Hollywood has always known what to do with a modern house. Give it to the villain, or the pornographer, or the lonely man. Put it on a cliff. Let the camera walk through it before anyone speaks. In these ten films the house does as much work as any actor, and in most of them it is a real building that you can still find on a map.

They are in order of release. Five of the ten are by John Lautner.

1. Mon Oncle (1958): the Villa Arpel

Jacques Tati's comedy is about a house that is too modern to live in. The Arpels' garden has a fish fountain that Madame switches on only for important visitors. The villa was a set, designed by Jacques Lagrange and built at the Victorine Studios in Nice in 1956, and it was torn down after filming. A full-size reconstruction was exhibited in Paris in 2009.

2. North by Northwest (1959): the Vandamm house

The most famous modern house in American film never existed. Hitchcock wanted a house in the manner of Frank Lloyd Wright for his villain, and the production designer Robert Boyle supplied one: interiors on an MGM soundstage, exteriors as matte paintings. One account says the limestone was mostly plaster and the windows had no glass in them. It stands near Mount Rushmore only in the film.

3. Diamonds Are Forever (1971): the Elrod House

John Lautner built this house in Palm Springs for the interior designer Arthur Elrod, and it was finished in 1968. The living room sits under a circular concrete canopy, with large rocks left in place and a pool beyond the glass. In the film it is the home of the reclusive Willard Whyte, where James Bond meets Bambi and Thumper in the living room and ends up in the pool. It is a private house.

4. Body Double (1984): the Chemosphere

Lautner's 1960 house for the aerospace engineer Leonard Malin is an octagon perched on a single concrete column, nearly thirty feet up, in the Hollywood Hills. Brian De Palma made it the place where his hero house-sits and spies on a neighbor. The publisher Benedikt Taschen has owned it since 1998 and had it restored, and the city named it a Historic-Cultural Monument in 2004.

5. Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986): the Ben Rose House

Cameron's father keeps his Ferrari in a glass pavilion over a ravine, and everyone remembers what happens to it. The house is in Highland Park, Illinois. A. James Speyer designed it in 1953, and David Haid added the pavilion in 1974. For the crash the production fitted breakaway glass and used replica cars. It has been a local landmark since 1987 and remains a private home.

6. Lethal Weapon 2 (1989): the Garcia House

Lautner's 1962 house on Mulholland Drive stands on stilts above a canyon, with a parabolic roof over stained-glass windows. It is also known as the Rainbow House. In the film it belongs to a corrupt diplomat, and Mel Gibson's character pulls it down the hill with his truck. The real house was not harmed; a copy was destroyed in its place. It was later restored by the firm Marmol Radziner and sold in 2023 for $12.5 million.

7. L.A. Confidential (1997): the Lovell Health House

The oldest house on this list. Richard Neutra completed it in Los Feliz in 1929 for Philip Lovell. In the film it is the home of Pierce Patchett, a well-mannered dealer in vice. It has been on the National Register since 1971. The art dealers Iwan and Manuela Wirth bought it in 2021 for $8.75 million, and a restoration is planned.

8. The Big Lebowski (1998): the Sheats-Goldstein Residence

Jackie Treehorn's house, where the Dude is handed a drink he should not have accepted. Lautner built it between 1961 and 1963 in the hills above Beverly Hills, and James Goldstein bought it in 1972. In 2016 the Los Angeles County Museum of Art announced that Goldstein had promised the house and its contents to the museum.

9. Galaxy Quest (1999): the Stahl House

Pierre Koenig's Case Study House No. 22, finished in 1960, is the glass house above Los Angeles in Julius Shulman's famous photograph. Here it is the home of Tim Allen's faded television captain. The Stahl family, who built it and ran public tours for years, put it on the market for the first time in November 2025 at $25 million, saying they wanted a buyer who would look after it. The price was cut to $20 million in April 2026. At last report, in September, it had not sold.

10. A Single Man (2009): the Schaffer House

Tom Ford set his film about a grieving professor in an early Lautner house, built in Glendale in 1949 of redwood, glass, brick and concrete. It was used inside and out. It was added to the National Register in 2016 and is a private residence.

If you want to see one

Most of these are private houses, and their owners are entitled to be left alone. The Stahl House is the one that has taken visitors, though its future depends on the sale. The Sheats-Goldstein house has been promised to a museum. For the rest, the films are the tour.