The Mean Season (1985) Film & Locations

[Paul Veres]

11 hours ago, airtommy said:

The biggest clue was the house number (as seen in your screencap).  

Yes, I saw that number too of course, just couldn't come up with a straightforward strategy to use it. I guess just going down every street in a reasonably matching area and looking up every house by that number and see if it's the one... I wish there was a search of the sort "show me all single family homes in Miami-Dade with street number 651, with pictures!".

 

18 minutes ago, Tom said:

And crime scene 4 (rainy scene) is Matheson Hammock. It looks like it. Also mentioned in the scene before by the killer. 

Agreed, that parking lot looks like a match.

[Paul Veres]

Just figured where Malcolm is running across traffic towards his girlfriend's school to save her - it's my favorite MV intersection, Brickell Ave and SE 15th St!

Easily matched by the church.

That's a crazy distance stitch within this chase scene.

 

[Tom]

Malcom´s house is at a very narrow street that is unpaved. Easy to see in the scene where he gets home after the Tobacco Road bar scene. Very rare, even for 1985. That rules our most streets in Gables and Coconut Grove. It also shows that there is no close neighbor or intersection. Together with the other search criteria (N/S street, entrance facing east, Banyan, vis a vis neighbor, slim rectangle shape parallel to street) that should be enough complexity reduction to find it. If it still stands.

 

Edited April 18 by Tom

[Paul Veres]

As to the last piece of Malcolm rushing to school sequence, this is an interesting one. There are some really nice clues in this one shot: 

Namely, some seafood sign in the back, further back a power substation, further back and above it a bridge, some building further back.

The substation and the bridge match well the metrorail bridge crossing Miami river and the substation west of it:

What is the road then? In the original screenshot above, I believe the round columns on the right are then I-95 overpass support, so he must be getting out of SW 2nd St and onto SW North River Dr, as he is driving towards the SW 1st St bridge. Here is the overall picture:

The view today is hard to match:

But I think I got it right with the indicators above. Let me know what you guys think.

 

[Paul Veres]

1 hour ago, Tom said:

Malcom´s house is at a very narrow street that is unpaved. Easy to see in the scene where he gets home after the Tobacco Road bar scene. Very rare, even for 1985. That rules our most streets in Gables and Coconut Grove. It also shows that there is no close neighbor or intersection. Together with the other search criteria (N/S street, entrance facing east, Banyan, vis a vis neighbor, slim rectangle shape parallel to street) that should be enough complexity reduction to find it. If it still stands.

 

Would you also rule out Morningside area?

[Tom]

vor 8 Minuten schrieb Paul Veres:

Would you also rule out Morningside area?

Yes due to vegetation, width of road and unpaved surface. I also had that thought because it’s near one murder site but that was before I inspected the road.

Edited April 18 by Tom

[Paul Veres]

So when you say unpaved, do you mean literally a dirt road without asphalt?

Also what do you think about these curvatures? Some weird cul-de-sac maybe? I also think I'm pretty sure I can see some thin curb above the top yelloe line, and maybe even below the bottom yellow line.

[Paul Veres]

This reminds me of what you said here 

I think I'm a little time away from sketching a floorplan 

[Tom]

vor 58 Minuten schrieb Paul Veres:

So when you say unpaved, do you mean literally a dirt road without asphalt?

 

30:06 and beyond looks like a dirt road to me. On your picture the lower part of the road looks like grey asphalt though.

[Paul Veres]

2 hours ago, Tom said:

30:06 and beyond looks like a dirt road to me. On your picture the lower part of the road looks like grey asphalt though.

I personally think it's asphalt. In fact I just found a house while randomly browsing which has an approach which I believe is very similar to what Malcolm's house has (compare back with my highlighted screenshot with curves and thin curbs):

In fact that's probably exactly what he does in that night drive-up scence - he turns to the left towards the house to get into this loop and stops in it.

This particular house is in Miami Shores. I was browsing that area because it is directly north of victims 2-3 house, has decently think vegetation in many places, and was probably underdeveloped vs Miami at the time, so there is more chances for that rough road without sidewalks and curbs and drains etc., and some weird random street configuations which I think what this house implies.

E.g. check out this street a block away from the above house, very good vibe:

[airtommy]

19 hours ago, Tom said:

 I don´t have the movie, only had a short snippet from YT to work with.

You can see the movie in HD here:

ww1.m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-the-mean-season-1985-5493.html

[Tom]

vor 2 Stunden schrieb airtommy:

You can see the movie in HD here:

ww1.m4uhd.tv/watch-movie-the-mean-season-1985-5493.html

Thanks I know that link but it interrupted there all the time. I have a full working version now.

[Tom]

vor 9 Stunden schrieb Paul Veres:

I personally think it's asphalt. In fact I just found a house while randomly browsing which has an approach which I believe is very similar to what Malcolm's house has (compare back with my highlighted screenshot with curves and thin curbs):

In fact that's probably exactly what he does in that night drive-up scence - he turns to the left towards the house to get into this loop and stops in it.

This particular house is in Miami Shores. I was browsing that area because it is directly north of victims 2-3 house, has decently think vegetation in many places, and was probably underdeveloped vs Miami at the time, so there is more chances for that rough road without sidewalks and curbs and drains etc., and some weird random street configuations which I think what this house implies.

E.g. check out this street a block away from the above house, very good vibe:

Of course there are some other potential areas in Greater Miami for that search profile, but very small and I haven´t found anything there either.

My favorite up north near Miami Shores for vegetation and street/house pattern was El Portal. It´s a very small area only, but very secluded and there is even a similar house with a Banyan tree at the right place and a vis a vis house at the right place and the street fits too, but it´s not it. See below.

 

[airtommy]

14 hours ago, Tom said:

Thanks I know that link but it interrupted there all the time. I have a full working version now.

It was terrible for me, but then I clicked on "Backup" and it worked great.

This movie was pretty good, far better than many other Miami movies.  Very formulaic serial killer story, but the newsroom aspect was cool.  Good cast.

[Paul Veres]

I now have a big question - how many bedrooms does this house really have? Because if it had only one, then it's maybe just some 50 houses we need to look at in the filtered county data map in target areas.

So I reconstructed the floorplan... I am 99% confident in my reconstruction outside of the yellow cloud in the diagram below.

 

Yellow cloud is where some incosistencies lie:

• I'm pretty sure that the bedroom has only two windows (at its head and next to the porch door). But the exterior shot clearly shows two windows close to each other on the right side (top in the diagram) of the house. So there must be another room, but I can't figure out the access to it unless it's a really odd floorplan with the master bedroom being a go-through zone leading to more of the house!
• The bathroom door and stuff on the wall to the left of it don't match. In bedroom scenes what I assume is the bathroom door is dark, in the bathroom scene it's light color with a whale figure on it. A strong assumption we can make is that they filmed the bathroom scene in another place. Is that unusual for production or is that plausible? The brown door must be the bathroom, it just makes sense for the master bedroom to have access to the only bathroom.
• The living room has some weird space - a closet with a window to outside. It's not good for my overall floorplan guesstimate 

If there are two bedrooms, why does Malcolm sleep on the couch after their argument whereas he could sleep more comfortably on the other bed? Granted, the second bedroom is not always set up as an actual bedroom. 

What's also interesting is that Malcolm invariably enters the home through the side door behind the car port. What's up with the front door? In fact they don't seem to have a proper front door, only the porch, which has a door on its side anyway (though the porch might have another door on the opposite side we can't see). What's up with the other side door they barricaded by a tripod?

If you have time to follow my reconstruction, here are all the Malcolm house scenes in the movie, with my notes.

13:23 - 14:20 (love making scene) good view of the bedroom and the porch through the open door

15:52 - 17:44 (the shower scene) the key exterior shot of the full house plus the shower scene where we catch outside of the bathroom's window, and see another window through the bathroom door

30:06 - 32:01 (coming from the bar) nighttime car approach scene, a clear bedroom shot with a view into the living room and a window reflection in the mirror

36:01 - 40:26 (villain calling Malcolm), some living room shots including both their desks and the sliding doors behind Malcolm

45:53 - 47:41 (villain calling Malcolm), great living room shots, with the blocked door, and tying a lot together. Note that when Malcolm is coming from the shower, he's walking from the bedroom (a clue that the brown door is the bathroom)

50:49 - 51:45 (villain calling Malcolm) good bedroom and living room shots

53:23 - 56:31 (mailman attack) car port shots, the house across the road, great living room and kitchen shots tying a lot of dimensions together

74:11 - 75:02 (with the detective waiting for a call) great living room shots 

91:40 - 98:44 (fight with villain) additional night road shot, a porch shot, a lot of living room, most importantly the view of the weird closet space with a window in it!

 

Edited April 20 by Paul Veres

[Paul Veres]

Well holy mackerel... It's unbelievable. The closet window goes into the bathroom?? What is wrong with this house?!

You tell me if I'm crazy.

First, note that in the shower scene she has the shower curtain both in front of her and behind them when they are kissing in the shower. It must be one of those old school free standing bathtubs where the curtain wraps all the way around. When they are kissing there is a window behind them. Now compare the shower curtain pattern and what we see in the closet window during the fight scene:

Note the bright patterns in the left and right corners:

They look just like the flowers on the curtain, don't they??

Now that would really help because we know that the bathroom door is directly opposite the shower, so we could "pull up" the whole bedroom on the diagram, give it all 3 windows, and conclude that's the total floorplan. But! The different bathroom door look would still remain anyway! Unless there is some walk-through closet between the bedroom and the bathroom. I actually rented an apartment which was just like that - you walk through a large closet to get from the bedroom to the bathroom. If both doors are open, we would still see the bedroom window behind Malcolm through both doors when he barges into the bathroom.

It would also make sense because otherwise there is no closet in the bedroom, which is a little unrealistic. 

I'd just need to stretch some dimensions differently in the sketch, but I think we could squeeze it there. I would really love this to be a 1-bedroom house. A realy long bedroom taking the whole front of the house I guess...

[Paul Veres]

I just noticed something else in the mailman attack scene. He comes from the "back" of the house, but now I'm not even sure where this house has the front and back.

As Malcolm notices the mailman loitering about, you can see through the thick vegetation that there is a road (presumably from which the mailman is walking after parking) and a house behind that road:

Now let's add this to the floorplan sketch, along with the road which we've assume so far to be the front approach road:

 

Now remember that in the full exterior shot of the "front" there is no clear approach to any possible "front" door. It's just all vegetation:

So what do we have in total? And @Tom I'm not sure now which side you meant when you said the house must be facing east, but for simplicity I'll assume the east is just like in my sketch - on the right. So we have roads on both east and west of the house. How unusual is that already? There is no clear "front" door on the east. There is no door on the west where the mailman is approaching from, and it's all vegetation outside. In fact both Malcolm as usual from the east, and the mailman from the west, get to the house's south side anyway to enter or leave the mail at the sliding doors which basically serve as the main entrance.

AND there is the mysterious blocked door on the north, which across everything else is the closest we have to a formal front entrance, especially because it enters into the living room (the porch entrance leads into the bedroom so it cannot be the main entrance). Does that imply there is another road in the north leading to that formal front entrance? Does the road possibly wrap around the whole lot on the east, north, and west sides?? That would make for some really unique location.

Edited April 20 by Paul Veres

[Tom]

vor einer Stunde schrieb Paul Veres:

I just noticed something else in the mailman attack scene. He comes from the "back" of the house, but now I'm not even sure where this house has the front and back.

As Malcolm notices the mailman loitering about, you can see through the thick vegetation that there is a road (presumably from which the mailman is walking after parking) and a house behind that road:

Now let's add this to the floorplan sketch, along with the road which we've assume so far to be the front approach road:

 

Now remember that in the full exterior shot of the "front" there is no clear approach to any possible "front" door. It's just all vegetation:

So what do we have in total? And @Tom I'm not sure now which side you meant when you said the house must be facing east, but for simplicity I'll assume the east is just like in my sketch - on the right. So we have roads on both east and west of the house. How unusual is that already? There is no clear "front" door on the east. There is no door on the west where the mailman is approaching from, and it's all vegetation outside. In fact both Malcolm as usual from the east, and the mailman from the west, get to the house's south side anyway to enter or leave the mail at the sliding doors which basically serve as the main entrance.

AND there is the mysterious blocked door on the north, which across everything else is the closest we have to a formal front entrance, especially because it enters into the living room (the porch entrance leads into the bedroom so it cannot be the main entrance). Does that imply there is another road in the north leading to that formal front entrance? Does the road possibly wrap around the whole lot on the east, north, and west sides?? That would make for some really unique location.

I assumed the front entrance on the side where the red beetle is parked. That’s also the road that Malcolm uses in the drive home scene after the bar scene. 
 

And for me the mailman came from the south side of your sketch, not from behind the house. Because he attacked the mailman at the east side (entrance) of the carport where the red beetle is parked.  And Malcolm detected him on the southside (at least that was my impression). 

Edited April 20 by Tom

[Paul Veres]

29 minutes ago, Tom said:

I assumed the front entrance on the side where the red beetle is parked. That’s also the road that Malcolm uses in the drive home scene after the bar scene. 

Got it, so the sketch is oriented correctly then. Yeah that's the road and he uses the south wide sliding doors which are at what I now call the back of the house, while the front door of the house's original plan is at the north side but is never used.

[Paul Veres]

1 hour ago, Tom said:

And for me the mailman came from the south side of your sketch, not from behind the house. Because he attacked the mailman at the east side (entrance) of the carport where the red beetle is parked.  And Malcolm detected him on the southside (at least that was my impression). 

He's certainly coming from the west side. Here he is behind the west side windows, and you can see the dining table below and the sliding doors on the left (south) side: :

 

Edited April 20 by Paul Veres

[Paul Veres]

2 hours ago, Paul Veres said:

Does that imply there is another road in the north leading to that formal front entrance? Does the road possibly wrap around the whole lot on the east, north, and west sides?? That would make for some really unique location.

By the way houses surrounded by roads on 3 sides do exist - I just found an example, which is also in a neighborhood full of these half-loop driveups: 

[Tom]

vor 14 Minuten schrieb Paul Veres:

By the way houses surrounded by roads on 3 sides do exist - I just found an example, which is also in a neighborhood full of these half-loop driveups: 

I doubt this house has streets on 3 sides. When Malcom arrives home we see no intersection behind him before he pulls into his own driveway, so if the mailman comes from the back of the house, we have only proof of 2 streets (in front and behind the house which still has to face east as the red beetle is parked on the east side of the house and the sun came from the south side during the attack on the mailman)

Edited April 20 by Tom

[Paul Veres]

17 minutes ago, Tom said:

I doubt this house has streets on 3 sides. When Malcom arrives home we see no intersection behind him before he pulls into his own driveway, so if the mailman comes from the back of the house, we have only proof of 2 streets (in front and behind the house which still has to face east as the red beetle is parked on the east side of the house and the sun came from the south side during the attack on the mailman)

I'm only speculating it might have a road on the third, north, side (so not where the Malcolm is driving, he is coming from the south), because the only door seen in the house looking like a front door faces north.

While it's clearly unused, it would be odd to originally build the house with a front door not having some road in front of it. Over time things might have changed, since there is now vegetation right in front of it, though the house is generally overgrown with greenery.

[Tom]

vor 20 Minuten schrieb Paul Veres:

I'm only speculating it might have a road on the third, north, side (so not where the Malcolm is driving, he is coming from the south), because the only door seen in the house looking like a front door faces north.

 dou

While it's clearly unused, it would be odd to originally build the house with a front door not having some road in front of it. Over time things might have changed, since there is now vegetation right in front of it, though the house is generally overgrown with greenery.

Given the location of the car port and where the two cars are parked, I would say the east side became the new front side of the house and whatever this north door was supposed to be originally - I doubt that anyone would park his two cars at a back entrance. But yes, the house is odd overall.

Edited April 20 by Tom

[Paul Veres]

FYI, here are all the filming locations we have so far (not showing Everglades) - which is really all of them, the house is practically the last one.

Maybe helps narrow down where they'd have this house, though I think the house migth still be outside, to the north, as discussed before.