Spooky settings in Northern California
afflicted character and depicting him terrorized by a ride in a glassed-in elevator as it rises in the Hyatt Regency’s atrium.)
Hitchcock told Francois Truffaut during their famous interview that he chose the Empire Hotel at 940 Sutter St. for Judy (Kim Novak) to live in because of a green neon sign flashing continually outside. Against this tawdry back light, Scottie engages in a kind of necrophilia, passionately embracing Judy only after he’s made her over to look exactly like a dead woman.
A series of black-andwhite film noirs shot in the city capture the terror of an individual faced with an outside menace. In “D.O.A.” (1950), a small-town accountant (Edmond O’Brien) spending a wild weekend in San Francisco is poisoned at a jazz club and given only hours to live. In one memorable scene, he’s shown desperately running down Market Street in a private panic.
In “Sudden Fear” (1952), Joan Crawford appears as a wealthy San Francisco playwright who discovers the talentless actor that she’s married to is trying to kill her. The city’s steep streets are used effectively to create an ominous mood.
Lee Remick is a bank clerk terrorized by a murderous blackmailer with an asthmatic wheeze in “Experiment in Terror” (1962). The villain is chased through a Broadway nightclub and a Crocker Bank branch before a final showdown at a night game at Candlestick Park.
More recently, “Zodiac” (2007), based on true events, chillingly captures the arbitrariness of senseless acts. In a scene shot from above to give an overview of downtown San Francisco, we watch a serial killer grab a cab at random and shoot the driver in the head as they arrive at a Presidio Heights destination.
Northern California has proved fertile ground for other scary films, most famously “The Birds” (1963). Hitchcock used Bodega Bay for his story of a San Francisco socialite (Tippi Hendren) who travels to a coastal town where she becomes victim to attacks from hundreds, possibly thousands, of birds.
Francis Ford Coppola’s “Twixt” (2011) stars Val Kilmer as a washedup horror novelist who pulls into a small town to peddle his latest book and becomes involved in solving the murder of a local girl. Coppola shot in Clearlake, Kelseyville and Napa, near where he lives. “Twixt” proved to be jinxed: It wasn’t distributed to theaters in America, and Coppola has not directed a feature film since.
A robust subgenre of San Francisco sci-fi films, including “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” (1986), “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” (2011), “Godzilla” (2014) and “San Andreas” (2015) are predicated on the destruction of San Francisco. The Golden Gate Bridge is particularly susceptible.
At the other end of the spectrum from big-budget disaster films are inexpensively made indie horror movies. They rarely show in theaters but can be viewed online and at horror festivals like San Francisco’s Another Hole in the Head Film Festival, currently in progress.
Festival director George Kaskanlian Jr. says that in a program of 40 indie horror films, typically “only one or two” are set in San Francisco. He offers a reason: “The city is so expensive you don’t have time for passion projects. They don’t pay the bills. People aren’t here to make movies. They are here to make apps.”
Director Christopher Coppola (nephew of Francis and brother of Nicolas Cage), however, felt compelled to set “Sacred Blood”— his 2015 gore fest featuring a vampire who seduces lonely men in bars — in these parts.
“I went to school in San Francisco and turned 21 here. It was a lonely safe haven for me,” he said. “‘Sacred Blood’ has a lot to do with my own feelings back then — the latenight walks through the city, the fog, loneliness and yet acceptance. It’s my bittersweet, atmospheric valentine to the city.”