Blade | 1998

Blood-drenched cartoon strip, filmed with bags of style and energy on some spectacular sets and downtown Los Angeles locations.

The interior of the hospital, where Dr Karen Jenson (N’Bushe Wright) is attacked by the crispy fried vampire, and from which Blade (Wesley Snipes) makes a flying escape, is a disused facility in Boyle Heights, but the exterior is the elaborate white terracotta building at 610 South Broadway – coincidentally one of the buildings from which silent comic Harold Lloyd dangled in Safety Last.

Karen’s apartment is the Chester Williams Building, 215 Fifth Street, directly opposite John Doe’s apartment from Se7en, and which became a ‘New York’ subway entrance in Joel Schumacher’s Phone Booth.

The ‘Pearl’ vampire club is a dressed-up shop front at 761 8th Street on the corner of South Broadway, just opposite the ornate Tower Theater at 802 South Broadway. In the background you can see the illuminated sign of the Olympic Theatre on 8th Street, which featured in The Omega Man (1971) and 2003's Daredevil with Ben Affleck.

The park where Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff) – with plenty of sunscreen – confronts Blade is Maguire Gardens on West 5th and Flower Street, in front of Los Angeles Central Library and just opposite the site of the bank heist from Michael Mann's Heat.

But the busy traffic into which Frost callously throws the young girl is West 7th Street just east of the junction with Broadway, dressed to look like Chinatown.

Some studio interiors were filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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