Venom: Let There Be Carnage | 2021
- Locations |
- San Francisco, California;
- West Sussex;
- London
- DIRECTOR |
- Andy Serkis
Discover the locations where Venom: Let There Be Carnage was filmed around San Francisco. Since the film was based at Leavesden Studios in England, there are some English locations too.
Although the sequel to Venom is also set in San Francisco, you'd hardly guess from watching the film that it was based at Leavesden Studios in the UK, where most of the interiors were shot. In fact there were only three weeks shooting in San Francisco, mainly exterior shots.
One of these real exteriors is the apartment Eddie Brock (Tom Hardy) 'shares' with Venom, and a couple of chickens, which is 545 O'Farrell Street in the Tenderloin District.
'Tenderloin Police Station', to which Eddie is summoned by Detective Mulligan (Stephen Graham) is the Anchor Steam Brewery building, 1705 Mariposa Street in Potrero. The brewery closed in 2023 after 127 years of business but the company has been bought and there are plans to relaunch.
As we saw at the end of the first Venom movie, killer Cletus Kasady (Woody Harrelson) requests a visit from Eddie at San Quentin State Prison, San Rafael, on I-580 just over the Toll Bridge from Richmond, California. The cells were recreated in the studio, but there was filming at the real facility.
If you want to visit the notorious establishment of San Quentin, there is a San Quentin Prison Museum. Not surprisingly, there are strict security rules, so you'll need photo ID.
San Quentin was briefly glimpsed in the opening shots of 1947 film noir Dark Passage, as Humphrey Bogart escapes from the prison and in the 1958 drama I Want To Live! for which Susan Hayward won an Oscar.
Cletus offers Eddie his exclusive life story on condition that he has a mysterious clip of poetry printed in The Daily Bugle.
This attracts the attention of Frances Barrison, aka Shriek (Naomie Harris), Cletus' adolescent love, officially dead but who's locked away in the secure 'Ravencroft Institute'. Despite a bizarre claim that the Griffith Park Observatory in Los Angeles was used for filming, the institute is one of the film's English locations. It's Goodwood House, northeast of Chichester in West Sussex.
Built in the early 17th century as the home of the Dukes of Richmond, it sits in the heart of a 11,000 acre estate.
Although the house contains magnificent Regency interiors and an extensive art collection, you probably recognise the name from the Goodwood Circuit motorsport track on the estate (site of the annual Goodwood Festival of Speed), and Goodwood Racecourse.
During a pre-execution visit by Eddie, Venom makes a sudden attack on the prisoner through the cell bars and when Cletus bites Eddie, he manages to swallow a little of Eddie's blood. Yes, Cletus now hosts his own symbiote, Carnage, a red one too, powerful enough to bust him out of San Quentin.
Back at the apartment, Eddie and Venom have a row which results in the symbiote leaving Eddie's body, trashing his bike, and stomping out of the alley behind the apartment where he 'enters' a woman cycling past on Jones Street.
Left alone, Eddie frees Sonny and Cher, the two chickens, alongside a statue of author Cervantes – plus his creations Don Quixote and Sancho Panza – which was built for the film alongside San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts, 3601 Lyon Street, between Jefferson and Bay Streets in the Marina district.
Built in 1915 for the Panama-Pacific Exhibition, the grandiose Romanesque buildings of the Palace were retained and – in the Sixties – the temporary structures rebuilt in poured concrete.
You'll recognise this landmark from appearances in The Rock and in Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo.
Freed from a human host, Venom proves to be a big hit at a 'Day of the Dead' rave with rapper Little Simz. Those low brick arches of the 'San Francisco' club are Tobacco Dock, a Grade-I-listed warehouse built in 1812 as part of the East End London docks in Wapping, E1. When the docks closed, the place became derelict but has now found a new lease of life as an events and conference space.
Meanwhile Cletus steals a red sports car and sets off to free Shriek.
At a 'Mini Mart' store and gas station, Cletus kills the shop assistant and manages to find the whereabouts of Frances/Shriek online. The convenience store is Park Gas & Food, 1395 7th Street alongside West Oakland Station in Oakland, across the bay from San Francisco. The elevated railway in the background is the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) M-line, a stop away from Embarcadero near the eastern end of the Bay Bridge.
Aided by Carnage, he's now able to break out Shriek and the couple plan to make up for lost time by getting married.
There's a brief glimpse of Anne Weying's (Michelle Williams) apartment at 1151 Montgomery Street as she and her new bf Dan Lewis (Reid Scott) are abducted.
What better vantage point is there to look out over the city for a rampaging symbiote but the top of Coit Tower? And that's where Eddie turns up.
The 210-foot Coit Tower, 1 Telegraph Hill Boulevard atop Telegraph Hill, also known as the Lillian Coit Memorial Tower, was built in 1933 using a bequest from Lillie Hitchcock Coit to 'beautify the city'. The legend has it that Ms Coit was somewhat taken with the San Francisco firefighting department and the tower was designed to resemble the nozzle of a fire hose.
Its phallic appearance lead to Alfred Hitchcock mischievously using it in his 1958 masterpiece Vertigo, as the landmark Madeleine (Kim Novak) uses to locate the apartment of Scottie (James Stewart).
It's also where Doctor Dolittle (Eddie Murphy) is called to deal with a suicidal tiger in the 1998 film, and With the help of some elaborate matte painting, the tower's art deco frontage became the entrance to Susan Hayward's mansion in 1957 musical Pal Joey.
There are tours and, don't worry, there is an elevator (though it's occasionally out of use for servicing).
Cheekily, those 'copters which appear to be searching the city for Carnage were actually being used for Matrix Resurrections, which happened to be filming in San Francisco at the same time.
The climactic wedding which turns into the big fight takes place at Grace Cathedral, 1051 Taylor Street. Of course with all that, um, carnage, the cathedral interior was digitally recreated in the studio.
Grace Cathedral is a screen veteran, seen in Alfred Hitchcock's final film Family Plot, as well as Peter Yates' Bullitt and Gus Van Sant's Milk.
