Stanley Kubrick was a famously obsessive filmmaker, his micromanagement of anything and everything to do with a production heightened by his severe fear of flying. Despite the settings of his movies spanning almost as many continents as they do genres, location shooting was a rare thing for Kubrick.
Mostly he preferred his set designers to construct elaborate, intricately detailed — and easily controlled — replicas on soundstages, most often at the Shepperton and Pinewood Studios near his country home in Hertfordshire.
There are exceptions, however. For the Kubrick fan looking to make a pilgrimage, but unable to afford flights to the moon or accreditation for film studios, we’ve compiled a list here of the London locations utilised in his films, with images comparing how they looked on the big screen to how they appear now (…with a little help from Google Street View).
Alex’s superspeed threesome in A Clockwork Orange was actually instigated at the Chelsea Drug Store
The building, which occupies the corner of of Royal Avenue and King’s Road is now a McDonald’s.
Thamesmead Estate was the location for Alex’s slow-motion beat-down of his fellow droogs.
You can find the exact stretch of waterway beside the estate’s artificial Southmere Lake
How did Kubrick manage to capture the bombed-out urban sprawl of the Vietnam War?
Yes, he used then-dilapidated East London, most of which has been regenerated, but for the still-abandoned Beckton Gasworks
The nervy sequence of Tom Cruise being pursued in Eyes Wide Shut is a superb example of New York’s sinister nighttime presence
Or it would be, were it not shot in the Hatton Garden region of Soho, dressed in NYC phone boxes
Eyes Wide Shut ends with a reconciliation of Cruise and Kidman’s post-Christmas toy shopping
Brilliantly, their incongruous discussion of sex was shot in a real-life toy shop: Hamleys, on Regent St
