May-2015
6 movies filmed in Downeast Maine
The Cider House Rules
The 1999 Academy Award-winning film “The Cider House Rules,” about a young orphan struggling to find his own path in life, was filmed at several scenic locations around Mount Desert Island. Starring a young Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Paul Rudd and Michael Cain, scenes were filmed at Sand Beach in Acadia National Park, Thurston’s Lobster Pound in Bernard and in the village of Corea.
Pet Sematary
It is only fitting that the adaptation of one of Stephen King’s creepiest novels was filmed in his native Maine. Scenes for 1989’s “Pet Semetary,” about a gaggle of pets who return from the dead, were filmed in Hancock, Bucksport, Ellsworth and Bangor.
Storm of the Century
Mainers have it bad enough as it is in the winter without a deranged psychic causing even more problems. This is the world of “Storm of the Century,” a 1999 miniseries based on the Stephen King novel of the same name. Some scenes were filmed in Southwest Harbor, and others, curiously, in San Francisco.
Sarah, Plain and Tall
Starring Glenn Close and Christopher Walken, this 1991 made-for-TV series adaptation of the novel “Sarah, Plain and Tall,” a book you likely read in elementary school. It was filmed in part in Stonington. The film is about a Maine woman in the 1900s, who moves to Kansas to become a mail-order bride, but doesn’t know if she can stay because she is homesick for the Maine coast. Can you blame her?
Signs of Life
This little-seen, 1989 flick starring Kathy Bates and Beau Bridges takes place the day a Downeast boat building shop closes, threatening the welfare of everyone in a small Maine town. Scenes were filmed in Ellsworth and Stonington.
Shutter Island
The 2010 Martin Scorcese film starring Leonardo DiCaprio about a missing psychiatric patient takes place on an island off the coast of Boston. Scenes for the film were shot on a Massachusetts island, but the rocky island shore and the crashing waves were filmed at Otter Cliffs in Acadia National Park.