Murder in the First, 1995
Director
Cast
visit the film locations
San Francisco: Flights: San Francisco International Airport
Tourist info: San Francisco tourism
Visit Alcatraz Island
Los Angeles: Flights: Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
Visit Bradbury Building, 304 South Broadway at Third Street. The lobby is open to the public.
Trivia
As well as Blade Runner, the Bradbury Building is also featured in Mike Nichols’ Wolf, with Jack Nicholson and in the Doris Day comedy thriller Caprice.
Murder in the First location: The ‘San Francisco’ law office: Bradbury Building, South Broadway, downtown Los Angeles
Buddy-weepie with idealistic, young, Armani-dressed lawyer James Stamphill (Christian Slater) representing no-hoper Henri Young (Kevin Bacon) and exposing the brutal regime of Alcatraz in the Thirties, while the soundtrack shamelessly rips off Vaughan Williams.
Murder In The First location: the one-time escape-proof prison: Alcatraz Island, San Francisco Bay, California
Photograph: iStockphoto / Nickolay Stanev
The real Alcatraz Island is used for much of the movie, though the dungeon in which Young is incarcerated for three years of solitary darkness was meticulously recreated in the studio. See more of Alcatraz in Michael Bay’s The Rock.
The courthouse building is San Francisco City Hall, though once again the courtroom itself is a studio set.
Stamphill catches the cable car on Hyde Street, where there's a truly great view of San Francisco Bay with Alcatraz Island smack in the centre.
The elegant law office building out of which Stamphill works, though, is in downtown Los Angeles. It's the extraordinary Victorian Bradbury Building, 304 South Broadway at Third Street, made famous by its appearance in Blade Runner.
