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The best and worst movies ever made in San Diego

By David Moye

January 30, 2006

San Diego--San Diego often lives in the shadow of Los Angeles and part of the reason is because Lala land is the center of the film industry. But that doesn’t mean the Big Tangerine hasn’t had an impact on the big screen.

In fact, San Diego has had a presence since the early days of motion pictures. For instance, there is an 1898 film called Street Scene, San Diego, that features a harrowing plot that could work today if they film a prequel to Speed: A trolley car packed with passengers, approaches and passes the camera.

The film revolves around a married couple, “Fatty” and “Mabel,” who visit San Diego, watch a parade, and then rent one of those new-fangled motorized cars. When Mabel goes shopping, Fatty starts flirting with a petite woman and follows her to a hula pavilion where he also is attracted to the plump Hawaiian dancers. Meanwhile, Mabel is looking for him, and so is the petite woman's husband. The ensuing arguments attract the cops, and it all plays out in front of one of the fountains in Balboa Park.

Balboa Park has also been seen briefly in other classic films, such as Citizen Kane, where it doubles as Charles Foster Kane’s Xanadu estate.

In honor of the Oscar nominations, which are being announced Jan. 31, Vyuz has compiled a list of notable movies that have been set or filmed in the region. Some are excellent, such as Traffic, Almost Famous or Sideways. Others are open to debate, such as….

Rainbow Brite: San Diego Zoo Adventure (1983), which concerns two kids who visit San Diego Zoo only to discover someone is making all the colors of the zoo animals disappear. The duo ask the help of Rainbow Brite, a costumed character who travels with Twink, a large white puffball, and somehow the day is saved.

Apparently, Murkey, the villain behind the color-napping merely changes color by switching the color film of the zoo animals with black and white.

If some lucky Vyuz reader has a copy of this, we’d love to see this film. We’re masochists at heart.

San Diego I Love You (1944) is a film I’ve always wanted to see ever since I first visited the Ken Cinema in Kensington, where the movie poster holds a prominent place in the lobby. It’s about a daughter who helps her dad, a wacky inventor (Is there any other kind in the movies?) sell his newest creation, a collapsible life raft.

The film features Buster Keaton, Irene Ryan (Granny from Beverly Hillbillies) and Edward Everett Horton, who is best known as the narrator for the Fractured Fairy Tales segment on the Bullwinkle cartoons.

San Diego Surf (1968) is an art film made by Andy Warhol and director Paul Morrissey that was set near Windansea Beach. The plot concerns a married couple who rent a beach house to surfers. The couple’s daughter is pregnant and Daddy—who is gay—wants her to hook up with one of the beach bums (even though he wants to bed one of his own).

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