunately, fell casualty to the 1996 renovation, though the pipe visible just beyond it still stands.

The door’s former location is pretty much where the middle glass block window is currently situated, as denoted with an orange rectangle below.

The rain gutter and window due east of the door’s former location are also still intact, which was thrilling to see! Along with the aforementioned pipe, they are pretty much the only elements that remain from the time Scream was filmed.

The dumpster enclosure and chain link fencing situated at the rear of the alley also largely remain the same.

It is in the alley that Sidney famously gives Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox) a fist to the face.

Had to do it!

During my ‘97 visit, my officer friend informed me that the people standing across the street in the punching scene were not background actors hired to be there, but interested locals hoping to catch a glimpse of the filming. Taking advantage of the situation, Wes Craven installed barricades to give the illusion that the crowd was made up of lookie-loos waiting outside the station for news about the murders of Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore) and Steve Orth (Kevin Patrick Walls). In his commentary on the Scream Collector’s Series DVD, Craven calls them “free extras.”

Woodsboro Police Station also shows up in a later scene in which Dewey drops the girls off to go grocery shopping while he checks in with his boss, Sherriff Burke (Joseph Whipp).

That segment gives us a better look at City Hall’s former exterior. It truly was a piece of mid-century perfection!

Today, the entrance to Woodsboro PD serves as the exterior of the Virginia Carol clothing boutique (the shop with the yellow awning below).

Man, what I wouldn’t give to have seen the old City Hall building still intact!

The happiest of Halloweens to all of my fellow stalkers!

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: Oakville Grocery Co., aka Woodsboro Police Station from Scream, is located at 124 Matheson Street in Healdsburg. Healdsburg Town Plaza, which portrayed downtown Woodsboro in the movie, is right across the road at the intersection of Healdsburg Avenue & Matheson Street.

October 29, 2019November 5, 2019

Healdsburg Town Plaza from “Scream”

I was saddened to wake up to the news of yet another fire tearing through Sonoma County last Thursday morning, this one threatening Healdsburg, one of my favorite places in the entire world. Not only is the city idyllic, pastoral and ridiculously charming, but it is a filming location to boot, the main square having stood in for downtown Woodsboro in Scream. Healdsburg Town Plaza was, in fact, the site of one of my very first stalking adventures back in late 1997. I have visited it often in the years since, most notably during my epic October 2016 Scream stalking trek in which I hit up every.single.location. featured in the 1996 flick, down to the warehouse where the production’s few sets were built to the hotel where the cast and crew stayed during the 55-day shoot (the latter was, sadly, lost to the Tubbs Fire in October 2017). Though Healdsburg remains safe from the Kincade Fire for the time being, the city was evacuated and per a Los Angeles Times article is currently a “ghost town,” a situation eerily reminiscent of Scream’s curfew scene which rendered downtown Woodsboro deserted. I pray that the blaze is controlled soon and my thoughts go out to everyone affected, including my aunt and uncle who were recently evacuated from their home in the area. For now, I thought a post on Healdsburg Town Plaza was in order.

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The city of Healdsburg was originally envisioned by businessman Harmon Heald. After failing to strike it rich mining gold, the native Ohioan built a small home in 1851 on what was then a portion of the Rancho Sotoyome land grant. Figuring the site was perfectly situated between San Francisco and the mining areas north of it and would, therefore, be passed through often, he constructed a general store with a post office soon after. A community surrounding the shop quickly developed and in 1857 Harmon commissioned a surveyor to layout a design for a town square and surrounding streets and, thus, Healdsburg and its central plaza were born. The city was incorporated ten years later.

Today, the bucolic one-acre Town Plaza boasts a gazebo, a central fountain, pathways, Canary Island date palms, and redwood trees, all surrounded by a sprinkling of charming shops, cafés, and restaurants. It is small town U.S.A. at its finest!

The fountain at its center, known as Sandborn Memorial Fountain, was donated by Elmer Sandborn in remembrance of his family in 1961. In the square’s early days, though, a bandstand stood as its focal point. The structure not only drew musical acts, but audiences with alcohol in hand, to the consternation of many locals. The Ladies’ Improvement Club got to work on curtailing the drinking and eventually won permission to raze the bandstand in the early 1900s, with a 13-foot marble fountain installed in its place. The revelers couldn’t be curtailed, though – according to The Healdsburg Tribune, a new bandstand was simply built next to the fountain the following day! Healdsburg Town Plaza also saw raucous times in the 1970s, when the Hells Angels made it their regular hangout. Today, the park is, thankfully, much more low-key.

On any given afternoon, you’ll find families picnicking, couples strolling, and visitors relaxing on the many benches that dot the site.

The space is so idyllic that Travel and Leisure deemed it one of “America’s Most Beautiful Town Squares” in 2013.

The surrounding town isn’t too shabby, either!

The last time I visited, in early December 2018, the city was really flaunting its fall colors.

We just don’t get this kind of Autumn vibrancy in Palm Springs.

Show off!

Healdsburg Town Plaza pops up a couple of times in Scream, most notably as the spot where Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and her friends eat lunch in an early scene. In the segment, during which Stuart Macher (Matthew Lillard) utters his famous “Liver alone!” line, the group is sitting on Sandborn Memorial Fountain’s north side with their backs to Matheson Street.

Sadly, the fountain has been renovated a bit in the years since filming took place, with its rock siding removed and built-in planters added to its corners.

Even sadder, the park’s quaint white wooden gazebo, visible in the scene, has since been completely replaced. According to a Press Democrat article, the original structure was a “casualty of dry rot and changing taste.” This photo of its demolition, which took place on March 14th, 2007, absolutely breaks my heart.

The gazebo is also where Gale Weathers (Courteney Cox), wearing her infamous neon green suit, reports on the murders plaguing Woodsboro in a news clip that Sidney catches on TV in a later scene.

Fortunately, the original gazebo and fountain were both still in place during my early stalks of the square.

Healdsburg Town Plaza is also seen in an establishing segment in which the sun rises on Woodsboro the morning after Sidney is attacked. That bit was filmed on the corner of Center and Plaza Streets.

Per the sheriff I spoke with during my first Healdsburg stalk, the shot was actually lensed early evening as the sun was setting. Apparently, Wes Craven intended to capture it the morning of the last day of the Healdsburg portion of the shoot, but ran out of time, so he instead grabbed it later that day at dusk, knowing that audiences would be none the wiser.

Finally, the plaza serves as a backdrop for the scene in which Woodsboro townspeople lock up and head home before the newly-imposed curfew. Several shops lining the square are featured in the segment including 104 Matheson Street;

312 Center Street, which was the site of Healdsburg Coffee Company at the time of the filming, but today houses The Nectary juice bar;

and the grassy section of the park directly across from 105 Plaza Street . . .

. . . and 111 Plaza Street.

Thanks to the Dear Old Hollywood blog, I learned that Healdsburg Town Plaza also appears a few times as Hartfield, Iowa in the 1943 drama Happy Land.

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: Healdsburg Town Plaza, aka downtown Woodsboro from Scream, is located at the intersection of Healdsburg Avenue & Matheson Street in Healdsburg.

October 9, 2019October 11, 2019

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!

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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! Smile

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.

October 7, 2019October 11, 2019

The “Scream” Grocery Store

I love a good grocery store locale (as evidenced here, here, here and here)! My dad worked in markets throughout my childhood and I spent a lot of time with him at “the office,” which is where my affinity stems from. So even though I had already blogged about Pacific Market, the Santa Rosa bodega that cameoed in horror favorite Scream (which my aunt and uncle, who live in the area, stalked on my behalf back in 2008), I still had to hit the place up when I traveled to Sonoma County in October 2016. Going through my photos from that trip in preparation for this post made me a bit misty-eyed. While in town, I dragged my mom, aunt, two uncles, longtime BFF, and her boyfriend to every.single.locale. featured in the 1996 flick. Oh, how I wish I could do it all over again – especially the visit to Pacific Market, where my stalking resulted in a free bottle of champagne! But more on that in a bit.

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Per newspaper ads, the property that currently houses Pacific Market has been a grocery store since at least as far back as 1950, at which time it was known as Pohley’s Market.

It has gone through several different grocer iterations in the years since – as well as a few renovations, I’m sure. When the Scream cast and crew descended upon the area in the spring of 1996, the shop was known as Town and Country Market.

The upscale store was known for its fine wines, gourmet foods, and other specialty items. A former ad for the place I found on Newspapers.com touted Town and Country as a spot “Where old-fashioned courtesy and relaxed shopping are yours at supermarket prices.”

Town and Country became the third store in the Pacific Market chain when it was acquired by the Mohar family in 1997, a year after Scream was filmed on the premises. Initially established in 1948 by Stan and Mary Mohar, the grocery company was light years ahead of its time as far as healthful eating was concerned, dedicating an entire section of each outpost to organic produce from the start! Unfortunately, with the purchase came some renovations, which I’ll cover further down.

The Santa Rosa outpost was subsequently sold on two more occasions (first in 2012 and then again in 2016), each time retaining the Pacific Market name. The latter sale occurred just prior to my visit, during which I had the good fortune of meeting the new owner, who could not have been nicer! Turns out, he had no idea of his store’s cinematic history and was thrilled to learn about it! As I filled him in on Pacific Market’s role in Scream and where filming had taken place, I couldn’t help but relish in his enthusiasm over the cameo and had to throw out a few suggestions to honor it, such as stationing a Ghostface mask in the freezer aisle so that its reflection could forever be visible in the glass doors. I am unsure if he implemented the idea, but it’s genius, right? As our chat wound down, he asked me what I like to drink. I told him champagne (of course) and he promptly grabbed a very nice bottle off the shelf and gifted it to me – which was the first time any of my stalkings ever resulted in free bubbly!

In Scream, Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) and Tatum Riley (Rose McGowan) head to what was then Town and Country Market to buy party supplies for the soiree Stuart Macher (Matthew Lillard) is hosting to celebrate classes being canceled due to the murder of two fellow Woodsboro High students. Sadly, the part of the store the girls walk by at the top of the scene was extensively remolded after filming took place, with the side window and wooden patio railing removed, as you can see below.

This was done to allow for a new entrance (pictured below) to be built at the corner of the market, one that would be more accessible to the surrounding wraparound parking lot.

As such, the southeast tip of the building was essentially blown out and diagonally-situated doors installed in its place. (The support beam visible below marks exactly where the demolished corner used to come out to.)

The store’s original main entrance, which was situated on the south side of the market and which Sidney and Tatum walked through in Scream, is just a set of windows today.

Completely framed in, the windows are situated behind seasonal displays and grocery cart storage and semi-obscured from view.

The bulk of the Scream scene takes place inside Pacific Market, in aisle 5 to be precise – the freezer aisle (dun dun dun!) – which Tatum and Sidney walk the length of.

It, too, has been remodeled, unfortunately. The freezer aisle used to be zigzag in shape. It was in the shorter section, where the aisle zagged off toward the front of the store, that Sidney grabbed popsicles and ice cream and announced she was “sexually anorexic.”

Today, the freezer section is one straight line with an open refrigerated display case situated in the spot where Sidney and Tatum perused frozen desserts. Though I don’t have a photo taken from the same angle shown in Scream, the area where the girls were positioned is pretty much right where the woman in blue is standing below. Because the freezer aisle pretty much ends where the new front doors stand, I believe the alteration was made to accommodate for their construction.

It is as the girls leave the aisle that Ghostface’s reflection becomes visible in a freezer case door – as I said, dun dun dun! (I accidentally took the photo below from the wrong angle, but as you can see the freezer doors have also since been swapped out for new ones.)

It is not at all hard to see why Wes Craven and the rest of the production team landed on the store as a location for Scream. Pacific Market is the perfect little neighborhood grocer. And while the segment shot there is short, it is significant as it not only encapsulates the idyllic small town nature of Woodsboro, but the naivete of the teens at the center of the story who are out buying ice cream and Tostitos for a party celebrating school being cancelled due to the murder spree ravaging their town! Talk about a juxtaposition! (The song that plays at the top of the scene is also perfection, btw.)

I really could not have timed my visit to Pacific Market better as the fall decorations adorning the store only added to its homey feel. I mean, if that’s not the perfect slice of Americana pictured below, I don’t know what is!

And yeah, had to do it!

Even my aunt got in on the fun!

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

Big THANK YOU to my aunt and uncle for originally stalking this location for me back in 2008, taking me to stalk it myself in 2016, and then re-stalking it for me again this past weekend. When I sat down to edit my photos for this post, I realized I hadn’t taken any that matched what was shown in Scream, so I asked if they might head out there to snap better comparison shots. They happily obliged and sent me all that appear in this post. (For those counting, that’s their third stalk of the place – and no, they’re not fans of the movie in the slightest.) I honestly can’t thank them enough!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Pacific Market, aka the former Town and Country Market from Scream, is located at 1465 Town and Country Drive in Santa Rosa. You can visit the store’s official website here.

October 4, 2019October 8, 2019

The “Scream” Video Store

Extremely nostalgic by nature, I was recently thinking about the demise of video stores and how many movies would suffer if made today because of it – movies like The Holiday, Clerks and, of course, Scream. Without the scene set at Woodsboro’s local VHS rental spot in the latter, in which Randy Meeks (Jamie Kennedy) schools buddy Stuart Macher (Matthew Lillard) on the “very specific formula” followed by slasher flicks, much of the tongue-in-cheek nature of the storyline would have been tragically lost. I blogged about Santa Rosa’s Bradley Video, where the segment was shot, back in 2008, though I had never actually stalked it myself, instead sending my aunt Lea, who lives in the area, to do so on my behalf. By the time I next made it up to Sonoma County in 2016, the shop had long since shut down, but I still included it in my Scream stalking itinerary, which encompassed every.single.location featured in the 1996 horror classic down to the hotel where the cast and crew stayed during the 55-day shoot, as well as the warehouse that served as the production’s soundstage. The vast majority of those sites remain on my To-Blog List and I figured today was the perfect time to get to posting about them, starting with Bradley Video.

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When Lea stalked Bradley Video for me in 2008, the store was still in operation. In fact, it was her local rental place and she and her husband would visit it regularly. Sadly, it went the way of most VHS leasing establishments, initially closing its doors in 2005 after its owner, William Bradley, filed for bankruptcy. There were 11 shops in the chain at the time, all of which shuttered that same year. In a fitting twist, the majority of the company’s outposts, including the one from Scream (located on Marlow Road) were curtained on October 31st! As The Press Democrat reported a few days later, calls to the Sebastopol outlet were met with a message stating, “Bradley Video is closing its stores for good, and this store is closed. Happy Halloween.” Though I am sad it is no longer open, if a horror movie location has to shutter, I can think of no better day to do it than Halloween!

That wasn’t the end of the Marlow Road store, though. In January 2006, the shop was was re-opened by West Coast Video, along with 6 others in the Bradley chain.

The rebirth was short-lived, however, and the Marlow Road BV closed once again in early 2009, shortly after my aunt’s stalk of it.

Amazingly, the space has remained vacant ever since, which is great news for us Scream aficionados as it has resulted in very few changes to the exterior.

The same goes for the interior, which I was thrilled to discover as I peeked through the windows! Despite the passage of 23 years, two separate closures, an ownership change, and an almost-decade long vacancy, the Bradley Video site still looks exactly as it did onscreen!

I cannot express how thrilled I was to see the very same muted fuchsia carpeting that Stu and Randy walked upon still lining the floor of the space! Also visible? Faded markings surrounding the areas where the shelving used to stand!

The rectangular pillar stationed behind Randy throughout the scene also remains intact, though today it is mirrored.

Per Scream’s production notes, Sonoma County was chosen as a backdrop for the lurid tale thanks to its “innocent, familiar” locales which provided the perfect setting for the movie’s more macabre sequences. And no site is more innocent or familiar than a local video store! It is at Bradley Video that Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich), Stu, and several other Woodsboro High students head to rent movies after classes are cancelled due to the murder spree taking place in town. While there, we get these choice words from video store employee/resident slasher flick expert Randy, “See, the police are always off track with this sh*t. If they watched Prom Night, they’d save time. There’s a formula to it – a very simple formula! EVERYBODY’S A SUSPECT!” As I was not able to venture inside the former Bradley Video space, my photographs were, obviously, not taken from an angle matching that of the movie, but I believe the image below shows basically the same vantage point, minus the anteroom visible in the foreground.

As for the detritus strewn about, per a commenter named Rich Brasil on the Bloody Disgusting website, the location is currently used to house supplies for a neighboring Chinese restaurant.

Filming of the Bradley Video scene took place on Monday, May 6th, 1996 (the 16th day of production) according to the Scream call sheets, which my friend Ashley of The Drewseum was kind enough to give me copies of. Actors were required to report to the locale at 9:15 a.m. and the weather was “sunny and cloudy, dry, breezy at times” with highs in the mid-60s. There were a total of 40 extras on set (including “2 babes for Billy”) and the shoot was scheduled to wrap at 6 p.m.

And while I am thrilled the Bradley Video space remains so unchanged from that 1996 cameo, at the same time it is a bit disheartening that the site of such a famous cinematic moment exists in such a sad state. I would love to see the place re-open, but with the interior left intact, of course. Scream video store pop-up, anyone?

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

Big THANK YOU to my aunt Lea for initially stalking Bradley Video for me and taking the images dated 2008 that appear in this post.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: Bradley Video, from Scream, was formerly located in the Rosewood Village shopping center at 3080 Marlow Road in Santa Rosa. Its former storefront, Unit A19, is denoted with an orange arrow below and its onetime frontage marked by orange lines.

October 23, 2017October 23, 2017

Hilton Sonoma Wine Country – Where the Cast of “Scream” Stayed During Filming

I typically begin compiling notes on a location and roughly outlining a post weeks before I hit publish. Today’s article, about the Hilton Sonoma Wine Country, where the cast and crew of Scream stayed during the 1996 film’s 55-day shoot, is no different. Sadly though, devastation struck shortly after I penned that preliminary edit. I am extremely sorry to report that the Santa Rosa-area hotel was destroyed by the Tubbs Fire in the early morning hours of October 9th. When I learned the news last Friday morning, just as I was sitting down to write this post, I felt like I had been punched in the gut. I could not – and still cannot – believe the Scream hotel is gone. I am heartbroken. And yes, I do realize it is a bit silly to be heartbroken over the loss considering the fact that the property didn’t even appear in the movie, but, at the same time, it was such an important part of the production and has been talked about by the cast in so many interviews that it honestly feels as if a piece of history has been lost. I am so thankful that I was able to stalk the Hilton last October during a trip up north and, even though it is no longer, figured I should still continue on with the post and share the many images I took of it for posterity.

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I learned about the Hilton and its role in the production of Scream from my friend Ashley, of The Drewseum website, who (as I’ve mentioned previously) was kind enough to share with me some call sheets from the flick that she has managed to get her hands on over the years. Besides detailing scene, wardrobe, and prop information for a particular date, each sheet also notes both the pickup time and location of the various actors scheduled to work that day. As indicated in the sheets, Neve Campbell, Drew Barrymore, Matthew Lillard, and the rest of the cast were picked up in the lobby of the DoubleTree Hotel located at 3555 Round Barn Boulevard in Santa Rosa prior to each shoot.

At some point after Scream was filmed in 1996, the property was transitioned to a Hilton, though, according to my aunt who lives in the area, not much of it was altered during the changeover and, up until the fire, it still looked much the same as it did in the ‘90s.

Typically, a hotel where a cast and crew stayed during the filming of a movie wouldn’t have that much meaning to me, but, in this case, because of Santa Rosa’s small-town vibe, the Scream team spent much of their free time together on the property. Unlike New York or L.A. or any other metropolis, where actors can step outside of their lodging and find a wide array of nightlife and activities at their fingertips, Sonoma County is a rather sleepy area. So the group hung out together, entertaining themselves on the hotel grounds, which created a tight-knit family atmosphere that I doubt would have occurred (at least not to the same degree) had Scream been shot elsewhere.

The Hilton was actually the location I was most excited about seeing during my NorCal trip, mainly because of an interview with Matthew Lillard that I watched years prior. Unfortunately, I can’t find a clip of the interview anywhere online, but, in it, the actor talked about holing up with the rest of the cast in Neve Campbell’s hotel room after filming wrapped each day or night and watching horror flicks. I love any and all behind-the-scenes tidbits like that and the thought of the cast huddled up watching scary movies together, while in the midst of shooting what turned out to be one of the most influential scary movies of all time, is pretty incredible.

Matthew is hardly the only Scream cast member to have mentioned the hotel in interviews over the years. In fact, I’ve found that, more than any other location associated with the movie, the Hilton is the one talked about the most. In the 2011 documentary Still Screaming: The Ultimate Scary Movie Retrospective, Neve Campbell reminisces, “We were all staying in the hotel – in like a little motel – the whole crew and cast. And we were just having a great time. I think we kind of couldn’t believe we were getting paid to have fun like that.” (Though the Hilton was actually quite large, because of the way it was laid out, with outcroppings of two- and three-story buildings dotted around the premises, it did have the feel of a small motel.)

That same year, in an Entertainment Weekly article, Jamie Kennedy also reminisced about the property, saying “We’d go home at night to the DoubleTree Hotel, and it was the first hotel I ever went to that gave you a cookie at night.”

Neve spoke of the Hilton again in a 2016 Entertainment Tonight exclusive, stating, “The cast would hang out in the mornings because we would shoot all night. We would get in cars and go back to our hotel and we would be covered in blood and there would be people going to work at 6 or 7 a.m. and they’d see me covered in corn syrup. The look on those peoples’ faces was always humorous. We would close all the curtains and hang out and have a drink. We were sitting in one of our bedrooms and we were like, ‘Could you imagine if this was good enough that there might be a Halloween costume?’ And we were like, ‘No, that couldn’t possibly happen!’ And now it’s 20 years later and I still see the Halloween costume every year in all the shops. It’s pretty amazing.”

Just this past July, Skeet Ulrich, who played killer Billy Loomis, gave an interview to The AV Club in which he mentioned the Hilton. He said, “I was fortunate in that the hotel suite they gave me had two rooms, so I used one just to sleep, and the other one . . . I was 26, I think, when I made it, and I was playing a 17- or 18-year-old, so I went straight to the mall and bought every hard-rock poster and black lights and everything, and I turned the other room into Billy’s room. And I’d sit in there and just read about John Wayne Gacy and play the most satanic music I could find and just try and find him rather quickly in that environment.”

All the anecdotes and tidbits I had heard about the hotel over the years enveloped me as I walked around the property. I couldn’t help but wonder which room each cast member stayed in;

if they were all grouped in the same area or spread apart;

if they checked in themselves;

did they walk down this hall;

or that one;

if they swam in the pool during their off-time;

if they sat by the fire;

hung out in the lobby;

ate at the on-site restaurant – etc., etc., etc.

Needless to say, my mind was buzzing. And yes, I am fully aware that I have an unnatural obsession with anything and everything related to Scream.

You can see some photographs of what the property looks like post-fire here, here, and here. And you can read an interview with a man who was staying at the Hilton when the inferno struck here. The hotel was actually one of the first places hit by the Tubbs blaze and, because it broke out so quickly, guests had virtually no warning. Most were awakened by a knock on the door from security guards at around 3 a.m. on October 9th and told to evacuate immediately. The man in the interview did not even have time to put on shoes. I can’t imagine how scary that must have been.

In watching this drone footage of the Hilton site, it seems that the three buildings surrounding the pool, on the western edge of the property, remain intact. So at least a part of the location still stands. A word of warning – watching the video clip is extremely disheartening. The devastation that citizens of Sonoma County are facing is unfathomable. My thoughts and prayers are with them.

Big THANK YOU to my friends Ashley, from the Drewseum, for telling me about this location and Katie, from Matthew Lillard Online, for trying to help me pinpoint the interview in which Matthew talked about the hotel !

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: Hilton Sonoma Wine Country, where the cast of Scream stayed during filming, was formerly located at 3555 Round Barn Boulevard in Santa Rosa. Sadly, the property was destroyed by the Tubbs Fire and no longer stands.

October 12, 2017October 12, 2017

The “Scream” Warehouse

There has been so much tragedy in the world as of late. I’ve always avoided watching the news, but recently I feel like not even turning on my TV at all. Between the heartbreaking massacre in Las Vegas, the multitude of hurricanes plummeting the Eastern seaboard, and the fires ravaging both Orange and Sonoma Counties, devastation seems to be everywhere. My mom and I were actually in Santa Rosa visiting my aunt and uncle last year at this exact time. Hearing reports of the blaze desolating the area has been particularly saddening as I can’t help but think of the incredibly happy time we spent there, traversing pretty much all of Wine Country to stalk film locations, mainly from my favorite scary movie Scream, which was shot in its entirety in the region. (Thankfully, my aunt and uncle are both safe, as is their house.) I have yet to blog about the vast majority of the locales we visited during that fabulous trip and thought covering one today would be especially poignant.

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Scream is a bit of an anomaly in the motion picture world being that it was lensed almost exclusively at actual locations. Very few sets were utilized in the shoot, which took place over the course of eight weeks beginning in April 1996. During my visit to Northern California, I dragged my mom, aunt and uncle (as well as another uncle, my longtime BFF, Nat, and her boyfriend, Tony – there was literally an entire squad of us!) to every single site featured in the flick – every. single. one. I was so fixated on being thorough that we even stalked the warehouse that served as a soundstage during the production. Though the building is completely non-descript with absolutely no recognizable elements tying it to the film – not to mention it was either largely remodeled or demolished with a new structure now standing in its place (I’ll extrapolate on that a bit later in the post) – I was thrilled to be seeing it in person.

As I detailed in last year’s post about the Sonoma Community Center, a portion of Scream was originally set to be shot at Santa Rosa High School. The school board wound up vetoing the plan at the very last minute, though, leaving director Wes Craven and the rest of the production team scrambling to find a suitable replacement to mask as Woodsboro High. Enter the Sonoma Community Center, whose then manager offered up the site for use. Though the center did serve as a school up until 1948, it lacked several spaces detailed in the Scream script. So a couple of sets were built at a Santa Rosa warehouse to accommodate for the missing spots.

I learned of the warehouse’s existence and location thanks to my friend/Drew Barrymore aficionado Ashley, who runs The Drewseum website. As I mentioned in my October 2016 post about the Shadow of a Doubt house (which also appeared in Scream), over the years Ashley has managed to get her hands on a few Scream call sheets and she was kind enough to share them with me. Let me tell you, reading through them is like a dream! I mean, the location information alone is enough to make my head spin! One of the coveted pages details Day 9 of production (April 25th, 1996), during which several scenes taking place in Woodsboro High’s school office were lensed. The sheet lists the location of the shoot as a “warehouse stage” at 2875 Santa Rosa Avenue. Ashley also shared with me the image below (a screen capture from Scream: The Inside Story), which shows the office set as it existed inside of the warehouse.

The Woodsboro High office set – which consisted of Principal Arthur Himbry’s (Henry Winkler) office, a small hallway and an anteroom – as it appeared in Scream can be seen below.

I am fairly certain that the Woodsboro High School girls’ restroom, where Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell) encountered the Ghostface killer for the second time, was also a set built at the warehouse. Though I originally assumed the segment was shot at the Sonoma Community Center, when I stalked the building, I could not find a bathroom even remotely similar to the Scream bathroom anywhere. I showed the employee who took us on a tour of the place the screen captures below and he informed me that he was fairly certain a restroom of that size and shape had never existed on the premises. Upon arriving home, I contacted a Scream crew member who got back to me immediately saying that the bathroom was indeed a set. Since crew member recollections are not always reliable, though, I wanted more confirmation. So I reached out to Leonora Scelfo and Nancy Anne Ridder, the two actresses who appeared alongside Neve in the scene. They both could not have been nicer, but had different memories of where filming took place. Leonora recalled shooting the bathroom scene on location at “the school” (I’m assuming she means the community center), while Nancy informed me that the bit was lensed on a set. As I said, cast and crew recollections can’t always be trusted. I am fairly certain, though, that Nancy was correct and that the Woodsboro High girls’ restroom was a set that existed inside of the Santa Rosa warehouse.

Ashley also has a hunch that a very tiny portion of the infamous opening scene was lensed at the warehouse, as well, though she is not certain of that fact. Scream’s opening, which took place at the residence of Casey Becker (Drew Barrymore), was actually the first part of the movie to be shot. At the time, Craven had not yet secured the rights from Fun World for the use of their “Peanut-Eyed Ghost” mask, which executive producer Marianne Maddalena had spotted while scouting the home that was ultimately used as Tatum Riley’s (Rose McGowan) in the flick and which Wes wanted to utilize to shroud Ghostface. Time running out, Craven had KNB EFX Group re-create the mask with just enough subtle changes so as not to infringe upon Fun World’s copyrighted design. KNB’s re-creation was used in the first two segments of Scream that were shot – the opening and the scenes in the Woodsboro High School office. After those bits were lensed, the rights to the Fun World mask were secured and for the rest of the shoot, the Peanut-Eyed Ghost was used. Both masks are pictured below. As you’ll notice, the differences between them are rather inconspicuous. The KNB version has a much sharper triangular nose than its Fun World counterpart. The KNB mouth boasts an upside-down tear-drop shape, while the Fun World mouth is more of an oval. And the eyes of the KNB ghost are thinner and more symmetrical than that of Fun World. Other than those small differences, though, it is pretty hard to tell them apart.

At some point after the rights were secured, Wes decided to reshoot the brief portion of the opening in which Ghostface is seen through Casey’s back window using the Fun World mask. Ashley has an inkling that the reshoot (stills of which are pictured below) was done at the warehouse and I think she’s right. That is just a hunch, though. While it makes sense that filming of the short, tightly-shot segment would have taken place at the warehouse, it is also entirely possibly producers constructed a tiny window set to shoot the bit at one of the other locales utilized in the production.

If you watch the Scream opening carefully, the two different masks are apparent. The sharp nose of the KNB version (which is pictured in the caps below) is the most noticeable giveaway.

I also have a hunch that the window portion of Sidney’s bedroom may have been a set. Though Craven states in Scream’s DVD commentary that filming of the bedroom scenes took place at the actual Santa Rosa residence utilized as Sidney’s in the shoot, as you can see in the image of the warehouse below, some sort of set boasting three single-hung windows is visible to the right of the high school office set.

Those windows are a darn close match to Sidney’s. Even her white lace curtains seem to be visible. In Scream, Billy Loomis (Skeet Ulrich) climbs through Sidney’s window, located on the Prescott home’s second floor, on two different occasions. To quote Bruce Willis, it seems doubtful, due to liability issues, that Wes would have Skeet clambering onto a roof and through a second-story window not once, but twice during production. It is much more likely that a small portion of the bedroom with more accessible windows was re-created at the warehouse for the scenes. Who knows, though?

When I arrived at 2875 Santa Rosa Avenue last October, I was shocked to find a strip mall that looked to be of rather new construction standing on the premises. Walking around the center, which is home to a flooring store, a La-Z-Boy outpost and a sports shop, among others, I started to have doubts that the Scream warehouse was still standing.

Upon arriving home, I looked into the matter further and was dismayed at what I found. In comparing the 1993 overhead view of the site to the 2009 view via Historic Aerials, it is clear that the warehouse was either razed and completely rebuilt at some point during the interim or remodeled and expanded extensively before being transformed into the strip mall it is now. My guess is the former, which would mean that the Scream warehouse is no longer. Try as I might, though, I could not find any confirmation of my hunch or any information on the warehouse or the strip mall whatsoever. Even searching Santa Rosa building permits provided no clarification. Regardless, to me the site will always be hallowed ground and I was thrilled that I got to stalk it.

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

Big THANK YOU to Ashley, from The Drewseum, for telling me about this location and for providing so much of the information included in this post!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! Smile

Stalk It: The Scream warehouse is/was located at 2875 Santa Rosa Avenue in Santa Rosa.

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.

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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 23, 2008October 29, 2019

Scream – One More Time

Many, many years ago – back when I first started college, in fact – I did a little stalking of my fave horror movie, Scream. I guess you can say that I have been pretty much obsessed with that movie ever since it premiered back in 1996. At the time I was still living in Northern California, and I was absolutely floored when I found out that the entire movie was filmed on location in the towns of Santa Rosa and Healdsburg, just about an hours drive from my house. I absolutely could not believe that one of my favorite movies was shot in such close proximity to where I lived, so of course I dragged my mom and my aunt Lea, who lives in the area, right out to stalk it.

The first stop on our Scream stalking tour was the Healdsburg police station, which my mom had suggested might have some info on what areas of town were used in the shoot. I was quite the little stalker even then so I marched right in to make an inquiry and the officer on duty could not have been nicer. I was shocked when he told me that the station itself stood in for “Woodsboro” PD where Deputy Dewey worked in the movie! As he informed us, Scream used both the interior and exterior of the building, but shortly after filming was completed, the station was relocated to a new location. The former police station is now a grocery store/delicatessen called Oakville Grocery and sadly looks very different than it did in Scream. The detective then surprised us by offering to take us on a little mini-tour of some other Scream locations in town.

And he gave us some good news – while the Woodsboro police station no longer looks like it did in Scream, the alleyway where Sidney punches Gail Weathers towards the beginning of the movie is still there and is still very recognizable from the movie. 🙂

And, in fact, the officer told us that if you watch that scene closely you will notice a crowd of people standing just outside the alleyway (pictured above). The crowd was actually made up of residents of Healdsburg who had come out to watch the filming. Wes Craven decided to keep them in the shot, and simply set up barricades and police tape around them to make them look like gawkers hanging around the police station waiting to hear news about the killings of Casey Becker and her boyfriend.

The officer then showed us the Healdsburg town square, which was featured several times in the movie, most prominently in the scene where Sidney and her friends eat lunch after learning about the killings. The town square looks EXACTLY as it did during the filming and even the fountain the group sits on is still there. For some reason, though, the fountain is usually boarded up, but otherwise, it looks the same as it did in Scream.

Another little tidbit of trivia that the officer shared with us was that the scene where the street sweeper drives around the Woodsboro town square at dawn the morning after the murderer first tries to kill Sidney (pictured above) was actually not filmed in the morning, but at dusk. Apparently Wes Craven needed the shot and was not able to get it during the morning of his last day of filming, so he simply shot it at night. I always love hearing little bits of insider information like that! : )

I must say that it was very exciting for me to visit the Scream locations in person – especially since visiting them was one of my very first stalking adventures. The town of Healdsburg is an absolutely adorable place, with great restaurants, coffee shops, and boutiques. I highly recommend stalking it, even if you aren’t a Scream fan!

On a side note, my aunt told me this morning that Bradley Video, which was also featured in the movie Scream, just announced they are closing down. 🙁 How sad!

Note – the above photographs were taken during two different trips to Healdsburg, which is why I am wearing two different outfits. 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Healdsburg town square is located on Healdsburg Avenue, between Plaza Street and Matheson Street. Oakville Grocery (the former police station) is located at 124 Matheson Street, kittycorner from the town square.