Table Of Content
Lights, Camera, Lancaster: Unleash Your Inner Movie Buff in Pennsylvania!
Lights, camera, action! Welcome to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, a city that has played host to the glitz, glamor, and creativity of the silver screen. If you’re feeling a little bored and looking for some adventure, look no further than the filming locations of movies in Lancaster. Get ready to explore the reel world and dive deep into the magic of cinema right here in this charming city.
Key Takeaways:
- Immerse yourself in the world of movies by visiting the actual locations where your favorite films were shot.
- Discover the hidden gems of Lancaster while exploring the places made famous by Hollywood.
- Capture incredible moments and create your own movie-worthy memories in the same spots where your favorite actors once stood.
Who says you need a backstage pass to experience the world of movies? By visiting Lancaster’s filming locations, you become the star of your own adventure. From quaint streets to picturesque landscapes, this city has served as a canvas for filmmakers and storytellers. So get ready to unleash your inner movie buff and add a dash of excitement to your travel itinerary.
Imagine strolling down the same streets that Diane Keaton walked in “Manhattan” or stepping inside the antique shops that served as backdrops in “Witness.” Every corner holds the potential for a cinematic experience, as Lancaster has been a favorite location for filmmakers due to its charming architecture and stunning natural scenery. Get ready to feel like you’re on set, but remember: paparazzi not included!
But it’s not just about channeling your inner celebrity; visiting filming locations can also be a fun and unique way to explore the hidden treasures of a city.
While you’re on your hunt for famous movie spots, you’ll stumble upon local cafes, quirky shops, and unexpected delights that may not have made it onto the silver screen but are definitely worth the visit. Who knows, you might just discover a new favorite coffee shop or boutique along the way!
So grab your camera and your sense of adventure, and embark on a cinematic journey through the vibrant streets of Lancaster. Visit the places that inspired filmmakers and see for yourself why this city has captured the hearts of so many creatives throughout the years.
Whether you’re a movie buff or simply looking for a new and exciting way to explore, Lancaster’s filming locations offer a unique blend of history, storytelling, and pure entertainment.
Lights, camera, action! It’s time to hit play on your own movie-inspired adventure. Explore the movies filmed in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and let the magic of the silver screen guide you through this enchanting city. Lights, camera, adventure awaits!
Witness – US Box Office: USD$68,706,993
Director: Peter Weir
Main Cast: Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, Lukas Haas, Josef Sommer, Jan Rubes
Release Date: February 18, 1985
Filming Locations: Paul Krantz Farm – 758 Bunker Hill Road, Strasburg, Pennsylvania, USA; Intercourse, Pennsylvania, USA; Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA; 30th Street Station – 3001 Market Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA; Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA
Main Plot: Baby Amish widow Rachel Lapp is visiting Philadelphia for the first time with her young son Samuel. Samuel witnesses the brutal killing of a third man by two men while in the restroom at the railway station. Det. John Book, the detective in charge of the homicide investigation, tells them that the victim was a police officer. The small youngster doesn’t take long to identify Philadelphia drug cop McFee as the murderer. Book quickly learns that McFee was stealing a substance called P2P, a component used to make methamphetamine. Shortly after Book relays this knowledge to his superior, McFee pursues him and shoots Book.
Famous quotes:
Eli Lapp: “[to John Book] You should be careful of English!”
John Book: “Samuel, the man killed tonight was a policeman, and it’s my job to find out what happened. I want you to tell me everything you saw when you went into the bathroom.”
Eli Lapp: “He’s returning to his world, where he belongs. He knows it, and you know it, too.”
John Book: “We’re trying to get this done as quickly as possible, then you can go. But Samuel will probably have to come back to testify.”
Rachel Lapp: “I just don’t like the idea of my son spending all this time with a man who carries a gun and goes around whacking people!”
Sequel: The Fugitive.; Presumed Innocent
Fun facts about Witness:
- As realistic as the actors playing the Amish background characters are, there is no honest Amish in the film because (as the film rightly states) they don’t like being photographed. However, they were very interested in being filmed, and many Amish often politely watched the footage out of camera range.
- Although the film was made with expert advice from the Amish community, some community members criticized it, believing that the portrayal was not entirely accurate. The Amish National Committee on Religious Liberty has called for a boycott of the film, fearing that insularity will “overwhelm these tourist communities.” They feared “it would increase crowds, memorabilia hunting, photography, and trespassing on Amish property.” After the film was completed, then-Pennsylvania Governor Dick Thornburg vowed not to promote Amish film communities as future filming locations.
Girl, Interrupted – US Box Office: USD$28,912,646
Director: James Mangold
Main Cast: Winona Ryder, Angelina Jolie, Cle Duvall, Brittany Murphy, Elizabeth Moss, Jared Leto
Release Date: January 14, 2000
Filming Locations: Hanover, Pennsylvania, USA; Reading Public Museum – 500 Museum Road, Reading, Pennsylvania, USA; Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, USA; Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA; 2100 Chestnut Street, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA
Main Plot: After graduating from high school in 1967, Susanna Kaysen was unhappy and aimless. She talks about this with a psychiatrist later on. Delusions had been plaguing her. Additionally, she had a relationship with the husband of a friend of her parents. According to the doctor, combining a bottle of aspirin and alcohol was a suicide attempt. She disputes this. The psychiatrist suggests she must stop at Claymoore for a brief healing time. Claymoore Private Asylum is full of unrestrained lunatics. While Susanna’s roommate Georgina Tuskin is a pathological liar. What do you think will happen to Susanna?
Famous quotes:
Lisa: “You know, there are too many buttons worldwide. There are too many buttons, n,s,, and they’re – There’s way too many just begging to be pressed, they’re just begging to be pressed, you know?”
Susanna: “Because you’re dead already, Lisa! No one cares if you die, Lisa because you’re dead already. Your heart is cold. That’s why you keep coming back here. You’re not free. You need this place, and you need it to feel alive. It’s pathetic.”
Susanna: “[narrating] Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash? Have you ever been blue? Or thought your train was moving while sitting still? Maybe I was just crazy. Maybe it was the 60s. Or maybe I was just a girl… interrupted.”
Susanna: “Declared healthy and sent back into the world. My final diagnosis: a recovered borderline. What that means, I still don’t know. Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is.”
Lisa: “[Southern accent] Razors pain you, rivers are damp / Acid stains you, drugs cause cramps / Guns aren’t lawful, nooses give / Gas smells awful, you might as well live.”
Sequel: The Virgin Suicides; Thirteen
Fun facts about Girl, Interrupted:
- Much of the film was shot at Harrisburg, Pennsylvania State Hospital. The hospital continued to be used to treat the mentally ill until it closed in 2006.
- In an interview, Angelina Jolie revealed that she thought she was the only sane character in the entire film, and that’s how she played her. She said, “I was almost shocked when people said I was so good at being crazy because I never thought she was crazy. She was sincere, which made her look crazy.”
Beloved – US Box Office: USD$22,852,487
Director: Jonathan Demme
Main Cast: Oprah Winfrey, Danny Glover, Yada Beener, Emil Pinnock, Calen Johnson, Beach Richards
Release Date: October 16, 1998
Filming Locations: Old New Castle, New Castle, Delaware, USA; Fair Hill Natural Resources Area – 376 Fair Hill Drive, Fair Hill, Maryland; Landis Valley Museum – 2451 Kissel Hill Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA; Eckert James River Bat Cave Preserve, Mason County, Texas, USA; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Main Plot: The film is about slavery, fleeting freedom, and pervasive psychological influence. A formerly enslaved person Sethe now resides outside Cincinnati with her grown daughter Denver after the Civil War. Denver seeks society; Sethe is hardworking and stoic. The home shakes and pitches as if spirits refuse Paul D’s entrance before the formerly enslaved person. Sethe’s acquaintance Paul D enters the farm and family. For some reason, a girl around Denver’s age shows up. She calls herself “attractive” and acts, talks, and behaves immaturely. She pushes Seth into the past while pushing Denver toward a new level of maturity.
Famous quotes:
Baby Suggs: “And the beat, beat, of your heart… Love it. More than the lungs that need yet to breathe free air. More than the womb, which holds life. More than the private parts that give life. Love your heart. This… this is the prize. Amen. This is the prize… Amen!”
Beloved: “In the dark, my name is Beloved.”
Beloved: “Dark. I was small in that place.”
Sethe: “I got a tree on my back, and a haint in my house, and nothing in between but the daughter I’m holding in my arms.”
Sethe: “You wanna feel something? Feel what it feels like to be a woman of color, roaming the roads and anything God made liable to jump on you. Feel that!
Sequel: Eve’s Bayou
Fun facts about Beloved:
- A subplot from the novel, an enslaved person from the film, suggests that Beloved may ing a woman in a nearby town, t, tortured and imprisoned by a white man. The subplot highlights Seth’s need for a beloved to be her reincarnated daughter.
- Twenty-four hours of mock slavery included being bound, blindfolded, and left alone in the woods.
The Boys from Brazil – Box Office: USD$19million
Director: Franklin. Schaffner
Main Cast: Gregory Peck, Laurence Olivier, James Mason, Lilli Palmer, Uta Hagen
Release Date: October 6, 1978
Filming Locations: Lisbon, Portugal; Vienna, Austria; Lancaster, Pennsylvania, USA; London, England, UK
Main Plot: Josef Mengele is a Nazi physician. He conducted experimentation on Jews during the war and is now being watched in Paraguay by a young aspirant Nazi hunter. Ezra Lieberman, a well-known Nazi hunter, has been receiving the man’s calls, and Lieberman finds them annoying. Mengele decides to bug his meeting when he has several visitors. Mengele discovers the bug just as he is ready to learn more. He then leaves and calls Lieberman, informing him that the man intends to execute 96 males over 65 worldwide. He’s about to tell Liberman more when Mengele falls and is killed.
Famous quotes:
Dr. Josef Mengele: “Do you know what I saw on the television in my hotel room at one o’clock this morning? Films of Hitler! They are showing films about the war! The movement! People are fascinated! The time is ripe! Adolf Hitler is alive!”
Dr. Josef Mengele: “This album is full of pictures of him. Bobby Wheelock and ninety-three other boys are exact genetic duplicates of him, bred entirely from his cells. He allowed me to take half a liter of his blood and a cutting of skin from his ribs.”
Dr. Josef Mengele: “We were in a Biblical frame of mind on the twenty-third of May 1943, at the Berghof. He had denied himself and his children because he knew that no son could flourish in the shadow of such a godlike father!”
Dr. Josef Mengele: “He betrayed me, you, the Aryan race.”
Ezra Lieberman: “Not Mozart. Not Picasso. Not a genius who will enrich the world. But a lonely little boy with an overbearing father, a customs officer who was 52 when he was born. And an overbearing doting mother who was 29. The father died when he was 65 when the boy was nearly 14… Adolf Hitler.”
Sequel: Marathon Man; The Odessa File
Fun facts about The Boys from Brazil:
- When Ezra Lieberman (Laurence Olivier) visits the first family on the list for the first time and is greeted by the adopted boy, the camera pans to a mirror in the hallway that shows multiple reflections of the same child. Several images feature appearances by the same child actor who goes on to play each of the adopted boys.
- At some point, Mengele had experimented on the little maid in his villa, and his eyes turned, fact, the real Dr. Drowns paint or ink into the eyeballs of his subjects (usually children) in an attempt to “Arianize” them.
Lucky Numbers – US Box Office: USD$10,042,516
Director: Nora Ephron
Main Cast: John Travolta, Lisa Kudrow, Tim Roth, Ed O’Neill, Michael Rapaport, Daryl Mitchell
Release Date: October 27, 2000
Filming Locations: Palmyra, Pennsylvania, USA; Hershey, Pennsylvania, USA; Sacramento, California, USA; Penn Township, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA; Enola, Pennsylvania, USA
Main Plot: Russ Richards is a well-known weatherman in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He is broke this winter because he borrowed a lot of money to start a snowmobile dealership. The forecast is still unusually warm. His shady friend Gig suggests him to insurance fraud. But when it fails, Russ loses another $10,000 and gets into trouble with Dale, a thug with a bat. With the assistance of Crystal, a gold-digging ditz with a heart of tin, Gig persuades Russ to fix the state lottery. The ticket must be purchased with a beard, and it must then be cashed. Soon, Russ’s nightmare is worsened by murder and other double-crosses. A slack officer focuses on Russ being farther away than prison. Will Russ decide whether to put his life in danger or money first?
Famous quotes:
Russ: “No, no, the concept of gravity is when you fall and break your head open.”
Russ: “You know, you better start taking notes because when Ime and Gig start hashing it out, there’s going to be a lot of gold flying around, and I don’t want to miss any of it.”
Russ: “Alright, jeez, it’s just an idea. It’s a work in progress, for God’s sake. Even a painter’s got to take the brushes and clean them.”
Gig: “No, that’s brilliant. No, it’s so simple. It is brilliant. In its simplicity Russ.”
Crystal: “Yeah, or no, like, from the Wizard of Oz. That guy. The Straw Guy.”
Sequel: Michael; Mad City
Fun facts about Lucky Numbers:
- The film is based on a true scandal involving the Pennsylvania Lottery Commission in 1980.
- A local television station in Pittsburgh employee was convicted and imprisoned for the “666” conspiracy. Some balls are weighted by entering a color. Only 46 balls remain in the air and are taken into the lottery machine.
