Laurie Strode’s House from “Halloween”

A couple of months ago, fellow stalker Mikey, from the Mike the Fanboy website, clued me into an INCREDIBLY cool little bit of Haunted Hollywood stalking information that I had not been previously aware of.  Apparently, the real life owners of the home that stood in for the Strode residence in the 1978 classic horror film Halloween are so extremely stalker-friendly that they provide a supply of plastic pumpkins on their front porch all year long for fans of the movie to pose with in photographs.  Well, as you can imagine, I was absolutely bowled over with excitement upon hearing this news and decided that, even though I had previously stalked the Strode house and blogged about it briefly way back in October of 2008, that it was most-definitely worthy of a re-visit.  So I dragged the Grim Cheaper out to South Pasadena to do just that this past weekend.

And, sure enough, as soon as we arrived at the home, I spotted an assortment of plastic foam pumpkins sitting on a chair on the property’s front porch, along with a framed sign.

That sign reads, “Yes this is the scene with Jamie Lee Curtis from the 1978 Halloween.  You may borrow the pumpkin.  Have a good time.”

The sign also includes a still from the movie so that fans can refer to it while posing on the front walkway.  How incredibly cool are these homeowners???  Big, huge, Andre-the-Giant-sized props go out to them for embracing the cinematic history of their residence and allowing stalkers to share in some of the fun.  If I owned a famous movie home, you can bet your bottom dollar that I would be doing this same, exact thing.  LOVE IT!  LOVE IT!  LOVE IT!

The supposed-Haddonfield, Illinois Strode residence was featured several times in Halloween.   It first appeared in the beginning of the movie in the scene in which Laurie Strode (aka Jamie Lee Curtis) is reminded by her father, Morgan Strode (aka Peter Griffith), to drop a key off at the “Meyer’s place”.  According to the fabulous website The Cabinet, that particular scene was the very first of the entire movie to be shot.  And according to IMDB’s Halloween trivia page, director John Carpenter hired Jamie Lee Curtis, in what was her very first movie role, as a sort-of nod to Alfred Hitchcock who had cast Jamie’s mother, Janet Leigh, in the iconic role of Marion Crane in Psycho.  In another homage to the legendary Hitchcock classic, Carpenter also named the character of Michael Meyer’s psychiatrist “Sam Loomis” after Marion’s lover in Psycho.

The Strode residence next shows up in the scene in which Laurie returns home from school, after having been accidentally scared by Sherriff Leigh Bracken (aka Charles Cyphers).

And finally, it appears in the scene in which Laurie waits, pumpkin in hand, to be picked up by her friend Annie Brackett (aka Nancy Kyes) to go baby-sitting.

It is that scene that the homeowners allow you to recreate with their fake pumpkins.  SO INCREDIBLY COOL!

Amazingly, the Strode residence looks pretty much exactly the same today as it did in 1978 when Halloween was filmed.  The north-facing side of the house is the area that appeared in the movie.

For whatever reason, the east-facing side, which is pictured above, was not seen in Halloween.  According to fave website Zillow, in real life the property is not a single-family home, but a multi-occupancy dwelling which features three separate units.

And while I cannot say for certain that the home’s actual interior was used in the filming, I am guessing that it was.

On a very random side-note – while doing some research on Halloween earlier today, I almost fell off my chair upon discovering that Kyle Richards (star of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, whom I loathe more than there are words in the English language to express – I honestly do not think there has ever been a bigger b*tch in the history of reality television, but I digress) had played Lindsey Wallace, the little girl whom Annie babysat, in the 1978 flick.

And on a Halloween side-note – as the GC and I were driving away from the Strode residence, we spotted a house that was decorated beyond belief for the upcoming holiday!

As you can see above, the amount of detail that went into the embellishment of the home is utterly incredible!

I was shocked to discover that the fence which runs along the perimeter of the property and reads “cemetery” above the gate was actually just a prop!  I mean, I, of course, realized the “cemetery” part was decoration, but the entire fence?  WOW!

And it was not until I was about to leave that I realized the home’s brick façade was also just a decoration!  As you can see in the above photograph, the entire front of the residence has been wrapped in some sort of plastic covering.  Talk about going all out!!!  If I ever have a house, you better believe that this is what it is going to look like every year come Halloween!

Until next time, Happy Stalking!

Stalk It: Laurie Strode’s house from the original Halloween movie is located at 1115 Oxley Street in South Pasadena.  The massively-decorated-for-Halloween home that we stumbled upon is located right around the corner at 1130 Diamond Avenue in South Pasadena.