The “Psycho” Car Dealership

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While putting together a list of spooky-type locales to stalk during my Haunted Hollywood month a couple of weeks ago, I decided to peruse through fave book James Dean Died Here: The Locations of America’s Pop Culture Landmarks by Chris Epting for a little inspiration.  And, let me tell you, I just about died of excitement when I saw a blurb about the North-Hollywood-area car dealership that appeared in the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock classic Psycho. In the blurb, Epting mentioned that not only was the place still standing, but that it was also still a car dealership – over fifty years later!  How incredibly cool is that?!?  So because Psycho is arguably one of the most well-known and best-loved horror movies of all time, I decided that I just had to include the location in my Haunted Hollywood postings and dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to the Valley to stalk it a few days later.

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In Psycho, Marion Crane (aka Jamie Lee Curtis’ mother, Janet Leigh), who is on the run from the police after having stolen $40,000 in cash from her boss in Arizona, stops by the supposed-Bakersfield-area “California Charlie’s Used Car Lot” in order to trade her car in for one with California plates.  While there, her brusque, hurried attitude causes California Charlie (aka John Anderson) to say his famous line, “Well, it’s the first time the customer ever high-pressured the salesman.”  At the time of the filming, the dealership was known as Harry Maher’s Used Car Lot and, because the Ford Motor Company was a sponsor of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Maher was required to swap out his real life inventory with a supply of Fords for the one-day shoot.  Hitchcock was apparently such a perfectionist that, according to a fabulous article written on The Cabinet website, he sent assistant director Hilton A. Green all the way to Bakersfield to photograph real-life used car salesmen in order to see their clothing so that California Charlie’s costume would be realistic.  He also commissioned Psycho screenwriter Joseph Stefano to observe car salesmen while writing the script so that Charlie’s dialogue would be legitimate.  Talk about attention to detail!

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Also according to The Cabinet article, the bathroom scene, in which Marion takes $700 out of her purse in order to pay for her new car, was not filmed on location at Harry Maher’s Used Car Lot, as the restroom there was too small to fit an entire camera crew.  Hitch instead decided to shoot that brief scene at Universal Studios, on what I am assuming was just a set that was built on a soundstage.

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Today, Harry Maher’s Used Car Lot is home to MINI of Universal City and it, sadly, does not look much like it did in 1960 when Psycho was filmed.

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Because the lot has changed so considerably over the years, it was hard to discern the exact spot where filming took place.  But if I had to venture a guess, I would say that the California Charlie’s scene was shot in the area denoted with a pink rectangle in the above aerial view.  And I am fairly certain that the building denoted with a blue arrow was not in existence at the time that Psycho was filmed.

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It is my guess that the screen capture and photograph pictured above show the same exact area of the lot.  I believe that the California Charlie’s sales office is now the MINI dealership’s service office . . .

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. . . and that the door shown in the screen capture above is in pretty much the same location as the door denoted with a pink arrow in the photograph.

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I am also fairly certain that the MINI showroom was built in the portion of the lot that Marion walked through in Psycho . . .

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. . . and that the above images show the exact same view, albeit 50 years apart.  Even though the property has changed so drastically in the five-plus decades since the filming of Psycho took place, I was still absolutely elated to be standing on such hallowed ground.  The thought that Alfred Hitchcock had once been in the same spot I was now stalking was literally mind-blowing.  So incredibly cool!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: MINI of Universal City, aka the Psycho car dealership, is located at 4270 Lankershim Boulevard in North Hollywood.  You can visit the dealership’s official website here.

The “Doppelganger” Mansion

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Another location from the 1993 thriller Doppelganger that I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to stalk this past weekend was the mansion where Holly Gooding (aka Drew Barrymore) grew up in the flick.  I found this locale, once again, thanks to Tony, my friend and fellow stalker who has the amazing Flickr photostream which I mentioned yesterday.  Incredibly enough, Tony has somehow managed to track down almost every single location featured in Doppelganger and he was kind enough to share them all with me so that I could blog about them during my Haunted Hollywood month well, every location that is except for the supposed-Arcadia-area Our Lady of Mercy Psychiatric Institute which I have now become just a wee bit obsessed with finding.  But I digress.  Anyway, last weekend, after stopping by the apartment building featured in the movie, the GC and I headed a short two miles north to Los Feliz to do some stalking of the mansion.

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The Doppelganger mansion is featured twice in the flick.  It first pops up in the scene in which Holly and her new roommate, struggling mystery writer Patrick Highsmith (aka George Newbern), meet with Holly’s family lawyer, Mike Wallace (aka George Maharis), in order to get the keys to her former home which has been locked up and sealed since her father’s murder four years prior.  While there, Patrick says that the abode is “right out of a Bette Davis movie” – a line which I, of course, loved.  Winking smile

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The large, English-country-style abode later pops up in the movie’s climactic, rather odd, and definitely spooky final scene in which Holly returns to her childhood home in the middle of the night to confront her evil doppelganger and finally end the nightmare in which she has been living.

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Patrick, of course, follows Holly and, carrying a baseball bat, climbs up the side of the house and through a second story window in the hopes that he can save her.

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I believe that the interior of the mansion that was shown in the movie was just a set and not the home’s real life interior.

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According to fave website Zillow, the Doppelganger mansion, which was originally built in 1923, boasts 5 bedrooms, 2 baths, and 3,500 square feet of living space, although I would have guessed it to be much, much larger.  And amazingly, the property still looks almost exactly the same today as it did 18 years ago when Doppelganger was filmed.  Even the three large circular trees which flank the home’s front door and front window still look exactly the same.   Love it!

Big THANK YOU to fellow stalker Tony for finding this location!   You can check out Tony’s FANTASTIC Flickr photostream, which features countless filming locations, here.

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: The Doppelganger mansion is located at 2421 Glendower Avenue in the Los Feliz section of Los AngelesDonna Martin’s house from the B.Y.O.B. episode of Beverly Hills, 90210 is located just two doors south of the Doppelganger mansion at 2405 Glendower Avenue.  And the so-called “Los Feliz Murder House”, which I blogged about back in January, is located just around the corner at 2475 Glendower Place.

The Mills View House from “Picket Fences”

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Well, my fellow stalkers, it is finally that time of year again, the month I look forward to all year long – October!  With it comes fall leaves, cooler temperatures, and my favorite holiday of them all, Halloween.  And you know what that means – I will once again be devoting the entire month of blog posts to locations having to do with Haunted Hollywood!  First up is the Mills View house, a Monrovia-area property that I learned about way back in March from a journalist named Toni Momberger who interviewed me for an Inland Valley Daily Bulletin newspaper article she was writing about famous movie homes.  Toni told me that she had toured the huge, Victorian-style abode as part of her research for the article and she was shocked to discover that I had never before heard of the place.  As fate would have it, the house had been featured prominently in not one, but two spooky productions over the years, so I figured it would be the perfect start to my Haunted Hollywood theme and I dragged the Grim Cheaper right on out to stalk it a few weeks back.

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The 5-bedroom, 2-bath, 3,140-square-foot Mills View house, which was built in 1887 by architects Luther Reed Blair and Uriah Zimmerman, was originally situated on a 5-acre plot of land on what was then the corner of Banana Avenue (now Hillcrest Boulevard) and Melrose Avenue.  The Eastlake-Victorian-style home was commissioned by William N. Monroe, the founder of Monrovia, as a wedding gift for his son, Milton Monroe, and his new bride, Mary Nevada.  Construction on the property began in May of 1887, shortly after Milton and his wife were married, and was completed a mere seven months later.  Sadly, the Monroes divorced a short time after tying the knot and ended up selling their wedding home to Colonel John H. Mills and his wife, Elizabeth Cook Mills, in 1893.  The Mills dubbed their new residence “Mills View” because on a clear day the island of Catalina was supposedly visible from one of the third floor windows.  Unfortunately, Colonel Mills passed away only three months after moving into the home and it went through several ownership changes after Elizabeth subsequently died in 1905.  Mills View, which boasts numerous stained glass windows, a third floor attic, hardwood flooring throughout, and five fireplaces with original tilework, became a Monrovia City Landmark on June 4, 1996.

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According to this Monrovia Patch article, Mills View has appeared in over 20 productions since 1980 alone. Sadly though, I know of only two – both of which, as I mentioned above, fit the thriller genre.  And the property definitely does give off a spooky vibe in person – I think primarily due to its gargantuan size – so it is not very hard to see why location scouts have flocked to it over the years.

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In the Season 1 Halloween-themed episode of fave show Picket Fences titled “Remembering Rosemary”, Mills View was where Rosemary Bauer committed suicide ten years prior by jumping out of a third-floor window, and where Sheriff Jimmy Brock (aka Tom Skerritt) and his deputies Maxine Stewart (aka Lauren Holly) and Kenny Lacos (aka Costas Mandylor) returned to investigate the case after deciding to re-open it a few days before Halloween.

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I am fairly certain that the real life interior of the house, which you can see some photographs of here, was used in the episode.

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Mills View was also the primary location used in the 1986 horror flick House.  In the movie, it was the haunted property that mystery-writer Roger Cobb (aka William Katt) inherited from his Aunt Elizabeth (aka Susan French).  According to the House production notes, for the onsite filming, which lasted two weeks, production designer Gregg Fonseca repainted the exterior of the property and  added Victorian gingerbread detailing, a few spires, a wrought-iron fence, and a sidewalk.  At the rear of the residence, he covered up the home’s real life clapboard siding with a fake brick edifice and added some much-needed landscaping.

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No filming took place inside of the actual home, though.  For all of the interior scenes, a replica of the house, which included two full stories, a living room, a den, a staircase, and three upstairs bedrooms, was built on a soundstage at Ren Mar Studios in Hollywood.

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And I am fairly certain that the pool shown in the movie was either a fake built on the property solely for the filming or that a second location was used, as Mills View does not currently appear to have a pool.

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Two very lucky British House fans were given a personalized tour of Mills View last year and wrote a great blog post about it which you can check out here.

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On a Halloween side note – I was finally able to dig up a photograph of me dressed up as Agent Dana Scully for Halloween one year during college, which I had mentioned in the blog post I wrote about meeting David Duchovny back in June.  The only picture I could find, though, was not a very good one as my eyes are closed in it.  Ah well.  That is my good friend Alex, who was dressed up a Parrothead, posing with me.

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While going through boxes at my parents’ new house looking for the Dana Scully picture, I also stumbled upon my Fox Mulder doll, which I could NOT have been more excited about!  I am so going to have to stalk DD again and get him to sign the doll for me.  How incredibly cool would that be??

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  Smile

Stalk It: Mills View, from the movie House and the “Remembering Rosemary” episode of Picket Fences, is located at 329 Melrose Avenue in Monrovia.

The “Hand That Rocks The Cradle” House

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Another location that I stalked while visiting the Pacific Northwest this past May was the gorgeous Victorian-style residence where the Bartel family – Claire (aka Annabella Sciorra), Michael (aka Matt McCoy), Emma (aka an absolutely adorable pre-Californication Madeline Zima), and baby Joey (aka Eric, Jennifer, and Ashley Melander)  – and their nanny, Peyton Flanders (aka Rebecca De Mornay), lived in the 1992 thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.  Even though I had actually only seen the movie once – almost two decades ago when it was first released in theatres – the Bartel home made such an impression on me that an image of it has been imprinted on my mind ever since.  It is absolutely amazing to me how iconic the dwelling still is all these years later.  Even more amazing to me is the fact that the home pictured above wasn’t actually the producer’s first choice for the filming of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.  They originally approached the owners of a different Tacoma-area Victorian residence – one that was chosen seven years later to stand in for the Stratford family home in the 1999 teen comedy 10 Things I Hate About You.  But because The Hand filmmakers wanted to paint over some interior woodwork, cut holes in several walls, and temporarily remove all of the real life furnishings and decor, the 10 Things homeowners turned down the offer and a different property located just over a mile to the west was chosen instead.  And the rest, as they say, is history.  There’s a quote from the now-defunct Movieline Magazine that I’ve had pinned up on my bulletin board for over twenty years now which reads, “It is always fascinating to learn how an actress came to play a role in which she is so perfect for the part that you can’t imagine anyone else ever having been considered.”  Well, the same can be said for houses, and it especially holds true for The Hand That Rocks the Cradle house – I honestly can’t imagine any other residence ever having been considered for the Bartel home.

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I am very happy to report that The Hand That Rocks the Cradle house looks remarkably the same today as it did eighteen years ago when it appeared in the movie.  The residence has been painted a different color since that time and there is a quite a bit more foliage surrounding the property now, but otherwise it is still completely recognizable.

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Even the light post/address marker located near the front porch is still there in real life, although the top of it is shaped a bit differently now.

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The backside of the house and the garage area also appeared in the flick . . .

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. . . although both have been remodeled quite a bit since filming took place.

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The real life interior of the home was also used extensively in the filming.

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Amazingly enough, the owners of the house decided to leave the famous Hand That Rocks the Cradle greenhouse, which played a pivotal role in the movie and which was built solely for the filming, intact after the flick had wrapped, which I think is just about the coolest thing ever!  Even cooler still is the fact that there is a scene in the movie in which Michael calls 911 and says to the police, “We live at 808 Yakima”, which is the home’s actual address.  I love it when real life details like that are included in a script!

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In real life, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle house, which was originally built in 1891, boasts 4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, and a whopping 6,105 square feet of living space.  And while the residence is absolutely beautiful in person, I prefer the white color it was painted in the movie, as opposed to the yellow color it is currently painted today.

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On a celebrity-sighting side-note – While doing some grocery shopping this past Sunday afternoon, I happened to run into actress Kimmy Robertson, who played Cathy in fave movie Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead.  I just about died when I realized who she was and, despite the Grim Cheaper’s objections, followed her outside to ask if she wouldn’t mind taking a photograph with me.  Kimmy was SUPER, SUPER nice and even chatted with us about Don’t Tell Mom for a bit.  I think she found me a bit odd when I told her how upset I was that the All American Burger on Sunset Boulevard – which stood in for Clown Dog restaurant in the movie – had recently been torn down, but she and her dog Cleo happily posed for a pic with me nonetheless.  So incredibly cool!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!  🙂

Stalk It: The Hand That Rocks the Cradle house is located at 808 North Yakima Avenue in Tacoma, Washington.

More Halloween!

Last year, during our annual Haunted Halloween tour, I dragged my boyfriend to the two houses where Jamie Lee Curtis and her friend babysit in the movie Halloween. The final action sequence in the movie takes place at these two houses, which are located across the street from each other. Even though I had never seen the movie Halloween, being that it was the season, I just had to stalk it. 🙂 I seriously need to rent this movie!

The first house I dragged my boyfriend to was the Doyle Family home where Jamie Lee Curtis babysits Tommy and Lindsay Doyle at the end of the movie. The Doyle home is a very cute house and it actually looks like it should be located in the Pasadena area. Being that the majority of the filming of Halloween actually took place in Pasadena, I am very surprised that the producers didn’t just find a home there to use. These location decisions always fascinate me and I would love to find out the reasoning behind them! Someday I really need to sit down with a location scout to pick their brain!

Anyway, the next house we stalked is located directly across the street from the Doyle house. It is the house where Jamie Lee’s best friend Annie babysits and also where she meets her untimely end. From what I can tell from the screen captures, this house looks very different from how it appeared in Halloween. While the front porch area is still recognizable from the movie, it appears that the home was somewhat modernized in recent years and a side garage was added. I so hate it when movie homes are remodeled! Filming locations should really be designated historical landmarks so that the exteriors are protected and forced to remain the same for eternity. 🙂 I mean I think I would seriously cry if anyone ever remodeled the 90210 house! LOL

Until next time, Happy Stalking! 🙂

Stalk It: The home where Jamie Lee Curtis babysits is located at 1530 North Orange Grove Avenue in Hollywood. The house where her friend Annie babysits is located directly across the street at 1537 North Orange Grove.

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.

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.

Halloween

Hi, my name is Lindsay Blake and I have never seen the movie Halloween. I know, I know – it’s like sacrilege or something, especially since Halloween is my favorite holiday. I’ve also never seen any of the Friday, the 13th movies. But I’ve always been kind of a scaredy cat, so as a teenager I was way too afraid to watch any sort of horror flick. I fully intend to rent and finally watch them this Halloween season, though. In the meantime, even though I have yet to see the movie, I did some Halloween stalking this past weekend. Halloween supposedly takes place in Haddonfield, Illinois, but in reality all of the filming was done in the L.A. area.

This weekend I set out to stalk Jamie Lee Curtis’ house from the movie, which is actually located in South Pasadena, not far from Michael Meyer’s childhood home and the Pretty In Pink house. In the movie, pretty much only a side view of the house is shown, so when we first drove up I didn’t recognize it at all. I actually thought we were in the wrong place, until I rounded the corner and saw the side of the house, which I am happy to report looks exactly the same as it did thirty years ago when filming took place.

The front of the home actually looks completely different than the side. The front of the house is a very cute, very typical South Pasadena style Craftsman home. The side of the house does not have any Craftsman features at all. It has more of a traditional American feel to it, so it was odd to see.

The next Halloween location I set out to stalk – the street where Jamie Lee Curtis and her friends walk home from school and Michael Meyes drives by in his station wagon – is also located in South Pasadena. The most recognizable part of the street where the girls walk is a large stone pillared half-wall located on a corner, which amazingly also looks EXACTLY the same thirty years later. Very cool!!! 🙂

Big THANKS to Mike from MovieShotsLA for the above screen captures! 🙂

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Jamie Lee Curtis’ house is located at 1115 Oxley Street, at the corner of Oxley Street and Fairview Avenue, in South Pasadena. The stone wall the girls walk by is located on the corner of Fairview Avenue and Highland Street, also in South Pasadena, just around the corner from Lady Heather’s house on CSI .