When you think of the movie industry you may think of Hollywood or Burbank in Los Angeles. But Solvang, California, both independently and as part of Santa Ynez Valley, has its own history as a prime location for filming motion pictures.
Film Solvang is also now a member of the Association of Film Commissioners International and a part of their global directory. For more information, contact us.
Movies Filmed in Solvang
Shot on Location
February 27, 2019
Solvang was in millions of homes over the past several weeks. First up, on PBS was Travels with Darley. The show focused on traveling to hotspots on the Central Coast and featured a nice long stay here in Solvang and stopped at locations such as the Solvang Restaurant, Ingeborg’s Chocolates, Wheel Fun Rentals, the Solvang Bakery, Sevtap Winery and the Elverhoj Museum.
Then more recently, the reality television show Vanderpump Rules aired on Bravo. The segment that included Solvang spanned three episodes following the ladies on a girl’s getaway. They visited locations such as the Landsby Hotel, Crosshatch Winery and the Copenhagen House. The result of the hard work resulted in large spikes of visitors to our SolvangUSA.com website, encouraging visitors to come to Solvang.
Is one of your favorite movies among those shot in and around Solvang?
Sideways, a character study which takes place in wine country and includes wine tasting as a central plot point, was filmed throughout Solvang and features many locations easily recognizable by residents and widely visited by guests. Visit our Sideways page for a handy map of all the film locations.
Solvang has had multiple productions within the horror genre come through town. 1980’s The Unseen, starring Barbara Bach (of The Spy Who Loved Me) and Stephen Furst (of Animal House), used locations around town like the Solvang Gardens Lodge and the Bit O’ Denmark Restaurant as the settings for crucial scenes in this shocker.
Cult Appeal
Cult film director William Castle, iconic producer of the Orson Welles noir classic The Lady from Shanghai and the horror milestone Rosemary’s Baby, used the town for different locations in his 1961 movie Homicidal. One major character’s time spent in Denmark even factored into the plot. Where better than Solvang to capture the look of that country while filming in the United States?
Castle was famous (or is that infamous?) for using interactive promotional gimmicks, passed off to gleefully terrified audiences as groundbreaking filming techniques. These novelties had names like “Percepto,” “Emergo,” and, perhaps less creatively, “Illusion-o.” Homicidal offered a “fright break,” marked by an onscreen timer at the start of the climax. The fright break gave patrons 45 seconds to leave the theater and get a refund if they felt too scared to stick around until the movie’s end.
The creature feature Watchers, starring Michael Ironside and Corey Haim, was based on the Dean Koontz novel of the same name. This film included a scene of the protagonists on a date within the Danish styled setting of Solvang.
In more recent years, the Quentin Tarantino throwback thriller Death Proof, was shot close by on the roads of Figueroa Mountain and against the oak backdrop of Los Padres National Forest. The region’s famous hills have also served as shooting locations for Depression-era movies like the horse racing drama Seabiscuit, and the Gary Sinise directed adaptation of the classic novel Of Mice and Men.
Local Pride
Local filmmaker Derek Magyar used his hometown’s valley setting to make Flying Lessons, an independent production from 2010 starring Maggie Grace (of the Taken trilogy and the TV series Lost) and Hal Holbrook (another horror luminary in Creepshow and The Fog).
In addition to being the filming site of many thrillers, Solvang has also served as the home to actress Pat Hitchcock, the only child of legendary director, and “Master of Suspense,” Alfred Hitchcock. She appeared in multiple episodes across the first six seasons of the anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, as well as in her father’s classic films, Strangers on a Train and Psycho. Pat is pictured in the top left of this family photograph.
