Keith Gordon’s House from the Horror Classic ‘Christine’ Revs Onto the Market

While tastefully updated in recent years, the abode, like “Christine” itself, remains a classic, outfitted throughout with handsome hardwood flooring, mantled fireplaces and paned windows. 

Spacious and bright living areas include a formal dining room, a private study, a living room and a kitchen modernized with marble counters, muraled tilework, shaker cabinetry, a Viking appliance suite and a sun-filled breakfast nook. A laundry room and bathroom with a shower complete the lower level.

The home’s three bedrooms, along with an additional full bath, can all be found upstairs.

Described in the listing as “an entertainer’s dream,” the home’s expansive 0.37-acre lot includes multiple gardens, a brick terrace, a covered patio, a wide swath of lawn, a heated pool, a spa and a pool house/pergola featuring travertine tiling, a dining space, a wet bar, a refrigerator, a television, ceiling fans and a large fountain with seating. 

Bursting with curb appeal, it is easy to see the place’s cinematic draw.

Set in the fictional enclave of Rockbridge, Calif., “Christine” exemplifies the familiar horror movie trope that evil can be found lurking in the most serene of places. As detailed by film historian Lee Gambin in his 2019 tome “Hell Hath No Fury Like Her: The Making of ‘Christine,'” “This is one of director John Carpenter’s most treasured and romantically embraced worlds – the American suburb. In ‘Halloween,’ he delivers a poignant and mesmerizing image of small town U.S.A., and what he manages to do so beautifully is power it with a sense of foreboding, ethereal otherworldliness and a quietly nightmarish pulse. Here in ‘Christine,’ Rockbridge is very similar to Haddonfield; a white middle-class halcyon tree-lined suburb that is a perfect environment for hushed terror – where a masked madman can stalk boy-crazy babysitters or a car that drives on its own can run down slacker never-do-wells.” 

Carpenter further explains, “The use of houses and the streets in ‘Christine’ and ‘Halloween’ was incredibly important to me and to the films themselves. What I set out to do for both those pictures was create a mythical Midwest in the United States, something that really doesn’t exist. There are neighborhoods in Los Angeles that have a lot of these old East Coast-type houses, and these are beautiful old houses and they are all set to these gorgeous tree-lined streets, so we hunted around for that.”

The director and his team found exactly what they were looking for at 1037 Buena Vista St. Not only did the Cape Cod offer an optimal amount of Anywhere, U.S.A. allure, but it also happened to be in an area with which Carpenter was very familiar – situated just a few hundred feet south of the roadway where he shot “Halloween’s” famous “Speed kills!” scene four years prior.

Serving as the residence of the Cunninghams, it is there that shy teen Arnie first attempts to store his new acquisition, a haunted 1958 Plymouth Fury named Christine, much to the dismay of his parents, Michael (Robert Darnell) and Regina (Christine Belford, of “Beverly Hills, 90210” fame). The family’s surname is no accident, incidentally. Furthering the story’s suburban ideology, Stephen King, who authored the 1983 novel on which the movie is based, selected it as a nod to the beloved clan at the center of the popular 1970s sitcom “Happy Days.”

At the time of the “Christine” shoot, the residence boasted a far more traditional Cape Cod look with a natural dark wood exterior complemented by white trim. Despite its current light blue coloring as well as the passage of four decades, the property remains entirely recognizable from its horror cameo.

“Christine” is not the dwelling’s only claim to fame. The structure is also featured as the home of Ben (Steve Carell) and Kelly Cooper (Jennifer Garner) and their four children in the 2014 Disney comedy “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day,” based on the 1972 Judith Viorst children’s classic of the same name.

As was the case with Carpenter back in 1983, “Alexander” director Miguel Arteta sought out a thoroughly idyllic backdrop for the film’s storyline to play out. Production designer Michael Corenblith explained in the movie’s production notes, “We imagined that this is a family of birds that live in this beautiful cozy little nest that has been created from all of the nicest little branches and twigs and pieces of colored ribbon and fabric. But there are just too many birds for the nest. This family is bursting at the seams, so the idea was to craft an environment for them that would really convey that idea to the audience.” To that end, he and his team set about looking for a “quaint” abode to portray the Cooper residence, promptly settling upon the Buena Vista St. Cape Cod. Corenblith stated, “It was exactly the right house for this family. It had the right scale, it had the right vibe, window scape and was built in the right period. It had a lot of things we really liked.” The property ultimately proved a bit too quaint for the production’s needs, though.  

So a replica was instead erected on a vacant patch of land at Melody Ranch Motion Picture Studio in Newhall for the vast majority of the filming. The facsimile, which took a whopping five weeks to construct, included a front yard, a front and rear exterior, an entire first floor and a backyard complete with a pool. While the South Pasadena house appears onscreen in a few brief faraway shots of the Cooper home, all interior scenes, close-ups and backyard segments were captured at the Newhall re-creation.

Although the set’s exterior façade was painstakingly modeled upon that of the actual dwelling, the interior was a marked departure in both its design and layout, as evidenced by the imagery above.

The Coopers’ backyard also contrasts notably with the real thing, in size as well as the orientation and shape of the pool.

Interestingly, the set build was predicated mainly upon a pivotal scene involving a crocodile. As Corenblith details, “We follow the crocodile through the house and out the back into a swimming pool. The path this crocodile takes from the front door, through the house, out the French doors in the back, and directly to a swimming pool was nothing we found in the real world. That was one of the big factors that mandated the design of this configuration.”

While 1037 Buena Vista St. may not be optimally arranged for the travels of a crocodile, its positioning is sure to prove ideal to future buyers.