With its frequently atmospheric weather, notoriously steep streets, and close proximity to some of the most unique and picturesque locations in all of California—including the iconic Golden Gate Bridge, arguably the West Coast analogue to NYC’s Statue of Liberty—San Francisco seems to provide the ideal setting for crime, both of the cinematic and all-too-real variety.
Some of the most revered of the classic film noirs—a genre that reveled in hard-boiled, cynical detectives and alluring femmes fatales peering into the most shadowy corners of the American psyche—took place on the fog-choked streets of San Francisco, including Dark Passage and The Lady from Shanghai, both released in 1947.
As if to further enshrine the city’s place in movie history, Alfred Hitchcock also set several of his movies in and around SF. His most notable in the city was 1958’s Vertigo, a somewhat surreal tale of psychosexual obsession that many consider to be among the legendary director’s best.
But as titillating as these fictional tales may be, they still pale in comparison to some of the true crime cases that went on to inspire silver screen adaptations of their very own. Here are five chilling films based on some of the most notorious true crimes in the city of San Francisco:
Escape From Alcatraz (1979)
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- Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures
Anyone who’s ever visited San Francisco will tell you that Alcatraz is one of the most fascinating and bizarre tourist attractions in the United States. A now-abandoned former maximum security prison on a secluded rocky island, it once upon a time housed nothing but armed guards, frigid water, and presumably bloodthirsty sharks to separate some of the nation’s most violent and high-profile criminals from the glittering lights of the city across the Bay.
Clint Eastwood stars in this taut action-thriller as the ringleader of a group of inmates determined to make good on the film’s title—or die trying. The story is based on a real life 1962 jailbreak with a decidedly ambiguous ending.
Did the three men escape to San Francisco and get away scot-free, or drown during the long swim to shore? The jury’s still out on that one, but either way the dramatization of their audacious attempt is worth a watch.
Patty Hearst (1988)
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- Photo Credit: Atlantic Entertainment Group
Paul Schrader, who also directed the similarly based-on-true-events Taxi Driver, helmed this adaptation of Patricia Hearst’s autobiography. In the source material, Hearst, an heiress and accidental domestic terrorist, wrote about her time with the Symbionese Liberation Army.
In 1974, Hearst—granddaughter of media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who himself inspired Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane —was kidnapped by SLA militants while studying at UC Berkeley. She was subsequently brainwashed into joining their cause.
Within two months, Hearst would be caught on security cameras participating in a bank robbery in San Francisco alongside her captors, brandishing a rifle and barking orders at hostages. But was she really the poster child for Stockholm syndrome, or just a bored little rich girl playing dress-up as a violent revolutionary, as some detractors claimed?
Check out this adaptation, starring the late Natasha Richardson as Hearst and a pre-Pulp Fiction Ving Rhames as the leader of the SLA, and draw your own conclusions.
Zodiac (2007)
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- Photo Credit: Warner Bros.
When it comes to unsolved crimes, it doesn’t get much more chilling than the Zodiac Killer, a still-unidentified serial murderer responsible for at least five deaths in and around San Francisco in the late 1960s.
Even after all these decades, the Zodiac Killer—who combined brutal crimes with a sadistic penchant for sending taunting missives to the press, some containing cryptograms that still haven’t been cracked—is still the closest thing the Bay Area has to a boogeyman. Theories about his identity have ranged from the Unabomber to the same person who perpetrated LA’s Black Dahlia murder, but the case remains maddeningly open.
Here, director David Fincher offers a moody and terrifying look at the Zodiac through the lens of real-life political cartoonist turned sleuth turned true crime writer Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal), whose obsession with the case begins to overrun his entire life.
Milk (2008)
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- Photo Credit: Focus Features
Harvey Milk was a pioneer in the realm of LGBTQIA+ rights. When he was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1978, he was the first openly gay man to hold office in California, and he used his all-too-brief tenure as a public servant to sponsor a bill outlawing housing and employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
Tragically, Milk and San Francisco Mayor George Moscone were assassinated at City Hall by a former city supervisor who cast the only vote against the landmark bill. Directed by queer cinema icon Gus Van Sant and starring Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, this biopic shines light on the life of an important American activist whose work is still deeply vital in today’s political climate.
Fruitvale Station (2013)
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- Photo Credit: The Weinstein Company via IMDb
Ryan Coogler, who went on to write and direct box office hits including Creed and Black Panther, made his feature film debut with this tragic drama about the murder of Oscar Grant, played by frequent Coogler collaborator Michael B. Jordan.
In 2009, Grant, only 22 years old, was detained and shot by police at a BART station in Oakland, just across the Bay from San Francisco. Bystanders recorded the crime on their phones and the footage went viral, sparking outrage and widespread protests that ultimately precipitated the Black Lives Matter movement, which began the same year as Fruitvale Station’s release.
This film is a difficult watch, but one that remains sadly relevant today.
