Tag: Scream filming locations

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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.

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Pacific Market – The Grocery Store from “Scream”

To continue with October’s Halloween theme, this weekend I sent my Aunt Lea out once again to do a little Scream stalking. And this one was definitely a collaborative effort. Her mission, and she chose to accept it, was to stalk the grocery store used in my favorite horror movie. There had been some confusion on my part, though, as to what grocery store was actually used. While doing some cyber-stalking, I had read that a store named the Town and Country Market in Santa Rosa was the grocery store featured in Scream, but at the same time I couldn’t seem to find any sort of market in the area that went by that name.

Lea had an inkling, though, that the location used was actually a grocery store called Pacific Market, which happened to be located on a street named Town and Country Road. Turns out she was right, and in fact, what she found out in the course of her stalking is that during the time of filming 13 years ago, the market was actually named Town and Country. A few years ago, though, it was purchased by the family-owned Pacific Market chain and the name was changed. So, on Saturday evening Lea dragged her husband, Steve, out to Santa Rosa’s Pacific Market to do a little stalking for me. And apparently I am teaching Lea well, as after snapping some pics, she went up to one of the checkers to verify that the store was in fact used in Scream. Lea said she looked for the oldest checker on duty as she figured he had the greatest chance of working there at the time of filming. Nice! Anyway, the checker verified that filming did in fact take place at that location back in 1995, but that since it was owned by a different company at the time, no one who worked at Town and Country during the filming was currently employed there. 🙁 Bummer! But the good news is that even though the store was purchased by a new owner, for the most part the exterior looks exactly the same as it did in the Scream days.

Pacific Market is a fairly small, gourmet market specializing in locally-grown fresh produce, fine wine, and organic food. The market is actually only featured in one short scene towards the end of Scream. It is the location where Tatum and Sidney stock up on snacks for the party at Stu’s house after school gets cancelled for the day. In the scene, the girls are first shown entering the grocery store through a side entrance.

A few seconds later we see them walking down the frozen food aisle, while discussing Sidney’s relationship issues. At the very end of that scene, as the girls walk away from the freezer section, a reflection of the killer wearing the ghost mask appears on one of the freezer doors. Love it! I absolutely can’t wait to visit the grocery store myself someday. 🙂

Big thank you to my newest stalkers, Lea and Steve!

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Pacific Market is located at 1465 Town and Country Drive in Santa Rosa, CA.

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The Video Store from “Scream”

On a recommendation from E.J. over at The Movieland Directory, I recently purchased a GREAT book called “The Worldwide Guide to Movie Locations“. I was completely floored to discover an entire section in the book dedicated to one of my favorite movies of all time – a little horror flick called Scream. Now, while I have admitted before that I was always too much of a scaredy cat to watch horror movies, Scream came out when I was in college, so I was pretty much past my scaredy cat stage by then. Scream was actually the very first scary movie I ever watched and I have to admit that I became a bit obsessed with it. The majority of Scream was filmed on location in Northern California and I actually stalked a few of the filming sites many, many years ago. But my new book listed some locations that I previously hadn’t known about. I usually don’t like to blog about locations that I haven’t visited myself, but since I don’t live in Northern California anymore, I enlisted my Aunt Lea to do some Scream stalking for me. Her first assignment – to stalk the video store where the movie-obsessed character of Randy works.

In real life the video store is called Bradley Video and it was was featured in only one scene in Scream as the location where all the high school kids rent scary movies after school is shut down for the day. In Scream, only the interior of Randy’s video store is shown and I actually had to send my aunt back to Bradley’s to stalk it a second time as the first time she didn’t get any interior shots. LOL Ah, the thing’s we’ll do for family! It was at Bradley’s Video that Randy, while talking about Sidney’s dad, tells Stu about the formula of scary movies. He says, “His body will come popping up in the last reel somewhere. Eyes gouged out, fingers cut off, teeth knocked out! See, the police are always off track with this shit! If they’d watch Prom Night, they’d save time! There’s a formula to it. A very simple formula! Everybody’s a suspect!” This conversation is shown in the above screen captures.

A BIG THANK YOU to my Aunt Lea for stalking this location for me.

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: Bradley Video is located at 3080 Marlow Road in Santa Rosa, California.