Things in Thrillers
Things you might not have noticed when you were on the edge of your seat.
Shutter Island (2010)
The eponymous Shutter Island in Martin Scorsese’s 2010 psychological thriller was actually put together from a variety of locations, including some computer-generated scenery.
The shots of the harbour, and of the whole island during the ferry’s approach at the beginning, use Peddocks island in Boston Harbour (although even this has been enhanced in the shot above, with CGI adding higher mountains and cliffs than exist on the real island).
Peddocks Island was used by the US military as a harbour defence fort (‘Fort Andrews’) until after World War Two. There are several abandoned military buildings left over, and some of these are visible in the early shots of the characters’ arrival.
The island has camping and swimming facilities, although if you’ve seen the film, you may not be too keen on taking the family on a waterside holiday.
Brighton Rock (1947)
In Brighton Rock, just before gangster Pinkie Brown goes to record his charming gramophone message for new wife Rose, we see Rose operating a slot machine.
The machine, apparently (and logically) called ‘The Bell Ringers’, was operated by dropping in an old English penny, and played a short mechanical performance of figures in a church ringing bells.
‘The Bell Ringers’ was designed by German Charles Ahrens, a well-known name in the world of penny arcades. His model ‘The Executioner’ turned up in The Wench is Dead, an episode of Inspector Morse.
These moving models are now highly collectable, and there are several museums that specialise in them. National Jukebox have restored a broken-down Bell Ringers, and there’s a short video of it in action below.
The Birds (1963)
In The Birds, right after stopping in the street to respond to a boy’s wolf whistle, Tippi Hedren goes into a pet store. As she enters, out comes Alfred Hitchcock, along with two dogs.
The dogs were apparently Hitchcock’s own, although for director’s pets, they weren’t particularly well trained. Despite their fleeting screen time, one of the dogs still finds time to stop and look right at the camera:
The Birds (1963)
Near the beginning of The Birds, when Tippi Hedren is walking down the street (having just passed the San Francisco poster), she turns to acknowledge a wolf-whistle from a passing boy. This is an in-joke.
Hitchcock had first seen Hedren in a commercial for Sego diet drink made by Pet Milk. There was a shot in that commercial where she turns and smiles in response to a wolf whistle, and Hitchcock decided to reference it here.
The Birds (1963)
After a couple of establishing shots showing Tippi Hedren walking through San Francisco’s Union Square in The Birds, the actress walks behind a large poster advertising the city (and clueing in anybody who still doesn’t know where the scene is set). The poster serves another purpose, however: it hides a cut.
Before Tippi Hedren walks behind the poster (above), we’re there in San Francisco. By the time she emerges (below), we’ve moved to a studio set, including the exterior of the pet shop.
It’s nicely done, but the lighting is a dead giveaway. You can’t really see it in these stills, but when you watch the scene, look at the shadows on the ground: they’re hardly visible in the location shooting in natural light, but on set, the actors cast multiple, well defined shadows.
