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Shane Gorski under Creative Commons
Settings in movies tend to be places the average person doesn’t spend a lot of time in, be it a beach in the South of France, or in outer space, or elsewhere. The exotic nature of a particular scene stimulates the imagination, and pulls the viewer in deeper. Our interest perks up when the characters on-screen find themselves in strange locales; and one of these locales is the dreaded, beloved, and mysterious elevator shaft.
Found almost exclusively in the action/thriller genres, scenes involving elevator shafts take us into the forbidden area above and below the cars we generally ride in when traveling tall buildings. While it’s true that the concept of a mechanical lift has been around for centuries, modern elevators (and the dangers associated with them) have sparked the imaginations of filmmakers since the days of black and white. And although the typical elevator shaft is not a grandiose space that would allow for such dramatics as Hollywood would like us to think, many timeless classics have portrayed them as such. Let’s take a look at some.
Death by Shaft
In John Farrow’s classic, The Big Clock, Charles Laughton’s character Janoth plummets to his death when he steps into an open shaft; this is after killing his accuser, so it’s justified. Things don’t end up so satisfying for Emilio Estevez’s
character in Mission Impossible‘s opening sequence, as the car he’s hiding atop takes him to the top of the shaft, where he meets a steely, gruesome end.
There’s even a horror movie starring Naomi Watts about a killer, evil, possessed elevator called The Shaft: YouTube Link
Hop on board, and hit the jump button for more elevator shaftness.
Screenwriter John Cox posted a guest blog at Frankensteinia about his search for the site of the only location shot in the 1931 movie Frankenstein.
Where did Universal shoot the famous Maria meets the Monster scene in the classic 1931 Frankenstein? For years I could never get a straight answer. Some claimed it was shot on the Universal backlot along with the rest of the movie. But it’s clear from the size of the lake and the rugged mountains in the distance that this can’t be true.
Cox found that the scene was filmed at Malibou Lake and set off to find the exact location of the scene, despite the knowledge that it was now in private hands, and that after almost 80 years, it might not look the same. But he was surprised at what he found! Link -via Metafilter
