The final act revolves around Walken realizing some bad things about a politician played by Martin Sheen. He lives in this distinctive house nearby… Here’s Walken crossing the street in the day, down near the post office… Here’s the main strip on Queen Street, complete with the distinctive clock tower. In a scary third act scene, the vice-president of the United States is played by Genie winner and Stratford veteran Ken Pogue, who died a couple of years ago.Īnyway, as we were saying, most of the action takes place right in Niagara-on-the-Lake. It turns out (30-year-old spoiler!) that the murderer is local acting legend Nicholas Campbell, who knows a thing or two about dead bodies.Īnd his mom is Colleen Dewhurst, better known to most Canadians as Marilla in Anne of Green Gables.Īny more Canadian actors of note? Oh, yeah! Walken’s nutty mom is Jackie Burroughs, veteran of Stratford and a kajillion Canadian TV shows and movies, including Last Night and Road to Avonlea. Looking out at the lake here, you can see Old Fort Niagara just across the way, on the American side of the border. You can see that green house still has the same paint job too. Indeed, the landmark gazebo there is a film prop they kept, though the original was replaced a couple of years ago. Then they’re called to a fresh murder, right along the lake, in Queen’s Royal Park. He takes him to the crime scene, Niagara’s landmark “ Screaming Tunnel,” located just off the QEW.

It’s not long before his amazing ability to tell the future is harnessed by local sheriff Tom Skerrit. He’s treated at the fictional Weizak Institute, which is the Randwood Estate just a bit out of town and recently repurposed as a romantic inn. When he drops her off after, we shift to where most of the action takes place, in Niagara-on-the-Lake, though we confess we don’t know most of these residential locations.īut then he has a crazy accident and ends up in a hospital. …and we get a few glimpses of what’s actually the newly-opened Canada’s Wonderland… Then he takes his gal pal on a roller coaster at an apparently empty theme park… …a teacher at what is actually Stouffville’s Summitview Public School, which still looks much the same. We open relatively close the city and then move further out. But it’s close enough geographically, and as both one of the better adaptations of Stephen King’s work and the most mainstream works of local auteur David Cronenberg, it’s worthy of the Reel Toronto treatment. Okay, strictly speaking, The Dead Zone was filmed more around Toronto than in Toronto.

Martin Sheen plays a right wing populist who could lead the country to nuclear war. Culture Where Stephen King’s and David Cronenberg’s The Dead Zone Was Filmed in the Toronto Area

The dead zone king