Virginia is for Lovers, D.C. is for Cannibals
As the air gets chillier and the days get shorter, D.C. residents’ thoughts turn to Halloween and tales of the weird and the macabre – like hearings on congressional page scandals and polls predicting midterm election outcomes. OK, so Washington, D.C., is not the first city to come to mind when you think of horror and suspense. It doesn’t even compare to New Orleans' Gothic backdrops or London’s fog-filled streets and alleyways. But on the silver screen, D.C. has played host to a veritable who's who of madmen and monsters, as well as some fine extraterrestrial mayhem.
Everybody knows that Georgetown was the setting of the 1973 horror masterpiece The Exorcist and its two sequels. You can still visit the site where Father Karras tossed himself down a flight of stairs after being possessed by the same pea-soup spitting, crucifix-loving demon previously taking up residence in a 12-year-old Linda Blair. It's also well known that D.C. was the setting of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still . In that film, an alien lands his ship on the Ellipse and threatens the Earth with destruction unless humans stop being so testy with each other. To demonstrate his awesome power, the alien causes a worldwide power outage (hence the movie title) just so he can conveniently get stuck in an elevator with the lead actress. At least the movie inspired a great running gag in Sam Raimi's cult favorite Army of Darkness.
Many people, however, might not know that D.C. has played a part in some other well-known (and not-so well-known) terrifying films -- and we aren't talking about National Treasure and Legally Blonde 2.
For example, D.C. was the stomping grounds for Hollywood's most famous cannibal, Hannibal Lecter. From Michael Mann's 1986 adaptation of Manhunter to The Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal and the Manhunter remake Red Dragon, D.C. locales such as the Federal Triangle Metro Station show up frequently in the films. Another murderer, although slightly less sadistic, plays a big part in Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 film Strangers on a Train, which utilizes Union Station as the starting point of its creepy journey.
On the lame end of the horror spectrum is the sucktastic Kevin Bacon spectacular Hollow Man, which was filmed at the Pentagon, the Willard Hotel, a house in Alexandria and a warehouse in Anacostia. You might remember that as the film where Bacon was naked 90 percent of the time, but thankfully we couldn't see it. There was also plenty of naked mayhem in Species II, which was shot at a Washington Suburban Sanitary Commission Filtration Plant in Laurel, Md. That film explored the hectic lives of aliens who like to have sex with people and then kill them.
And who could forget the 1973 Z-movie The Werewolf of Washington ... Well, a lot of people.
If you know of any D.C.-based horror or sci-fi films that don't involve aliens blowing up the White House or Congress, let us know in the comment section.
Info taken from IMDB.com, the D.C. Office of Motion Picture and TV Development and the Washington Post. Photo by Bog_King.