Living in the West Village I’m always walking up Grove Street to see lines of tourists posing at the corner of Bedford Street. I finally asked someone why and they said it was the building shown at the beginning of the TV series Friends. I walked away so happy because I have never watched ten seconds of that stupid show and never will. But it did get me to thinking. Especially seeing Movie Tour buses prowling the neighborhood. Every day, we New Yorkers unknowingly walk by some corner or doorway that has been featured in a movie- and I’m not talking about obvious landmarks like the Empire State Building made famous by King Kong, An Affair To Remember and Sleepless In Seattle. So, I offer you a few of my holy Cinemaniac spots. As you pass, acknowledge them with the reverence they so richly deserve. Note: several addresses are cheats. After all, if you planned on visiting the Ricardos (I Love Lucy) at 623 East 68th street you’d end up drowning in the East River.
Spring St. and W. Broadway. Where Jill Clayburgh pukes when she finds out her husband has been unfaithful in 1978’s An Unmarried Woman.
125 W. 9th St. The address of Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) the wife killer Jimmy Stewart spies on in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954).
362 W. 19th St. The apartment of Peter Lowe (Nicholas Cage) a crazed literary agent who thinks he’s a vampire- he dines on live cockroaches- in the underrated Vampire’s Kiss.
Waldorf Astoria Hotel (301 Park Ave.) Where Ma & Pa Kettle (Marjorie Main and Percy Kilbride) stay after winning an all-expense-paid trip, courtesy of Bubbelola Cola in Ma And Pa Kettle Go To Town (1950).
Chrysler Building (405 Lexington Ave.) Home of the giant mythological serpent-bird Quetzalcoatl, whose nest is discovered by small-time crook Michael Moriarty in Larry Cohen’s witty sci-fi film Q: The Winged Serpent (1982).
400 Madison Ave. The address of entertainment law firm Bellamy & Bellows, where Ann Welles (Barbara Parkins) gets her first job in the inadvertently hilarious film version of Jacqueline Susann’s bestselling Valley Of The Dolls (1967).
St. James Hotel (109 W. 45th St). In which a psycho (Joe Spinell) scalps a prostitute in the notorious 1980 slasher classic Maniac. Also the setting for one of the gay murders in William Friedkin’s controversial Cruising (1980).
209 E. 13th St. Where crazed cabbie Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro) blows away pimp Harvey Keitel before traveling down the block to 225 East 13th St. to continue his bloody rampage in Martin Scorsese’s 1976 urban nightmare Taxi Driver.
13 Grove Street. The duck-voiced killer is revealed at the end of Lucio Fulci’s grisly, great, The New York Ripper (1982).
The Sunshine Hotel (241 Bowery) In Frank Henenlotter’s aptly titled 1988 film Brain Damage, Brian (Rick Herbst) checks into a fleabag hotel to kick the addictive hallucinatory fluid that was injected into the back of his neck by a talking brain-munching wormlike creature named Elmer.
38 Horatio St. Party girl Elizabeth Taylor crashes at her songwriter friend’s (Eddie Fisher) apartment here in the trashy Butterfield 8 (1960).
The Lincoln Tunnel. A giant prehistoric praying mantis is trapped and killed in the 1957 monster movie The Deadly Mantis. (in the film it’s called the Manhattan Tunnel, but the nearby sign indicating Port Authority suggests it’s the Lincoln).
4 St. Luke’s Place. A blind Audrey Hepburn is terrorized in this West Village apartment in the chilling Wait Until Dark (1967).
162 E. 70th St. The location of psychiatrist Michael Caine’s office where he counsels Angie Dickenson before she’s killed by a razor-wielding transvestite in Brian De Palma’s Dressed To Kill (1980).
43 Sutton Place. A bedridden Barbara Stanwyck overhears the plot of her own murder in the 1948 Sorry, Wrong Number.
125th St. Subway Station. Gangster Tommy Udo (Richard Widmark), who cackles as he pushes a wheelchair-bound old woman down a flight of stairs, is gunned down here in Kiss Of Death (1947).
The Dakota. (1 W. 72nd St.). The famed building where Rosemary Woodhouse (Mia Farrow) gives birth to Beelzebub’s brat in Rosemary’s Baby (1968).
915 Third Ave. Nat’s Bar (actually P. J. Clark’s) where Ray Milland drinks himself silly in The Lost Weekend (1945).
Port Authority Bus Terminal (635 8th Ave.) Kevin Bacon nods out in a men’s room stall in Forty Deuce, Paul Morrissey’s brilliant 1982 film about male hustlers in Times Square.
3 Beekman Place. The fabulous townhouse of the madcap Mame Dennis (Auntie Mame), made famous by Rosalind Russell in 1958 and then (scarily) remade by Lucille Ball in 1978.
Liberty Theater (234 W. 42nd St.). Jon Voight get a blow job in the balcony of one of the old movie palaces (now torn down and Disneyfied) in John Schlesinger’s Oscar-winning Midnight Cowboy (1969).
427 Perry St. In The Seventh Victim (1943) Kim Hunter comes to Greenwich Village in search of her missing sister only to fins she’s fallen victim to a devil-worshiping cult.
Corner Of Lafayette & Spring St. A C.H.U.D. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller) crawls out of the sewer and eats a little girl’s grandfather in this 1984 horror film appropriately titled C.H.U.D.