The Most Unconvincing Film Locations Of All Time

Yeah, the contrast is just so weird.

 

Well, that was the south side of Chicago...

 

Well, in that shot you could have active volcanos and tsunami waves in the background and no one would notice it wasn't Kansas . . . Half the audience, anyway.

 

which IS the baddest part of town.

 

Yes, the Georgetown metro stop is an all-time howler. The fact that it still hasn't been built -- more than 30 years after the movie -- is peak NIMBY.

 

The series "Monk" took place in and around San Francisco (except for a few "travel" episodes), but only the pilot was filmed there. For the rest of the series, we had L.A. playing the role, except for bumpers filmed in San Francisco (and all at once, then parceled out...with the actors often wearing the same outfits from episode to episode). Periodically, a gas-powered cable car (sans cable) would bounce along the street in the background for extra realness.

Then we had NBC's Thursday nights in New York...via L.A. "Friends", "Seinfeld", "Mad About You", all tales of a bunch of wacky cosmopolitans occupying New York City on its sunniest day ever.

Would any of these shows' popularity have suffered if they were just set in L.A.? It's not as if the plots relied upon the backdrop being anything other than a contemporary American city.

 

first thing my dad (vet) said is 'good film but that wasnt vietnam' (I thought the burnt out wasteland looked right - but I was 16 - in a way it works as a break from the usual jungle scenes we got at that time - platoon etc... weird that Kubrick was such a stickler with Barry Lyndon

 

This is just my take on it, but in his last three films, (those two and The Shining), Kubrick used sound stages heavily (contrasted to Barry Lyndon's on-location shooting). This, coincidentally or not, corresponded with the director becoming more reclusive (to the press and public).

It comes across as if he was increasingly creating his own reality, as a director, rather than trying to depict a real place, something he arguably started with 2001. In other words, I think he knew full well he wasn't depicting the real Vietnam (of the 70s conflict) or New York (of the present). It was more his unique, subjective vision of those places, with no basis in reality. In The Shining, the interior of the Overlook Hotel makes no linear sense if you try to map it, and I think Kubrick fully knew that, too.

 

The train wreck in The Fugitive was filmed in North Carolina. In the movie, the wreck happened in the mountains of Illinois.

 

Cleveland for Stuttgart, Germany in The Avengers. ("Hey, isn't that Higbee's Department Store behind Loki?")

 

The '80s Italian police thriller Black Cobra (starring Fred "The Hammer" Williamson) is apparently supposed to be set in New York, judging from the stock footage of the Brooklyn Bridge and NYC traffic that accompanies the opening credits, but the rest of the film was obviously shot in a suburb of Rome.

Even better, if memory serves, the opening credits of Black Cobra 2 uses stock footage of Chicago over its opening credits, not New York.

 

In Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me the scene of Carnaby Street, London with Austin, Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach was filmed on the backlot of Universal Studios Hollywood. You can see the Hollywood Hills in the distance.

 

Major League used Milwaukee County Stadium in place of Cleveland's stadium.

How about Little Big League using Comiskey for Yankee Stadium? Or Naked Gun using Dodger Stadium for the Angels?

 

Fun Fact: This set was destroyed over the course of shooting that deathless classic Ilsa: She-Wolf of the SS. Apparently the owners were planning to have the set razed, and figured they'd make some money on it by letting some other filmmakers pay for the right to do the job.

 

To me the whole movie feels off as well, but I'm sure it's deliberate. You're not quite sure these things are really happening. Even the dialogue is off. No one seems to be participating in the same conversation, exactly.

 

Obviously the winner is Monty Python's "Scott of the Antarctic":

 

Michael Caine was cast in part because of his experience in the Korean War where he had served as a soldier. He later said, "My function as a technical adviser was completely ignored during the making of the film. For example, I advised the crew to spread the troops wide as the latter advanced, which was militarily correct, but they replied that they didn't have a lens of sufficient width to take it all in! I also pointed out that the officer would have removed his signs of rank and worn a hat, the same as the other men, to disguise which one was in command, but George [Baker] was allowed to go into battle with all badges and hat gleaming, every inch an officer. In a real fight, he would never have lasted all of ten seconds."[4]

Caine added, "The most glaring mistake that I never brought to their notice was that Portugal did not in the least resemble Korea; if anything, Wales was more similar. I did not say anything because I wanted to stay in Portugal - I could go to Wales at any old time."[4]

Caine later recalled, "I had eight lines in that picture, and I screwed up six of them."​

 

Anyone who's familiar with the topographical parking lot that is the province of Saskatchewan might've noticed something amiss about the '40s movie of that name.

 

Marnie (1964)

 

It’s also from an earlier set of shots of the spacewalk. In this ABC edit of the film, Kirk talks to McCoy (still inside the ship) in this suit. Then you see him drifting outside this door in the same suit. Then a little while later he catches the unconscious Spock while both are wearing the redesigned suits with rounder helmets.

 

I’ve watched The Shining far too many times and there are a few details, like the hotel fire notices being British, some of the telephone directories in the background being British Yellow Pages directories that fit well with the film being shot at a UK studio. I still love the film, but there are just a few odd details that aren’t quite right. I don’t suppose Kubrick expected people to be watching his films multiple times on a big HD screen when he made them!

The one thing in The Shining that REALLY annoys me is the bit where Jack looks down on the model of the hotel maze and it fades into the real maze. The maze is so ridiculously huge it rather spoils the effect. Off topic, I know...

 

spot on.

 

Truth be told, I don’t think Hitch was ever trying to be realistic in any of his process shots either. It was rare that he shot on location and when he did it was designed to add a level of reality separate from his other films. There are lots of shots in Marnie that don’t look realistic (Hendren riding the horse for example) so it was part of a “look” to suggest reality rather than look “real”.

I’d also take into account that back then, this could be as good as it gets when it comes to a process shot (although the painting could be improved on a bit) as the lighting on set doesn’t match what is suggested in the process shot.

 

I don't know, I've heard this defence of Marnie before -- that it wasn't meant to be realistic -- but Hitchcock's process shots were never as bad in his other movies.

 

“The Waltons” locales irked me as a child (and it was my first time realizing movies aren’t actually filmed where the action occurs). I kept saying to my parents, “That looks nothing like West Virginia!”