Anyone who's wandered around Alamo Square has wondered about the big, looming, elaborately painted Victorian at the corner of Fulton and Scott, known by the name of its original owner as The Westerfeld House. Hoodline published a quick history of the place in 2014, and now they report that the manse with its air of the darker side of the 1960's in SF it figures into Season of the Witch, of course, because of one of its ca. 1967 residents, Satanist Anton LaVey will be the subject of an upcoming documentary titled House of Legends. The filmmaker is Matt Alavi, and he's aiming for a November debut of the doc, though there isn't yet a clip to show.
Per Hoodline, Alavi has snagged interviews with the current owner Jim Siegel, who also owns Haight Street antiques/consignment shop Distractions and who bought the house in 1986; Rolling Stone co-founder Charles Fracchia, who once owned the house; jazz musician John Handy, who once lived there; Manson family member Bobby Beausoleil who's serving a life sentence in Oregon for the 1969 murder of Gary Hinman and who also spent time there; and filmmaker Kenneth Anger, who also once lived there around the same time LaVey.
The place has a ton of history, a lot of it dating to the late 60's and early 70's when the house served as a setting in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe, and for Kenneth Anger's scary 1969 short film Invocation of My Demon Brother, featuring Mick Jagger.
But there's also just a ton of cool stuff inside.
Just look:
Also, as Hoodline showed earlier, a door jamb on a staircase leading to the house's tower still bears the scratch marks of a lion cub that LaVey kept up there for use in Satanic rituals.
The place is crazy, basically, and it will be fascinating to see and hear more about it, if and when this film is finished. Follow the movie's page on Facebook for updates.
