This post is a great excuse for me to write about a subject close to my heart – great horror films. Only great ones, mind. Having been duped into seeing Hostel and having my hopes dashed by “Nazi Zombies” I know there’s a whole lot of really bad or just quite dull horror films out there. So, without further ado.
The above shot is taken from Angel Heart.
Angel Heart:
For a long time one of my favorite films of all time, this horror noir featuring Bob de Niro as a bearded, egg-cracking Louis Cyphre (geddit?) and Mickey Rourke at his tweed-coated private-detecting best (I had a coat just like it in the 80′s, and yes, I’m a girl).
The first part of the film is set in a chilly grey New York and the second in a hot and steaming Louisiana, and the director Alan Parker has managed to make the atmosphere in both dark, heavy and wet – and rich in voodoo atmosphere.
The brownstone tenement buildings that Harry walks past can still be seen in Eldridge Street, Harlem – the procession and church scenes were also filmed in the Harlem neighbourhood.
Vazak’s Bar at 108 Avenue B, East Village features as the place in which Harry receives some information on Johnny Favourite from his newspaper contact. (Incidentally, Vazak’s is a regular film star – you may have seen it in Godfather II and Crocodile Dundee).
One of my favourite scenes takes place on a chilly, deserted beach (pic below): this is of course Coney Island, and Harry then goes off to find Madame Zora in the old amusement park on West 10th Street on the island.
Harry arrives in Louisiana at Hoboken Railway Station, immediately starts sweating and getting rained on in the town’s Decatur Street and goes to visit Toots Sweet (geddit?) played by legendary Bluesman Brownie McGhee at the Maple Leaf Bar posing as the Red Rooster. The Laurel Valley Village Museum is the location for the plantation where the lovely Lisa Bonet lives.
The church in which the diabolical Mr Cyphre meets with Johnny is the St Alphonsus deconsecrated church in New Orleans:
Incidentally, do you know that Marlon Brando was considered for Bob’s part in the film? And that Alan Parker said he avoided De Niro on set because his interpretation of the part of Louis Cyphre was so convincing?
Poltergeist
A very sweet horror film, this. Cute little blonde girl in peril; an extremely funny yet serious medium played brilliantly by Zelda Rubenstein; weed-smoking, loving parents,an evil pastor and a sinister television set.
The film is set in the fictional suburban neighbourhood of Cuesta Verde, California which is in real life Simi Valley, California. The exteriors of the house occupied by the Freelings were shot at No 4267 Roxbury Street in that area.
At the time of filming, the houses were new, and unoccupied land behind the house offered easy access for the camera crews. Although a swimming pool featured in the film, there was apparently none present at the time of filming, although later owners did build one.
It was damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake, but it looks fine now according to this Google Maps image:
You’ll be glad to know that the final shots of the house collapsing weren’t real. Here’s a description of how it was filmed from bigwaste.com.
“I don’t have any interesting stories about the real house, but the model that stood in for it at the end of the movie had a pretty fascinating, although short-lived, existence. A replica about four feet across was constructed for the final scene in which the house is quite convincingly sucked into the Netherworld. The model was positioned face up over an industrial vacuum through which wires were run and attached to points inside the house. The camera, located directly above the model, was run at 300 frames per second, or twelve and a half times normal speed.”
The Shining
The unsettling opening sequence was filmed in Glacier National Park in Montana According to moviemistakes.com you can see the shadow of the filming helicopter on the ground during it. Interestingly, outtakes from it were used in the final shots of Blade Runner.
A guest post on QT has already look at the inspiration for the Overlook Hotel – the haunted Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado. But the exterior shots for the film were taken at the beautifully situated Timberland Lodge in Oregon. Aerial shots and only some of the establishing shots were taken there.
I thought I recognised the area where the snowcat vehicles were kept in this photo …
… but I find that the largest set ever built at the time (at Elstree Studios) provided many of the shots around the outside of the building where a facade was constructed.
The maze didn’t exist at all – the snowy version was built as a sound stage at Elstree and a non-snowy maze at Borehamwood. By the way, watch those spatial awareness videos in that last link for spectacularly picky insight into the hotel design.
That fantastic tracking shot of Jack’s son on his toy tricycle took place at Elstree and the kitchen was built there also, in a large warehouse.
The interiors were based on yet another hotel – the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite Park. Interestingly, the Timberline Lodge asked that the room number chosen by Stephen King in his novel for the spooky room – 217 – not be used in the film as they understandably feared that people would avoid booking it. Therefore 237, a room number that doesn’t exist in the Timberline, was chosen.
The Omen
Most of The Omen (the 1976 original), that evergreen story of the birth and childhood of your everyday Antichrist took place in the UK, although Rome and Jerusalem were given brief mentions.
Parliament Hill with its excellent view of the City of London is the location for a picnic with young Damien and his parents (played by Gregory Peck and Lee Remick). And the US Embassy in which Gregory works as the American Ambassador is indeed the real one, situated in Grosvenor Square, Mayfair.
The church that Damien had a hissy fit in is Guildford Cathedral, in the London borough of Kingston. Another church that I can’t now walk past is All Saints Church, Fulham without thinking of the scene where Patrick Troughton is speared by a lightning rod falling from the building. They filmed the scene by having the conductor slide down a wire that was a few feet away from Troughton.
The harrowing scene where Lee Remick is thrown out of a window was filmed at Northwick Park Hospital in Harrow.
The last scenes at the burial of Damien’s earthly father was at the American Military Cemetery in Brookwood (that’s where the photo was taken of Damien among the white crosses).
Why did they ever remake The Omen, by the way?
Beetlejuice
This comedy-horror pic from one of my favourite directors, Tim Burton was filmed on location in East Corinth, Orange County.
The house that featured extensively in the film, occupied by the recently dead couple, the Maitlands, then joined by the incomers, the Deetzes, wasn’t a real house: just a box shell built for the film – according to one comment I’ve read from a local who lived in East Corinth at the time there was actually a baseball court inside.
The Maitlands’ Hardware Store was a a real general store in the town which has since closed down. In the opening aerial shot if you look closely you’ll see a potato chip truck (that means crisp lorry in the UK) pulling away from the store – which of course is wrong if it’s supposed to be a hardware store. The locals were asked to keep their cars off the road for this shot to work out well.
The bridge off which the Maitlands’ car crashes is actually uncovered and doesn’t lead to the fake house and the river beneath was damned to create a pool of water, presumably to make the shoot look better.
The interiors were shot in Culver Studios, Culver City, California.
Born in Belfast and now living in London, Julie McNamee is involved in internet marketing as a day job and blogging as a hobby. She’s interested in all things quirky and Fortean, as well as art, photography and theatre. Her blog Quirky Travel, specializes in London and Paris top tips and off the beaten path information with subjects such as London film locations and unusual Paris museums.
