This movie is about a Detroit cop who comes to Beverly Hills to investigate his friend's murder.

So the beginning of the film is supposed to take place in Motown. And some of it does - most notably the lengthy police pursuit / chase scene that sees 'Axel Foley' (Eddie Murphy) hanging onto the back of a truck while it careens wildly through the streets of Detroit.

But the producers don't even wait until he's out of Detroit before switching to L.A. locations.

The apartment building is actually located near downtown L.A., in a seedy part of town about three blocks west the Harbor (110) Freeway and about seven blocks east of MacArthur Park, at the southwest corner of Whitmer Street & Ingraham Ave. - just a block south of Wilshire Blvd.

When we first see Eddie's car arrive (see the top photo), he is heading south/SW on Witmer Street (away from Wilshire). . He drives between two tall, run-down apartment buildings that look somewhat alike. The camera is looking north. Just after he passes Ingraham Ave, he hangs a U-turn (so he's going back north/NE) and he pulls over and parks at the curb on the east/SE side of Witmer Street. (As he gets out of the car, it starts to roll backward, and he has to jump back in and stop it.)

The building he parks in front of is the one on the southeast corner of Witmer & Ingraham Ave. But as he gets out of the car, he appears to be heading to the building across the street, to the building at the southwest corner of Whitmer & Ingraham, where his apartment is supposed to be located.

That same building is seen again later (see the photo above), after the cops swarm in to investigate Mikey's murder, in a scene where Eddie's Detroit boss warns him to stay away from the case, and Eddie asks for vacation time.

(In the photo above, the camera is looking west/southwest, down on Witmer Street.) *

Next, we see Eddie in Beverly Hills, driving down his crappy blue Chevy Nova down its palm tree-lined streets and taking in the sights.

For much of this drive, he's heading west on Sunset Boulevard.

[ To read more about Rodeo, click here. ]

The camera focuses on the bronze signs of several well-known shops that are located on Rodeo Drive , including Louis Vuitton and Fendi. These bronze plaques were located on the west side of Rodeo Drive, on the walls of the Rodeo Collection center, at 421 Rodeo Drive.

At first glance, knowing we're supposed to be in Beverly Hills, and having just come from Rodeo Drive, you might mistake this for the Beverly Wilshire Hotel (where "Pretty Woman" was filmed), at the north end of Rodeo Drive . It does look a bit like it. But you'd be wrong.

This is actually the Biltmore Hotel, located 11 miles to the east, at 506 South Grand Ave, in downtown Los Angeles.

At the Biltmore, Eddie's car pulls up to the southeast side of the hotel (heading southwest on Olive Street), where the bellhop takes his bag. (Eddie couldn't do that today - Olive Street is now a one-way street, heading the opposite direction - northeast). In the photo above, the camera is looking north/northwest.

The hotel interiors were shot were shot inside the same hotel, the Biltmore. Even Eddie's room interior was actually shot in a room upstairs at the hotel (although the producers redecorated it for the scene).

Later, when the cops (Judge Reinhold & John Ashton) have staked out his hotel in their car, Eddie has a meal delivered to their car, and while they're busy eating it, he sneaks up and stuffs bananas up their car's tailpipe. In this scene, the unmarked police car is parked on the southeast side of Olive Street (across from the southeast side of the hotel, next to Pershing Square park). The car is facing northeast.

Eddie also meets 'Serge' (played by Bronson Pinchot), the gallery's unusual receptionist.

I'm still not sure of the exact address of this "art gallery". The area has just changed too much in 30 years.

First, it wasn't really an art gallery. It was actually a shoe store.

According to the DVD, it was located on Wilshire Blvd, an eighth of a mile east of Rodeo Drive. Now that should have made it easy, right? Wrong.

Although that description would seem to put the "gallery" in the vicinity of the corner of Wilshire Blvd & Canon Drive, thirty years later, there is no sign of a shoe store in that area.

So I studied the background (when Eddie comes into the store) to see what was across the street (for instance, there was a Jaeger store, a Thai restaurant, and a City National Bank). But when I tried to match what I saw to what is now on that stretch of Wilshire, there was nothing that even came close. Alas, there have been several new developments in the area, and there are a couple of vacant lots where things might have been torn down - so I suspect that the area has simply changed too much to ever match up exactly to what is seen in the film.

So, the best I can do is to tell you that the gallery was on Wilshire Blvd, apparently somewhere around Canon Drive.

If I had to guess, I'd say that it was probably where the empty lot is now on the southeast corner of Wilshire & Canon. Cancel that... I just found out that lot used to hold a Chevron station. My second guess would be the current Ferrari of Beverly Hills dealership next door (to the east), at 9372 Wilshire Blvd.

That "warehouse" building is located at 3550 W. 6th Street, in Koreatown. It's at the southeast corner of 6th & Normandie. *

But it's not a warehouse. In real life, it's a low-rent office building, known as the Abbey Building, and contains such diverse businesses as PIP Printing, Abbey Properties Self-Storage, a Korean dance studio, a Taekwondo school, and a liberal lobby group called Peace Action West.

On their first (night time) visit to the warehouse (seen in the photo above), he and 'Jenny' are in their car, heading south on Normandie Ave (just south of 6th St) when they pull up outside the warehouse. They park on the west side of Normandie and walk towards the east side of the building. When they exit, they leave through a stairway on the south side of the building. (Jenny hangs a U-turn that sends her back north on Normandie, towards 6th St.)

On their second visit (in the daytime, with cop Judge Reinhold in tow ), they park in a narrow alley on the west side across the street (west of Normandie). The enter the warehouse by climbing the stairs on the south side of the building.

Reinhold, waiting in the car in the alley, observes Jenny being taken away, and goes to check. He sprints east, across Normandie Avenue, to the building. After the rescue, they run back down the stairs (on the south side), back to the car in the alley, then their leaving car turns right (south) on Normandie.

(While there, he spots two guys about to rob the place, and foils the robbery.)

On the DVD, the production designer says: "It's a bar on Sunset, just east of Western Ave, that was actually a "go-go dancer" type bar. The exterior architecture was Moorish."

So I went looking for the spot on Sunset. But after 20 years, things change. As best I can figure, the strip club may well have been a "gentleman's club" known as "Aladdin". It was on Sunset, just east of Western Ave, and that Arabian name would suggest that a Moorish architecture would seem appropriate. The place went through a number of name changes, but remained a strip joint until its most recent incarnation.

That building is now a bar/concert venue known as "Safari Sams", at 5214 W. Sunset Blvd.

I emailed them and asked if a major motion picture had been filmed there back in the '80s (without revealing the title), and they emailed me back to say that they had heard that "Beverly Hills Cop" was filmed there, but hadn't been able to verify it.

So there you are, that's my best guess.  There's probably about a 70% chance that it was Safari Sam's... *

This customs warehouse is actually the Korean Air cargo terminal on the south side of LAX. It's located just north of the 105 freeway, between Sepulveda and Imperial Highway. The address is 6101 W. Imperial Highway.

It's not. Which might have made it hard to find.

But fortunately, the producers not only showed us the house number (609, clearly visible on the gate), they also showed us the street signs at the corner of Channel Road & Dryad Road, which is where you'll find the front gate to the estate. The exact address is 609 E. Channel Road, in the canyon between Santa Monica & Pacific Palisades.

Most of the action at Maitland's mansion (including the photos above & below) takes place in the gardens and pool area near the smaller house on the northeast side of the estate, not in the larger, main house.

But the owners of the house wouldn't let them film inside the mansion.

But this one has a unique history all its own. A fortress-like home, rising above the Lake Hollywood reservoir, it was known as Castillo del Lago (Castle of the Lake), it was originally owned by mobster Bugsy Segal. Later, Madonna lived there for several years.

You'll find it at 6342 Mulholland Highway (at Canyon Lake Drive), next to Lake Hollywood.