(The fact that a remake is looming makes it even scarier.). Thank you very much. Cinematic San Francisco: movie locations in the City by the Bay. If you've ever wanted to visit the film locations of your favourite movie, or you've simply wondered ‘Where did they film that?’, you’ll find all the info you need here – along with plenty of original location photographs and trivia. Thanks for doing this! Filming Locations of Chicago and Los Angeles. This 1989 cold fish featuring Linda Blair and zombies menacing a cryogenics lab on Halloween night (also released as The Thawing) is set in Kansas City but lists several East Bay locales in its credits, including Oakland. Love your posts-- so interesting and thorough.Were the Brocklebank Apartments (1000 Mason Street) used in the 1984 film, 'The Woman In Red' (Gene Wilder/ Kelly LeBrock) ..? According to Herbert Coleman, Vertigo associate producer, Hitchcock often picked a location and then developed a story to be filmed there. Location filming for Vertigo took place from September 30th to October 15th, 1957, in San Francisco and also at Mission San Juan Bautista, Big Basin Redwoods State Park and Cypress Point on 17 Mile Drive.. San Francisco movie locations from classic films. Brian De Palma tried to channel some Hitchcock vibes of his own in this 1992 thriller about murder conspiracies and a doctor fighting his fractured personalities. For over a decade, I've had a passion for film locations and film-related travel. It's not tucked away down a creepy staircase (hello, this is a major tourist attraction!) Today the site is a National Historic Landmark managed by the National Park Service. It was the setting for the 1979 Clint Eastwood film Escape from Alcatraz, which fictionalized the only known and potentially successful escape attempt from the island. By choosing I Accept, you consent to our use of cookies and other tracking technologies. Apparently the current owners, who have been there for a number of years, got sick of people taking selfies, standing on the step and even ringing the bell. Love what you've done. San Francisco movie locations from classic films. Awesome work. The Buena Vista building is supposedly a sanitarium in the film, but actually it's a rather lovely residential building full of very expensive condos for truly devoted fans who want the ultimate piece of Hitchcock memorabilia. The interior staircase was also used in the end Raiders of the Lost Ark as a stand-in for a federal building in Washington, DC, from which Indiana Jones denounces the ‘bureaucratic fools’ who now have the Ark of the Covenant. In an early scene, Scottie says: "I can't go to the bar at the Top of the Mark, but there are plenty of ​street-level bars in this town." This weird sci-fi thriller based on a Michael Crichton book isolates its cast on an ocean floor lab with an alien presence. This tongue-in-cheek adventure movie about martial arts and mysticism isn’t even kind of scary. Thank you! How does Downtown Los Angeles fare as the backdrop for DC's new team? No part of this site may be reproduced without our written permission. Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). Find out where. Did you know that the San Francisco hotel in which Judy Barton is swooningly transformed into Madeleine in Alfred Hitchcock's masterpiece Vertigo is now the Hitch-themed Hotel Vertigo? This now-obscure 1980 haunter starring Joseph Cotton and featuring Trish Van Devere as a woman who inherits a possibly haunted house shot mostly in LA but feature an EXTENSIVE on-location driving sequence in San Francisco, including a well-timed shot of Van Devere driving past the Hyde Street cable car. When he first saw San Francisco, he said it would be a good place for a murder mystery, and he chose a French novel, D'Entre les Morts (From Among the Dead). The use of the zoo as the setting for one late scene calls into question whether Douglas has turned the tables on his tormentors or is himself still trapped. Twisty Lombard St has become a top attraction in San Francisco, and on film it’s come to represent the city’s quirky, hilly layout. The Movie Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo has been a huge audience favorite since it premiered in San Francisco at the Stage Door Theater at 420 Mason Street on May 9, 1958. But it's not really Vatican City you're seeing, it's the Palace of Fine Arts, and every monk and nun in the streets was an extra from San Francisco. Jordan Peele won an Oscar for his groundbreaking horror-drama Get Out in 2018, then followed it up almost immediately with this shocking Santa Cruz scarefest about homicidal doppelgangers. The confusion of James Stewart's character Scottie is perfectly captured as he follows the entranced Kim Novak's Madeleine around the vertiginous streets of the city. Now get ready to travel – at least, in your imagination: For Renée Zellweger's Oscar-winning performance as Judy Garland, London – and even Los Angeles – of the Sixties had to be recreated. In a scene that was cut from the movie, Gavin Elster, Madeleine's husband says: "You know what San Francisco does to people who have never seen it before... Everything about the city excited her; she had to walk all the hills, explore the edge of the ocean, see all the old houses and wander the old streets; and when she came upon something unchanged, something that was as it had been, her delight was so strong, so fiercely possessive! Local drag connoisseur of all things in tastefully bad taste Peaches Christ wrote and directed this 2010 gore satire set mostly at the Victoria and chronicling a descent from moviemaking into madness. ... Vertigo, or The Birds, Alfred ... Maybe no San Francisco movie so excites film buffs as Vertigo. And that was not the Dunsmuir Estate’s only contribution to horror history; three years earlier the house made its film debut in Burnt Offerings, about a dream home that drives its occupants to murder. To be perfectly accurate—the entrance to Elster's shipyard was not a set, it was the entrance to the paint department at Paramount Studios, with a little signage added to disguise it. These things were hers." Perhaps you will gain a little of Madeleine's love for the city by the time you've finished the tour. where Ryan O’Neal and Barbra Streisand are pursued by thieves. Vertigo - McKittrick Hotel December 26, 2010 / CitySleuth. If you’re planning a location trip and you want to find a hotel, click here to compare prices – just enter your destination and travel dates, and let the search engine find the best deal for you. Other than some shooting at the San Francisco Chronicle building, most of the city locales were stand-ins or digital creations. To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. Yeah, not many scares in this 1978 spoof, which lampoons countless truly scary movies, including The Birds. The film takes place in San Francisco, California and many different local spots are featured. Pacific Rim (2013), Ant-Man (2015), Star Trek (2009), Zodiac (2007) and many more. The bridge appears in an important scene in Vertigo (1958), when a distraught Madeleine (Kim Novak) leaps into the waters at the base of the bridge’s abutment, and Scottie (Jimmy Stewart) jumps in after her. She leads him all over town and beyond and appears to be possessed by the spirit of her great grandmother, Carlotta Valdes. The beach funhouse where the most critical scenes play out isn’t real, but if someone doesn’t open a facsimile on location it’ll be a real missed opportunity. The “small town” Santa Rosa setting was crucial to that appeal, as Hitch relished the idea of introducing a ruthless serial killer into what he imagined to be an idyllic and unassuming Northern California community. Despite the film’s title, the centerpiece home used for shooting was actually located in Potrero Hill. Well, that's different. . – you are visitor Built in 1933, the art deco Coit Tower was constructed using a financial gift from wealthy socialite Lillie Hitchcock Coit as a memorial to the city’s firefighters (some say the tower looks like the nozzle of a firefighter’s hose, but that's coincidental). Chronically depressed vampire Brad Pitt starts out in New Orleans but of course drifts into the City by the Bay sooner or later, narrating his story from a Market Street hotel. What better base for your exploration of the Bay City's numerous film locations? Similarly, Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times admired the scenery, but found the plot took "too long to unfold" and felt it "bogs down" in a maze of detail". Our city’s foggy streets and dramatic Victorians are a natural fit for movies—especially for tales of terror. I've amassed vast image archives that still need to be converted into posts, and there are many new findings that are still waiting to be photographed, so please be patient. Vertigo is one of my personal favorites and my love for the city started with it. Jesse Warr of A Friend in Town, who offers a Vertigo Tour, describes them this way: "Vertigo's locations link the eras, styles and times of San Francisco". Rather than Psycho, Vertigo, or The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock declared 1943’s Shadow of a Doubt his favorite of his own films.