Locations Used for Filming

Shag: The Movie

Sometimes you just have to do stuff that serves no practical purpose and most likely has almost no interest or relevancy to others, but by doing so you finally succeed in getting a nagging issue off your mind.  Such was the case with wondering about a couple of the principal locations used in Shag:The Movie which were intended to represent Myrtle Beach in 1963.  It started innocuously and innocently enough with the unintended discovery of a YouTube clip showing scenes from the movie accompanied by a soundtrack of Ernie K-Doe's Teta Ta Ta Ta.

We knew the film was shot in 1987, the year we were married in Myrtle Beach and which was during a period when we were very frequent visitors there.  We recognized the areas where the day and nighttime cruising scenes were done, but weren't entirely certain whether the amusement park featured was the one directly across from the old main pavilion in Myrtle Beach or perhaps the one at Family Kingdom some distance away.  We weren't into doing "rides" at that time in our lives and consequently paid no attention to them.  The diner with the roller skating waitress wasn't even in Myrtle Beach - it was the Sky View Drive-In located in Florence, SC which was still operating until it burned in 2007.  However, since we were intimately familiar with all the clubs and party places where one could enjoy Carolina Beach Music and shagging, it began to really trouble us that we didn't recognize the building used for the "Pavilion" and there was also the matter of the location of the bikini contest which, though not immediately recognizable, looked hauntingly familiar.

The biggest surprise of all came when plumbing the depths of the internet the realization set in that the answers weren't there.  How could that be?!  Everything one could possibly want to know is available somewhere on the internet, isn't it?  There were a few reviews of the movie here and there with lists of actors, and the music and its performers, but nothing about locations other than naming Myrtle Beach, North Myrtle Beach, Georgetown, Florence and Atlantic Beach, SC.

There were a few comments found which suggested the writers of them assumed the "Pavilion" was the main one in Myrtle Beach proper which we knew most definitely was not the case.  But try as we might we just could not remember a building in any of the locales referenced that could have been used for that purpose.  More on a hunch than anything else or perhaps because of a vague recollection of the movie being mentioned, we found ourselves paging through our copy of Shagging in the Carolinas autographed for us by the author 'Fessa John Hook.  And there on page 118 was the first clue.

OK, so John says the last dance scene was shot inside the old Atlantic Beach Pavilion without providing any explanation of how he came to possess that particular bit of knowledge.  Did that mean the other interior shots also were done there?  What about the many exterior day and night shots?  Those movie producers can be a crafty bunch and have been known to use multiple locations including movie lot sets to represent a single place.

Studying and restudying the YouTube clip was futile in terms of attempting to answer the preceding questions.  It did serve to remind us that long ago when the movie was newly released we had been told by someone who was in it that the facades on top of what was otherwise a plain building had been added for the filming of the movie.  We have yet to verify whether that is true.  The questions became all the more maddening and with a good degree of obsessiveness manifesting itself the decision was made to rent the movie and study it more carefully.  That was a useless idea - none of the local movie rental outlets had a copy available.  Also, definitely got some strange looks from the tattooed, pierced young kids masquerading as clerks and cashiers.  Not to be deterred, it was determined that Blockbuster online had a new DVD version available for purchase.  We did hesitate on ordering it since we clearly remembered how much we disliked the film the one and only time we had seen it when it was first released twenty some years ago.  But, obsessive curiosity prevailed.

Careful study of all the interior and exterior Pavilion views, often frame by frame, was undertaken and we became convinced the same building indeed was used for both.  Also an obscure sign was noticed near the Pavilion in one of the nighttime scenes.  Frame captures and enhancement with Adobe Photoshop revealed the words "Biarritz Motel".  More internet research found no reference about any such place in Atlantic Beach, SC.  Another of the movie props?  Dismayed at yet another internet search failure (that's just not possible, is it?), we remembered that amongst our collection of memorabilia from our wedding were some of the typical "see and do" type tourist publications.  Paydirt at last!  Listed in the directory of accommodations in Strand Magazine was:

Plugging the address into an online map search and then switching to a satellite view showed it would have been exactly where the sign was seen in the movie in relation to the Pavilion at Atlantic Beach - now vacant space.

But there was one last detail needing attention.  Was the beach location represented in the movie as being adjacent to the Pavilion authentic?  In the film a pier was prominently visible, but there is no such thing at Atlantic Beach.  Frames of the view were captured and made available to a longtime resident and collector of Myrtle Beach pictorial materials who uses the nom de plume "cathooker2".  He immediately recognized the Holiday Inn Pier and provided copies of postcards featuring it.

Another of the 1987 publications, Coast magazine, showed the pier as being located just where it appeared in the movie.

This time our internet research endeavor was more successful.  We learned the pier had been demolished by Hurricane Hugo in September 1989 and was never rebuilt.