- Hi, I'm Michael Wyetzner,
and I've been an architect for over 35 years.
And today we're gonna look
at some of the architectural details in horror movies
from "Psycho" to "The Shining" and "Beetlejuice."
- We're here.
[cheerful music]
- First up, the Bates house from "Psycho."
Okay, so here's everything that jumps out at me.
It's a house up on a hill.
It's got this very tall mansard roof
with the widow's walk that goes all around it.
It has these ornamental brackets
that are holding up the eave.
It's got this very prominent front porch
that sits in front of a central tower.
And the thing about the porch also
is it has a lot of ornament that goes around the porch,
and that was something that was very typical
of Victorian houses of which this is one.
So Victorian houses are not really a style,
it's actually an era, and it's the era of Queen Victoria
which basically was 1837 to 1901.
And within that era architects were using a style
that was kind of a combination of gothic,
elements from the Italianate,
and elements from the Greek Revival.
And so all these elements formed
what's now known as the Victorian style.
Most of these houses are large,
they're almost like mansions,
and that's because they were built by people of means
mainly in the Gilded Age
which was the tail end of the Victorian era.
But by the 1930s, a lot of the rich people
had abandoned these houses,
having moved on to other types of styles,
and they fell into disrepair
and they became sort of the iconic
dilapidated spooky haunted house.
- Hate the smell of dampness, don't you?
It's such a, I don't know, creepy smell. Come on.
- So, the house in "Psycho' is considered
the iconic house of horrors,
and it sort of sets the stage for houses of horror in film.
Hitchcock was inspired by the Edward Hopper painting
"The House by the Railroad"
which is sort of a symbol of decaying America.
So although this draws on real historical information,
it's actually not a real house at all.
It's just a two-wall exterior set
that borrows from other sets
because it had such a tight budget.
- An old house,
which is, if I may say so, a little more sinister looking.
- Now let's take a look at a film
where the characters themselves
literally attempt to modernize a haunted house,
Tim Burton's "Beetlejuice."
So this is the house and what it looked like
when they first move in,
and what jumps out at me right away
is it's a house set up on a hill, like "Psycho,"
and like "Psycho" it has this very prominent tower
with this mansard roof and the widow's walk around it.
It has a wraparound porch, which is one of the elements
of Victorian architecture.
It has these very small windows,
especially for the size of the house.
And the other thing it has is these very tall pitched roofs
which implies that there's a very large attic within.
And these pitched roofs are metal,
which gives it this sort of farmhouse feel
or this farm-like structure.
And of course it's Tim Burton,
so you know there's a model version of the house
featured somewhere in the film.
- Beetlejuice.
[upbeat suspenseful music]
What happened?
[upbeat suspenseful music]
- I think we're in the model.
- So the plot of the film is that the main characters
who buy this house, they wanna renovate it,
and the people who are haunting this house
don't want them to renovate it.
- So let's face it, you want somebody out of the house.
I wanna get somebody out here, huh?
- So now let's take a look at what it looks like
after the renovation.
Okay, I love this renovation.
It talks about so many kind of architectural styles,
most prominently Deconstructivism.
Deconstructivism was a style of architecture
that was very popular in the late '80s
at the same time that this film came out in 1988,
and architects such as Frank Gehry and Daniel Libeskind
and Zaha Hadid and the Austrian firm Coop Himmelblau
were practitioners of this style.
And what Deconstructivism did was it sort of like it sounds,
it broke apart architecture into its different elements.
And what that means is they've taken specific elements
and pulled them out and highlighted them.
So for instance, this gable end forms the edge
of this porch which has been expanded
and sits on this single column support
with an opening in it,
and they emphasize the ridge beam sticking out
through the gables here and here in yellow.
The ridge beam is usually at the very top of the roof
or the ridge, but in this case they've lowered them down
so the ridge is popping out from the attic,
which actually makes no architectural sense,
but gives it a very fun sort of feeling to it.
And the idea that they've created these exterior walls
with nothing in them, just the frame of exterior walls here
without windows, it all gives the house
a different kind of scale and a different kind of feeling.
- Look at this place. Everything's different.
All our furniture's gone.
- A lot of what's been added hasn't formed any new spaces,
it just emphasizes existing spaces.
So personally, I disagree with the ghosts.
I think this renovation is actually a lot of fun
and it's keeping with the whole feeling of the film
that it portrays a certain exuberance
of which Tim Burton is known for.
So the other thing I love is that even though they've added
all this stuff to it and really gussied this house up
is that they left the one element that ties it
to the house of horror, or the typical house of horror,
and that's that tall central tower with that mansard roof
and the widow walk around it.
[suspenseful music]
Next up is a truly modern haunt
from "House on Haunted Hill."
- In just a minute, I'll show you
the only really haunted house in the world.
[ghost moaning] [floors creaking]
Since it was built a century ago, seven people,
including my brother, have been murdered in it.
- Okay, so this is what jumps out at me.
This is another house up on a hill sitting on a platform
in the hills outside of Hollywood,
and it's a really modern house,
yet it uses somewhat ancient forms.
You could see that the house is made
of these component parts, these modular parts.
The other thing that jumps out is
it doesn't have a very domestic scale.
It almost feels like it could be a museum
or some other type of religious building.
- Well, if I were gonna haunt anybody,
this would certainly be the house I'd do it in.
- There's very few windows,
at least apparent from this view.
You could see a large window here
and you could see these very, very temple-like forms
that repeat throughout.
So this is clearly influenced
by the Mayan style of building,
and it also feels somewhat Egyptian
in that it's a Trabeated style of architecture,
which means there's no curves, there's no arches,
there's no vaults, there's no domes.
Besides "House on Haunted Hill,"
this house was used in many other films and TV shows,
including "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "Blade Runner,"
and "Day of the Locust."
And although this actually looks like a fantasy house
or a set, this is actually a real house.
So, Frank Lloyd Wright created this house
out of what he called textile blocks,
which are essentially concrete blocks or cinder blocks,
as we might call them, that was made in these aluminum forms
from the earth and the sand and the gravel
right at the site of where the house was built.
Okay, so the way he constructs this wall of textile blocks
is he takes a block that's 16 inches by 16 inches
on the face and is nominally four inches thick.
He takes another one also 16 by 16,
and then he puts another layer on the interior,
also 16 by 16 on the face and nominally four inches thick,
and he leaves an airspace between them.
And that airspace in the Los Angeles environment
acts as an insulating layer and keeps the house cool.
And then the other thing he does to tie them together
is he creates this furrow in the edge of the blocks,
and he lays inside that furrow a thin steel rod,
which is essentially rebar,
and he ties the blocks together using that rebar.
And then he puts ornament built directly into the mold
so that when he pulls the block out of the mold
the ornament is already part of it.
And that's how he constructed these textile block homes.
So, Frank Lloyd Wright did four houses of this style
in the L.A. area.
And this, the Ennis House, is the grandest of them all.
- There's been a murder almost every place in this house.
- And to form this house,
he actually used 27,000 of these blocks.
Next up, the Overlook Hotel from "The Shining"
where working remote takes on a whole new meaning.
[suspenseful music]
[Jack screaming]
Okay, so here's what jumps out at me.
First and foremost is the roof.
It's got this huge deep roof
with an even deeper huge roof at the central entrance,
and then it has these dormers which are somewhat unusual
because they pop out of the front facade.
They're not set back like the dormers over here are setback.
The other thing it has is this very rusticated base
all made out of stone closer to the earth, rougher,
and then it comes out and gets smoother as it rises.
It's another building up on a hill.
And the other element that I find really interesting
about this building is this roof line
comes all the way down to the ground,
so it goes past the roof, past the eave, becomes the wall,
and then becomes the base and the rustication
and runs right into the ground.
I think that's a really cool element.
It's got this nice big bay window over here
to sort of give some interest to this facade and this wing.
And then on this end where we have this big chimney
popping out as part of this dormer,
it also has these three roofs that are sort of layered,
these shed roofs.
And in fact, the main roof pretty much comes down
on this edge and comes all the way down
to the rusticated base.
So it's doing some really interesting things with roof,
and that seems to be the common element
in all the haunted houses that we look at.
They always have these really deep high roofs
that imply that there's a big, deep attic within,
and who knows what goes on in there.
So this line that comes down from the roof,
this sort of angled line,
almost echoes the mountains beyond.
In fact, the entire roofscape I feel like is meant to echo
the entire mountain range beyond.
So in actuality, this is the Timberline Lodge,
which was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood,
who was known for designing many of the lodges
at U.S. national parks.
And one of the themes that runs throughout all these designs
is that he uses natural materials from the site.
So all this stone is from nearby, as well as all the wood
and all the wood on the shingles of the roof.
And so he used natural materials
basically from the surrounding area
so that it would blend in and be part of its habitat
of where it was built.
So the building is reminiscent of the Adirondack style,
which was a style built in upper New York State
for these sort of remote camps for rich people,
and basically all these lodges in the U.S. parks are based
on that original Adirondack style.
And the other thing about this building is the size
and how that relates in the film,
because he's there alone with his wife and son
in this huge building, this vast and empty building,
and they are the only ones there,
and that plays very prominently in the film.
The other thing about this film
is everybody always wants to go and visit the hedge maze,
but in fact it doesn't exist
because it was shot on a set in England.
[suspenseful music] [wind blowing]
Next up, let's take a look at the house from "Get Out."
- We're here.
[melancholy music]
- Okay, so here's everything that jumps out at me.
Right away you could see this house is not exactly
what it portrays to be.
[melancholy music] [people chattering]
- [Missy] Come on in. Please, welcome to our home.
[suspenseful music]
- It's got this very deep roof, which is sort of indicative
of all the houses we've looked at before.
But other than that, it's very different than all the houses
we looked at before.
It's not on a hill, it's not Victorian, it's not foreboding.
It appears to be a Cape Cod house at first glance,
but the more you look, the more you realize
actually all that's Cape Cod about it
are the three dormers in the roof.
And in fact, it's an amalgamation
of all sorts of different houses.
So it's got this very prominent porch
with these supporting Greek Doric columns
that looks like they came from a plantation from down South,
and it's got these brick gables that go up past the roof,
and it's got these two side wings
that are also made out of brick
that let you know that the house is actually much bigger
than it appears to be at first glance.
So it's a very strange house.
Typically, Cape Cod houses were built out of wood.
This one's built out of brick.
And typically they don't have a porch.
One enters in directly to the centrally located door.
So it's like this Cape Cod house
with this sort of plantation-style porch stuck on the front
with the French doors that lead out to it.
So at first glance
the house looks like a very regular, typical house
you'd find on a suburban street,
but the more you look at it, the sort of stranger it gets.
[suspenseful music] [birds chirping]
Putting horror in a very plain and sunny place.
We've come sort of to the complete polar opposite
of the "Psycho" house,
and in fact, that's something that the director Jordan Peele
had in mind when he selected this setting for the film.
He's taking the idea that when movies show you
these sort of haunted and spooky homes
you expect bad things to happen there,
but when they show you this bright and sunny house
that at first feels very warm and inviting,
you're shocked when horror does occur there
'cause you're really not expecting it.
- [Missy] Sink into the floor.
- Wait, wait, wait. - Sink.
[dramatic music]
- So these are the architectural details I noticed
in these haunting homes.
Let me know which is your favorite in the comments below.
[cheerful music]