Tour the Locations of Scottish Local Hero Movie
Visit Scotland's Locations from the Classic Bill Forsyth Film
Aug 18, 2009
Along with the haunting music of Local Hero, the film is also renowned for its locations and beautiful scenery. Famous locations include 'Ben's beach' (Camusdarrach), the red telephone box (Pennan), the village of 'Furness' (Pennan), the church (Lochailort) and the Macaskill Bar (Banff) – all of which provide the settings for some great comic scenes within the movie.
Ben's Beach
This is located on Camusdarach beach in Morar. This stunning Scottish beach is the setting for 'Ben's hut' and the crux of Local Hero's plot. Ben is reluctant to sell his beach as it has been in his family for centuries. In a famous scene of negotiation, Mac (Peter Riegert) tries to sell Ben a foreign beach in exchange for his own. Ben retorts by holding a handful of sand and asking Mac to give him a dollar for every grain of sand he can hold, dropping some and saying, 'look, saved you a few dollars there'.
Eventually an unusual deal is settled when oilman Happer (Burt Lancaster) visits Ben in his hut to discuss the stars, providing the villagers of Furness with an unexpected future. The beach and dunes where the hut was built lie on the white sands of Camusdarach beach between the west coast harbours of Arisaig and Mallaig. The location can be visited today, it has a small car-park and path leading to the beach which instantly brings back images from the film. The rockpool where Mac loses his digital watch is also here, as is the headland on which Danny woos Marina.
Furness
The village of Furness and its cast of gritty characters is assumed to be a west coast village in the film, but is actually set on Scotland's east coast at Pennan, a small fishing harbour on the Moray coast. This is the site of the famous red telephone box scene when Mac phones Happer to tell him of the amazing northern lights ('it's red all over'). It is also the setting for the hotel run by Gordon Urquhart and his wife Stella. Though the telephone box and hotel exterior were props due to cinematography positioning, the village remains much the same as it exists in Local Hero, with the harbour, tekephone box and hotel still frequently visited and photographed by fans of the film.
The Church in Local Hero
The church is a focal point in the movie, where villagers gather to discuss apportioning the money they expect from the oil company 'Knox Oil and Gas', whose representative 'Mac' has been sent to negotiate a deal. Gordon Urquhart (Denis Lawson) holds court in the pulpit box while the Reverend Macpherson (Christopher Asanteis) demoted to shepherding Mac and Danny from the busy church meeting. The famous line 'news does tend to travel fast round here' is the key moment in this scene. The church exterior was built as a prop at the end of Camusdarach beach, but the interior was filmed in the now disused Lochailort church, which can still be visited beside a busy modern road on the way to Mallaig one mile beyond the Lochailort Inn.
The Bar in Local Hero
The bar is the hub of all negotiation in Local Hero, when Gordon Urquhart feeds Mac enough whiskey to negotiate a deal in pounds rather than dollars. It is also the setting for the famous scene when Mac admits his love of Stella and suggests a lifetsyle swap: 'I'd make a good Gordon, Gordon.' The bar was known as the Macaskill Arms in the film but is in reality the Ship Inn in Banff. It remains largely the same to this day.
There is a dedicated site to the locations of Local Hero which gives details of other locations in Bill Forsyth's most successful Scottish film comedy.
