So, there should be no argument that
Maidens of Fetish Street AKA
Girls on F Street is a weird, terrible, wonderful picture—described in a review
here—and note, if you will that in the accompanying video, at 1:04, there's
the stained glass of The
Castle. It's not the only Bunker Hill reference, later on the narrator makes a point of saying the "House of Fetish" is up on the Hill, first mentioning that our protagonist Nick takes the Flight:
(all screen grabs, from
Maidens,
SWV)
This is the Angels Flight...that ascends and descends countless times daily...where the angels fear to tread, the flight that is incapable of surmounting the plight of our human misery. Where this hill has never budged and bridged the border of the ravaged slum with all its potent and stomach turning smells, when each individual's flight to the top of the hill never seems to leave behind his despaired hopes and disillusioned agonies. Nick is no different from all the others; and its thirty-second journey of hopeless dejection.
Which brings us to the question, where
was the House of Fetish? Because when Jim Dawson
said it was the Berke Mansion, up on Bunker Hill at Second and Hope, and I took a look at the film, I was sold. But years later I took another look and it's
not the Berke. Compare:
calstatelib
I mean you can see how one would certainly think so, but no. Some more shots of the mystery house:
I thought I'd figured it out, actually—it had to be that mucked-up house at the corner of Edgware and Carroll. But no, turns out that was the
Stilson-Bradford House, looked nothing like this. What got me thinking
that in part is that after Nick rides up Angels Flight and it shows the panorama of "the Hill," that's actually shot from the roof of the Stilson-Bradford House:
Moreover, in the establishing shot of "the city", judging by the way the DWP is turned, its relationship to City Hall, and how the Hwd Fwy runs, certainly seems like Carroll Ave, or nearby:
Of course I just realized that I could have just posted a single image of the house and one the Noirishers here would have in ten seconds said "Oh yeah, that's the Schmendrik-Doppes House" or somesuch...but explanatory text and pictures are much more fun.