Universal Studios Backlot Tour

While at Universal Studios Hollywood, we took the hour-long backlot tour where they actually make movies and television shows. The tour has been going on for decades and predates the park. Some of the attractions are classics.

New entrance to an old favorite

The tour bus is open air and lets riders get a good view of the soundstages and lots where all sorts of things are filmed.

Ready for fun!

Soundstage 14

The guide explained that she would have to be quiet if any of the red lights were on at any of the stages, meaning they were filming and did not want any outside noise if possible. The buildings are not fully soundproof and her PA system did make her much louder.

Stage 19 in action!

The lot still has the small bungalows that were used by writers, directors, and actors as offices and places to relax during the day. They are still used for administrative work.

Bungalow

City streets are fairly common in films and shows so they have a large outdoor street that is mostly facades of buildings.

New York? Chicago? LA?

Could be a bank or a courthouse, maybe even a church

Actual trees!

One of the demonstrations of special effects was a ride through the King Kong Experience, with the tour bus surrounded by screens of Skull Island. Dinosaurs attack the bus and Kong defends it. The floor moved the tour bus around in sync with the images, so when a creature climbed across the top we would feel it happening. It is very similar to the Kong ride in the Florida amusement park, so a lot of fun.

Going into the Kong Experience

Back in the city, we saw people parked so they could walk to work, right behind the fake buildings. Of course, some buildings are more fake than others.

Cast and crew park behind the scenes

A very thin building

A graffiti artist decorated some of the walls with the classic Universal monsters.

Frankenstein's Monster and the Creature from the Black Lagoon

I recognized these decorations from Back to the Future.

Where Marty lived (and behind which he hid the DeLorean)

We passed by the Old West street several times.

Old west street

Old west vehicles

Part of the tour recreates Amity Island, the beach community terrorized by the shark in the original Jaws. They showed the original trails with the famous John Williams score and no reveal of the shark. The tour guide made a joke about the movie's rating, PG, which is the same rating as Despicable Me.

Famous billboard from the movie

Riding by the seaside town, a diver swims out to deal with the shark and gets dealt with. Then the shark tried to deal with us!

A bit of the water you shouldn't go into

The diver disappears!

A bit of destruction trying to get the shark

The shark coming for us!

The shark swims backwards as the attraction resets

We drove back toward the Old West where we saw another practical effect--a sudden flash flood that almost engulfed the tour bus.

Happy and unsuspecting

Disaster approaches!

The old west town is bigger than I thought it would be. They even have a church (or maybe it's the Alamo).

I can just see a rifleman falling from the upstairs balcony

Church/Bank/Alamo?

A quaint train station is set up like when it was used for the TV series The Good Place.

Good Place to get out of the Bad Place

Storing vehicles where they don't look right

Our next visit was another soundstage set up as a subway station. The station is also rigged to experience an earthquake.

Generic subway

Things falling apart in the subway

More flooding

A vintage tour bus

The lot has a lot of spare vehicles, including ones used in movies like the Fast and Furious franchise and The Flintstones.

Guess I should have also mentioned Jurassic Park/World

Fintstonesmobiles

Fast and Furious rides

Another famous stop on the ride is the Bates Motel from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. The house is there with someone on the porch.

12 rooms, 12 vacancies

Norman wants to make a point

The town where a jet crashed in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds is still set up.

Plane wreckage

Neighborhood wreckage

The final bit of the tour took us by Jupiter's Claim, the wild west attraction from Jordan Peele's Nope.

Not sure we should go there

The tour is both informative and entertaining and a definite must for movie fans.

Movie Review: Jaws (1975)

Jaws (1975) directed by Steven Spielberg

In the early summer, some college kids are having a bonfire on the beach of the island town Amity. One girl sneaks of with a boy to go skinny dipping. He's too drunk to make it out into the water, which is lucky for him because she is killed by an unseen nemesis from underwater. The boy reports the incident to local police chief Brody (Roy Scheider). The police find what's left of her body on the shore. The medical examiner declares the cause of death as shark attack, but soon backpedals once the town council gets ahold of the news that Brody plans to close the beaches. The island depends on summer tourism. Brody reluctantly agrees to leave the beaches open, leading to another shark attack. Pandemonium breaks out on Amity Island as shark hunters and ichthyologist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) come to help out with the problem. Brody eventually hires Quint (Robert Shaw), a local salty old fisherman who promises to bring in the shark. Brody bring Hooper along for the hunt. The three of them have a rough time getting along as they try to get the shark.

This movie is a classic, scaring people away from beaches since its release in 1975. The movie effectively uses the "less is more" strategy, not showing the shark till late in the movie. He's just a menacing presence with an iconic menacing theme from John Williams (who seems to be inspired by Bernard Herrman's Psycho score). The performances are all solid, with Shaw standing out as crusty Quint. He's got the gravelly demeanor and a fantastic speech that ends the "comparing of scars" scene. The movie is tightly crafted and highly enjoyable, still looking good even now, 45 years later.

Highly recommended, though definitely a strong PG rating for language, menace, and gore.