Movies filmed in Vermont? Pull up a chair, because the list goes back more than a hundred years. Covered bridges, white churches, maple-lined back roads, a giant lake and a whole lot of nobody around to get in the way of the camera. Hollywood figured out early that Vermont looks exactly like what everybody pictures when they think "small-town New England." Sometimes the movie is set here. Sometimes Vermont is playing Maine, Massachusetts or a made-up Connecticut town. Either way, somebody in Peacham has a story about it.
Same ground rule as our Connecticut and Maine lists: every film here actually put cameras on Vermont soil. Being "set in Vermont" doesn't count, and you'll see why at the end. Grab a creemee, here are 12 films shot in the Green Mountain State, oldest to newest.
1. Way Down East (1920): Lillian Gish on the Ice in White River Junction
This is the granddaddy of them all. D.W. Griffith's silent melodrama ends with one of the most famous stunts in early film: Lillian Gish, collapsed on a chunk of ice, drifting toward a waterfall while Richard Barthelmess leaps from floe to floe to save her. That ice was real. The sequence was shot in March 1920 on the White River and the Connecticut River at Hartford, Vermont, around White River Junction. The waterfall shot from a distance was Niagara, but the cold was 100 percent Vermont. Fun twist: the story is set "way down east" in Maine. Vermont has been playing other states for over a century.
2. The Trouble with Harry (1955): Hitchcock's Foliage Problem
Alfred Hitchcock made a dark little comedy about a dead body that keeps turning up in the fictional town of Highwater, Vermont, and he actually came to Vermont to shoot it. Filming happened in the fall of 1954 around Craftsbury Common, Morrisville and Barre. It was Shirley MacLaine's first movie. The legendary part? The crew showed up expecting peak foliage and the leaves didn't cooperate, so, as the story goes, they ended up gluing leaves onto the trees. Leaf peepers, you've been warned. Even Hitchcock couldn't time it.
3. A Return to Salem's Lot (1987): Vampires in the Northeast Kingdom
Larry Cohen's horror sequel to the Stephen King miniseries sends Michael Moriarty back to a town that's been taken over by vampires. Salem's Lot is supposed to be in Maine, naturally, but the cameras rolled in Peacham, Newbury and St. Johnsbury. Remember the name Peacham. That tiny town is going to show up on this list a lot.
4. Baby Boom (1987): Diane Keaton Goes Country
Diane Keaton plays J.C. Wiatt, a Manhattan workaholic who inherits a baby, buys a farmhouse in Vermont on a whim, and ends up starting a gourmet baby food business out of all the apples on her property. The Vermont scenes were filmed in Peru, Manchester and Weston. It's basically the original "burned-out city person moves to Vermont" movie, and half of Fairfield County has been trying to live it ever since.
5. Beetlejuice (1988): East Corinth Becomes Winter River
Tim Burton's ghost comedy is set in Winter River, Connecticut, but the town you see is East Corinth, Vermont. Burton used its streets, church and countryside for the exterior shots, and that's why the movie looks like a postcard right up until Michael Keaton shows up. Then, more than 35 years later, the production came back to East Corinth for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (2024). We wrote a whole post about it: tour the Vermont town where Beetlejuice was filmed. If you're the type who watches this every October, our Comfy Clothes & Horror Shows T-Shirt is your official movie-night uniform.
6. Funny Farm (1988): Chevy Chase Moves to "Redbud"
Chevy Chase and Madolyn Smith play New Yorkers who move to the fictional town of Redbud, Vermont, and find out country life isn't the peaceful dream they pictured. It was directed by George Roy Hill, the guy behind Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, and shot in Townshend, Grafton and Windsor with lots of locals as extras. Here's the best part: a gazebo the film crew built in Townshend is still standing. Go sit in it and try to pay the whole town to act normal.
7. Ethan Frome (1993): Liam Neeson in Peacham
Edith Wharton's bleak classic about a lonely farmer, his sickly wife and her young cousin is set in the fictional town of Starkfield, Massachusetts. For the movie, starring Liam Neeson, Joan Allen and Patricia Arquette, the snowy farm scenes were filmed in Vermont, in Peacham, Morrisville and the Chester area. It's not a feel-good movie. It is a great movie to watch when it's 8 degrees out and you're thinking about how good you've got it with a wood stove.
8. Where the Rivers Flow North (1993): Pure Northeast Kingdom
This one is as Vermont as it gets. Director Jay Craven adapted a story by Vermont writer Howard Frank Mosher about an old logger, played by Rip Torn, and his partner, played by Tantoo Cardinal, fighting to hold onto their land in the 1920s. It was set in Vermont and filmed in the Northeast Kingdom, including Peacham and St. Johnsbury. It's a small, homegrown movie, and it shows off the Kingdom better than any big studio ever has.
9. The Spitfire Grill (1996): Vermont Plays Maine Again
Alison Elliott plays Percy, a young woman just out of prison who takes a job at a struggling diner in a small Maine town, with Ellen Burstyn and Marcia Gay Harden alongside her. The town on screen? Peacham and St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Peacham, three movies deep and counting. The story was popular enough to become an off-Broadway musical a few years later.
10. The Cider House Rules (1999): Scott Farm in Dummerston
John Irving's story about Homer Wells, an orphan played by Tobey Maguire, who leaves his orphanage to work at an apple orchard, is set in Maine. But the orchard is Scott Farm in Dummerston, Vermont, which has been growing apples since 1791 and still grows more than a hundred heirloom varieties. Its old hog barn became the cider house itself. The train station scenes were filmed at Bellows Falls. The movie won Oscars for Michael Caine and for Irving's screenplay. Bonus trivia: Scott Farm sits right next to Naulakha, the house where Rudyard Kipling wrote The Jungle Book.
11. What Lies Beneath (2000): Harrison Ford on Lake Champlain
Robert Zemeckis made this ghost thriller with Harrison Ford and Michelle Pfeiffer while his other movie, Cast Away, was on a break so Tom Hanks could lose weight. Filming started on August 23, 1999, in Addison, Vermont. The couple's gorgeous lake house was built from scratch at D.A.R. State Park on Lake Champlain, along with the creepy neighbor's house, and both were torn down when filming wrapped. A pavilion stands there now. Crews also shot in Burlington, including at the University of Vermont, and the interiors were done on soundstages in Los Angeles. Sorry to everyone who drove out there looking for the house.
12. Me, Myself & Irene (2000): Jim Carrey Takes Over Chittenden County
The Farrelly brothers' comedy stars Jim Carrey as Charlie, a Rhode Island state trooper with a split personality, and Renée Zellweger as Irene. A lot of the road trip was filmed in Vermont, in Burlington, Middlebury, Waterbury, Addison and around Chittenden County. The Addison Four Corners Store shows up as the "Four Corners One Stop Shop," and a Middlebury footbridge gets its moment too. Local legend says Carrey got stuck on a rock near the Milton dam for a couple of hours during filming and wasn't thrilled about it. Vermont rivers don't care who you are.
Set in Vermont, Shot Somewhere Else
Now for the twist. Some of the most famous "Vermont" stories never came near the place:
- White Christmas (1954): Bing Crosby's inn is in Pine Tree, Vermont, but the whole thing was made on the Paramount lot in Hollywood, fake snow and all
- Super Troopers (2001): the Vermont state troopers were really patrolling New York's Hudson Valley, in places like Fishkill, Beacon, Newburgh and Wappingers Falls
- Newhart (TV): the Stratford Inn was supposedly in Vermont, and the show was taped in Los Angeles
That's why the movies above deserve a little extra love. They did it the real way, on real Vermont dirt roads, in real Vermont weather.
Roll Credits on the Green Mountain State
From Lillian Gish on the ice in White River Junction to Jim Carrey stuck on a rock in Milton, Vermont keeps proving it can play itself, and Maine, and Massachusetts, and even Connecticut, better than any back lot. And there are more out there, like Robin Williams and Walter Matthau's The Survivors, which shot scenes in Fairlee. If you want more Green Mountain trivia, check out our famous people from Vermont list. Next time you're driving through Peacham, Townshend or East Corinth, look around a little. You might be standing on a movie set.
Want to rep the state that stars in all of these? Our Patriotic 802 Vermont T-Shirt is made for flatlanders and lifers alike.
Were you an extra in one of these, or did you see Harrison Ford at the general store? Tell us on our socials. We want the gossip.
Stay wicked cinematic, Vermont,
Ryan & the Chowdaheadz Crew