Ten Fun Facts About Nimród Antal’s ‘Vacancy’ (2007)
Jazmine Hiller April 19, 2022ListsComments Off on Ten Fun Facts About Nimród Antal’s ‘Vacancy’ (2007)
Nimród Antal’s horror/thriller, Vacancy turns 15 on April 20, 2007. That’s right, it’s been fifteen years since this movie made me—and everyone else—absolutely terrified of motels. To celebrate, we have compiled a list of 10 fun facts.
Vacancyfollows the story of David (Luke Wilson) and Amy (Kate Beckinsale), a married couple on the brink of divorce. As they are heading home, their car breaks down. They have little choice but to spend the night at a remote hotel. The couple soon find that things aren’t as they seem. They entertain themselves by watching low-budget slasher movies on TV… until they realize that the horrifying, violent images they see were recorded in the room in which they are staying.
How can you escape… if they can see everything?
Ten Fun Facts About Vacancy
1) It was rumored that Sarah Jessica Parker was going to play Amy, the role ended up going to Kate Beckinsale.
2) The advertising strategy for the film made use of the Internet as well as a toll-free phone number. If you called the number, you heard a message that sounded as if you were actually calling the Pinewood Motel. In the background, screaming could be heard accompanying the voice of the proprietor (Frank Whaley), who informed callers about the “slashed” prices and the “killer” deals that the motel had if there was a vacancy. The toll free phone number for the ad was 1-888-9-VACANCY (1-888-982-22629). That number is no longer valid.
3) The snuff films were all shot on the first day of shooting. The completed films are listed on the film’s home video release.
4) Kate Beckinsale had a difficult time working with Luke Wilson, who often showed up late, hungover, and unprepared.
5) The cast and crew remarked that the film was intended as an homage to old school horror films, primarily Sir Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960). As a result of this, the emphasis is placed primarily on suspense over gory violence.
6) Vacancy was shipped to theaters under the name Temporary Arrangement.
7) Wilson refused to stand off-camera opposite Beckinsale when she read her lines, sending his stand-in instead. Eventually, an appalled Beckinsale refused to do her own off-camera work for Wilson’s benefit, instead sending a photograph of herself to the set with a note which read: “Read your lines to this — it will be better for the both of us.”
8) The address on the motel entryway door, S. Hwy 281, would put the location of the motel somewhere in Texas. If the address were S. Hwy 28, it would be somewhere in the Carolinas, which is the location of the prequel.
9) Writer Mark L. Smith stated that he used to live in Colorado with his wife, and they would frequently drive down to New Mexico. During these drives, they would see all these isolated motels in the middle of nowhere that never seemed to have any customers. Smith started to wonder how these empty motels stayed in business, and that’s how he came up with the idea of an isolated motel that was actually a front for selling snuff films of its travelling guests.
10) The Pinewood Motel was actually built specifically for the film and was not a pre-existing location. The motel itself was actually two entirely separate sets, one interior and one exterior. Director Nimród Antal remarked that the attention to detail by the production designers was astonishing, since they were able to take an entirely new structure and make it look like a run-down dive motel. He remarked that, after shooting each day, he felt that he needed to “shower off” the feel of the set despite it actually being quite clean in real-life.
Just a Canadian girl who loves horror movies and old music. I grew up watching horror with older siblings, and cousins but I really fell in love when I watched Wes Craven's A Nightmare On Elm Street, and I've been in love ever since.
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