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Thursday December 12th 2024

Jumanji | 1995

Robin Williams plays yet another man-boy, Alan Parrish, spewed from a sinister board game after spending 26 years in a jungle limbo.

Set in 'Brantford, New England', the production was based in British Columbia, at the Bridge Studios in Burnaby, south east of Vancouver, which houses the largest effects stage in North America. And to set the record straight, despite urban myths – no live animals were used in the visual effects sequences.

The grand 'Parrish' family home was no more than a façade built on a vacant lot at 1438 Balfour Avenue, off Granville Street, in the Mount Pleasant district, west of Burnaby. A real house has since been built on the site.

'Sir Sav-A-Lot' was a disused supermarket in the Delta Fair Mall, at the southwest corner of 56th Street and 12th Avenue in Tsawwassen, a seaside resort on Route 17 in Delta, the peninsula south of Vancouver. Save-On-Foodsnow stands on the site.

An intersection near Diefenbaker Park was used for a scene of an animal stampede.

Also Maple Ridge Water Park, 23200 Fern Crescent, Maple Ridge, BC (tel: 604.467.7346).

There is some of the real New England, though. 'Brantford' town square and the earlier sequences, with the young Alan Parrish (Adam Hann-Byrd) were filmed around Keene, southern New Hampshire, where the animals stampede along Main Street.

West Street, in Keene, with the 'Parrish' mural.

The Central Square bandstand is overgrown with vines. the Angus Parrish statue on the Central Square common in Keene built for the filming of "Jumanji". Extras run through Central Square in Keene during a looting scene. scenes in Central Square, where the animals were stampeding in the movie. About 150 local residents were used as extras, although the animals that tore through the Square and down West Street, past Paquette’s shop, were later added by computer.

Go to Central Square in downtown and visit the brick wall where West Street begins. Here you’ll see the sign for Parrish Shoes, the fictional company that is the namesake of Robin Williams’ character Alan Parrish. The wall had been painted for filming and was left up after production had wrapped.

The grown-up Parrish finds the graves of his parents in Mount Caesar Cemetery.

The ‘Parrish Shoe Factory’ is North Berwick Woollen Mill, 10 Canal Street, on the bank of the Great Works River, an historic landmark in North Berwick, south of Portland, Maine, near the New Hampshire border.