Photographer Dedicates Their Whole Life To Tracking Down Movie Locations

You see, Sir Reginald Hargreeves’ mansion’s interior is really a studio set, but the exterior is very real, and you can find it at 4 King Street E. The city also features in the show’s time-travel shenanigans, and they didn’t need to change much to capture its nostalgic charm.

Remember the fight scene outside the Cash N Carry? It’s not in West Virginia, as the movie would have you believe, but Destrehan, Louisiana. Eisenberg’s not really a government assassin either. As far as we know.

The building in the photo is San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza, if you’re interested in visiting it yourself. Keep an eye on the trees though… they seem kinda suspicious. Is it just us, or did they move closer to the camera?

The City of Angels was originally called “El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula,” which translates to “The Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels on the River Porciúncula.”

In 2017’s It: Chapter One, the cast filmed the bullying scene at the West Montrose Covered Bridge in Ontario. It’s also called the Kissing Bridge because apparently a woman and her escort needed to share a kiss before crossing it.

It’s not the only famous franchise filmed there, though. It features in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, The A-Team and multiple Star Trek shows, too. In fact, it was used as a movie set as far back as 1935 for Werewolf of London’s Tibet scenes.

The bridge also has another name: the Batann-Corregidor Memorial Bridge. It has an important historical significance: the plaque on it bears the names of the brave WWII soldiers serving on the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor Island.

In case you were wondering, its name comes from the looming cliffs overhead, which are known as the Scarborough Bluffs. They’re incredibly dangerous to climb because they’re eroding, so if you’re in the area, perhaps just admire them from the beautiful beaches!

Ontario found a way. Rouge National Park is surrounded by a city, but the park itself is more akin to a forest wilderness, with a wild ecosystem including animals such as bears, raccoons, and even otters. Thankfully, evil clowns are not included.

In 2023 it hit media news because of its transformation into a ghost town. However, a mall Santa called Albert Sanchez kept it — and the Christmas spirit — alive a little longer by setting up shop there for some evening festivities.

JFK also has scenes in the Dallas City Hall garage basement, where Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald. The movie filmed on location for this, so you’re seeing the actual place where the historic events took place.

Her house is a real one, though it’s in Oregon, rather than Washington. And if you’re a Twilight megafan — or just fancy a unique experience — you can also rent it out and stay there for a vacation… though we can’t promise any dark romantic encounters. Sorry.

A lot of the movie was filmed in New Orleans, including the hotel Francis enters at the start of the movie. In real life it’s The Hilton New Orleans/St. Charles. Best not to order cake though. You don’t want to tempt fate!

In reality of course, the Black Church is a legitimate religious building. It was once a cathedral, but is now a place of worship for the Jesus the King Melkite Greek Catholic Church. You can see it on some of the promotional posters for In the Mouth of Madness, too.

Warner Bros Studio Tour Hollywood describes its menu as “a special blend of Central Perk coffee with new Friends-character-inspired beverages.” It’s bittersweet since Matthew Perry passed away, but his legacy lives on in Chandler Bing.

They continued, “These were kinda tough, as the game is far from being to scale and I was trying to match these to pre-existing shots I had. Overall though, I think they came out pretty decent!”

The rock band Radiohead also filmed the music video for their hit “High & Dry” there, too. There’s actually two versions of the video; the band filmed one for their resident British audience and another for us Americans across the pond.

The private women’s college has roughly 1,000 students, but it is perhaps more renowned as a filming location for a whole bunch of movies, including 1955’s A Man Called Peter, 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy, and more recently 2018’s Life of the Party — alongside Scream 2, of course.

There are some economic advantages, too: Toronto offers eligible expenses for filming companies, such as labor and equipment. It also offers tax credit for movie and TV productions and is easily accessible thanks to its frequent outgoing flights.

The industrial bridge in Gotham is Illinois’ Marshall Suloway Bridge in reality. Interestingly though, they chose to add some pretty convincing CGI work over the top of a real building to create the luxurious Wayne Tower.

June Osborne — portrayed by Elizabeth Moss — is a member of the resistance, trying to save her daughter and smuggle the oppressed across the Canadian border to freedom. Ironically though, scenes shot in the male-dominated fictional land of Gilead are really filmed in Canada!

Still, if you’re going to get stranded on an island, you could do worse than the idyllic paradise of Hawaii’s Kualoa Ranch. It’s been used to film 80-odd movies, including 1995’s Jumanji, 2017’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Jurassic Park, and Jurassic World!

As it turns out, the Scream 2 cast had to do their own detective work, too! They didn’t receive the last ten pages of the script until it came to film them, and they only found out the killer’s real identity on the last day of principal photography.

Come 1997, it was more than inspiration that linked them. You see, when filming began on the miniseries for The Shining, they actually shot on location! You can book a room there, but you’ll have to check your ax in at the door. You know, just in case!

In fact, they were so confident that Lost would be a hit, no expense was spared in creating the show. Its pilot was the most expensive ABC had ever put together, costing between $10 to $14 million, as opposed to the average $4 million for most TV pilot shows.

Yet despite Don’t Worry Darling’s retro futuristic aesthetics, that’s not set dressing: it’s just how Palm Springs looks. According to Visit Palm Springs, “Talented young visionary architects came to Palm Springs and interpreted modern architecture in a way that best suited the desert environment and leisure living.”

Reeves autographed a lawn sign reading “You’re breathtaking,” then tracked down the person who wrote it. It turned out to belong to a family; they not only got a visit from the celebrity, but also had a personal photo with him too!

Apparently, the crew built the whole galleon and filmed on it, but when the movie was over they didn’t know what to do with it. When it was offered to any takers, no one claimed it, so the vessel was scrapped.

It was used in 1995’s The Grass Harp, and again in 2002 for a TV movie called The Rosa Parks Story. This latter flick was obviously based on the famed and eventually world-changing actions of the titular Rosa.

Yet it wasn’t a ghostly encounter that got his imagination running. Instead, it was the distinctly liminal experience of being there while the hotel was closing for the season. It was the hostelry being run with a skeleton crew — not literally — that spawned The Shining.

Moore told GQ in 2022, “When I did things like … Watchmen, they were… trying to show that any attempt to realize these figures in any kind of realistic context will always be grotesque and nightmarish. But that doesn’t seem to be the message that people took from this. They seemed to think, uh, yeah, dark, depressing superheroes are, like, cool.”

In 2020 Thurber told StarNews, “I knew that they were shooting Iron Man 3 there, so I figured if it’s good enough for Robert Downey Jr., then it’s probably good enough for us. And it worked great. I was so happy to be in Wilmington.”

In actual fact, a script was written in the late 2000s, but when you add in rewrites, distributor problems, and technical issues, the movie had its fair share of hiccups. Still you can’t keep good men down, and Bill and Ted finally returned with their daughters two decades later than first planned.

If you really love the MCU movies, then you can stay there as well, because it’s available to rent. Don’t expect the interiors to match the movie though: they were shot on a soundstage. You can’t have everything!

Producer Christopher Landon said in the official production notes, “When we went back to the hospital in Louisiana that we’d used for the last film, we found it was gutted. So, we had to painstakingly recreate hallways, hospital rooms, everything.”

Take New York’s Empire State Building, for example. It looks like the genuine article, but when she couldn’t access the building itself she had its upper deck remade on a former naval base. Other scenes were shot there too when sound stages were unavailable.

You can also follow the “Twilight Trail” on the inn’s grounds, though you’re more likely to find rock climbers than bloodsuckers. Just stay on the path unless you’re well equipped for the vertical journey.

During the shooting scene where Ben Affleck’s character Rafe flees three Japanese planes, one of the genuine pilots hit a palm tree and crashed. Luckily he walked away with nothing more serious than a broken finger.

They even opted to film the New York sets there, because it was cheaper than actually filming on location in NYC. The crew also visited Scotland and England for several scenes. Obviously, they couldn’t get through the cloaking tech to film on location in Wakanda, though!

For example, The Overlook Hotel was recreated from blueprints director Mike Flannigan got his hands on, and lookalike actors replaced the originals. Meanwhile, an aerial shot of the island and two shots of the mountain road drive were reused, albeit digitally enhanced to lend them extra atmosphere.