The vast majority of horror movies always tend to take place in either small rural towns or remote backwaters, because the setting lends itself much better to the genre than a bustling urban metropolis full of skyscrapers ever will, as anyone that’s seen Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan can surely attest to.
From A Nightmare on Elm Street‘s leafy suburbs to Friday the 13th‘s remote Camp Crystal Lake, countless iconic horrors have been set in locations not dissimilar to the ones that the target audience grew up in or around. For instance, John Carpenter’s 1978 classic Halloween unfolds in the fictional town of Haddonfield, Illinois, where murderer Michael Myers escapes from the local Smith’s Grove Sanitarium after fifteen years of incarceration.
Back on the loose, Michael returns to his childhood home and soon sets his sights on babysitter Laurie Strode, played by Jamie Lee Curtis in one of the genre’s most iconic performances. In a recent interview, the actress reflected on the movie and revealed that the majority of the exteriors were actually filmed in West Hollywood, and explained why the production needed to find the ideal location.
“It had to look like Illinois. We had to find a street that looked like a residential street that had houses opposite each other because what was crucial was the house that Laurie is babysitting in is directly opposite the house her friend is also babysitting. It was crucial so that the two houses be opposite each other, so they found this street in West Hollywood on Orange Grove Ave., two houses opposite each other, is where we shot the bulk of those scenes.”
The 61 year-old admitted that she still occasionally drives past the street where she shot her breakout role, which no doubt brings up some pretty nostalgic feelings. Of course, Curtis continues to play Laurie over 40 years on from Carpenter’s original, but fans will have to wait a while longer now to see Halloween Kills after the follow-up to David Gordon Green’s smash hit was pushed back to October 2021 as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic.
