1955 RIVER ROAD TUNNEL

February 17, 2013
Editor
1955
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Tunnel Location from “Back to the Future part II”

Located in Griffith Park, Los Angeles, Ca

Editor’s Note: this text is from the old version of BTTF tour – we’re going to be revising these articles in the coming days. The photos and screenshots from these articles will all be down below for the time being, instead of thumbnails within the text. Thanks for your patience, and visit us again when everything’s tidied up!

We just added our photo archive of the tunnel. The East side was entered by Biff, which is also the side which he hits the Manure on. Interestingly the east side was also the entrance to “Toontown” in the movie Who framed Roger Rabbit, which was also directed by Robert Zemeckis just before BTTFII. The real life tunnel does not have lights along the side and is usually closed after sunset anyways. For as long as I’ve been visiting the lights connected to the cieling (also not the same as those seen in the film) have been long neglected and burnt out. The tunnel still sports the BTTF paint-job, but has more or less fallen into disrepair due to constant vandalism.

The real life tunnel is also NOWHERE near as long as the film leads you to believe. According to Bob Gale and Niel Canton, they built a large, forced-perspective backing that they could put on either end of the tunnel to extend it’s on-screen length. Also, they obviously used other, more simple tricks, such as wide angle lenses, and putting the lights at the far end of the tunnel progressively closer together, giving it the appearance of greater distance without actually having to lengthen it (which they did anyway.)

It’s still a great site to visit. Make sure you “hoverboard” through it on a Skateboard. It’s part of our tradition of “Skateboarding in the footsteps of Marty McFly!” Just watch out – there can be a lot of traffic coming through the tunnel! Might be safer not to attempt that bit unless it’s a weekday morning in the winter, or some other low traffic time.

Tip: The 1960′s Batman TV batcave is located in Griffith park, as well as the Griffith Park observatory, the BTTF Starting Line, and many other film locations!