Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Save articles for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time. Got it Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Once upon a time in Hollywood, the bad guys holed up in anonymous hotel rooms or shabby bedsits.
They were rootless; they took what they could get. If their lairs happened to be in places of former grandeur – castle ruins or sunken hotels – it was just a neat visual reminder of their moral decay. But around the mid-century, things started to shift; the sophisticated baddie took hold.
Today, modernist architecture is movie shorthand for menace. Such houses can be read as cold and stark. But they can also be idiosyncratic, built into rocks, or perched in canyons like strange birds, transcending house-as-shelter.
If the house reflects the self, then it follows that whoever lives in such places might see themselves as inviolate, removed from the hustle and hassle of everyday life. So if we are drawn to the dream houses of movie villains, does this indicate some latent badness within, our shadow self of wealth and taste? Martin Landau and James Mason inside Vandamm’s house in North by Northwest (1959). Credit: Alamy My own love affair with lairs started with the Vandamm house in North by Northwest (1959).
In the movie, Phillip Vandamm (James Mason) is a communist spy – softly spoken, elegant and ruthless. He’s gunning for ad-man Roger Thornhill (Cary Grant), wh.