Much of Twixt was filmed on Coppola’s Napa County estate, as well as in small towns further north in Lake County. It stars Val Kilmer as a horror novelist who finds himself in Swann Valley, a place where he gets all his best ideas while sleeping. That’s in part because sleep allows him to sojourn with teenage vampires, the ghost of Edgar Allan Poe and a bunch of dead children. Things get even creepier when he’s awake, though, thanks to a Ouija board-touting sheriff, a dead girl in the morgue, a Baudelaire-spouting emo kid and a clock tower with seven faces.
So, yes — in case you were wondering — this one is more of a mood than a movie.
‘Twixt’ (AKA: ‘B’Twixt Now and Sunrise’) is available to rent on AppleTV+.
Winchester (2018)
Look, we all know it’s preposterous for Winchester to declare the San José mystery mansion as “the most haunted house in history,” but there’s something extraordinarily fun about seeing this sprawling but familiar tourist attraction captured on film. If you’ve never paid the Winchester Mystery House a visit in real life, you’ll also benefit from real architectural trivia that’s worked into the script. (If you’ve ever wanted to see Sarah Snook from Succession sternly talking about hardwood parquet floors, this movie is for you!)
Though mostly hokey, there are a couple of good jump scares, a possessed white-eyed, red-headed child and Helen Mirren doing the most half-assed American accent in history. (Truly chilling.) Ah, just have fun with it…
‘Winchester’ is streaming now on Freevee and Plex.
Stigmata (1999)
If you think about Patricia Arquette in the ’90s, your mind probably goes straight to True Romance. But if you want to see her being the most ’90s of all of the ’90s, do not skip Stigmata. Leather pants! Belly piercings! Butterfly clips! Shiny Alanis Morissette shirts! It’s like a Delia’s catalog exploded all over this thing. (Which is, of course, a good thing.)
The plot goes like this: Arquette’s gal-about-town, Frankie, gets sent a cursed crucifix from her dumb-tourist mom in Brazil, and promptly starts bleeding all over the place and having visions of nails getting hammered into feet. Byrne’s priest investigator shows up to … look shocked and take photos of her, basically? If none of that holds any appeal, stay tuned for the scene where a bunch of priests wander around the Palace of Fine Arts and pretend it’s the Vatican. Hilarious.
‘Stigmata’ is streaming now on Roku, Hoopla, Tubi and Pluto TV.
The Lost Boys (1987)
Okay, so fine. This one isn’t technically set in the nine-county Bay Area region, and it wasn’t filmed here, either. But it’s close enough, dammit! All of the moody, teenage, bloodsucking action in this ’80s classic takes place in Santa Cruz instead. (“Santa Carla” if you’re Corey Haim in a shoulder-padded, hypercolor ensemble or Corey Feldman in a Rambo headband.) The justification for including it in this list lies in the part where David (Keifer Sutherland, at his sauciest) explains that he and his merry band of hair metal vampires wouldn’t have a cave to live in (or presumably a pipe to hang upside from) if it wasn’t for the “big one hit[ting] San Francisco in 1906.” BOOM! That’ll do!
This movie is incredibly stupid and brilliant and everyone should watch it (again) immediately. Even if only to see Alex Winter’s crimped mullet hanging upside down.
‘The Lost Boys’ is available to rent on Apple TV+, Amazon Prime and Spectrum.
The Dead Pit (1989)
For over a century, the sprawling campus of grand white buildings at 4000 Lafayette St. in Santa Clara served as a mental health facility. The buildings started life in 1885 as “the Great Asylum for the Insane” and closed in 2011 as “Agnews Developmental Center.” Five years before Green Day filmed the band’s “Basket Case” video on location there, this schlocky, outdated horror ran amok with the buildings’ real-life history as well.
