The Deer Hunter is a cinematic masterpiece about how the Vietnam War affected the lives of mid-western Americans, starring an ensemble cast that includes Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep, among others. However, as memorable as the cast is for the film, the marvelous varied locations in which The Deer Hunter takes place are equally as impactful.
Steel mills, a Russian Orthodox church, and the jungles of Southeast Asia are just some of the places you will see throughout the course of the movie. And, of course, who can forget the lush, misty forests of the U.S., where the main characters engage in their favorite activity that the film was named after? Let’s take a world tour to see what some of the most prominent filming locations were from the movie.
Ohio locations
Though The Deer Hunter is set in Clairton, Pennsylvania, what was filmed for the movie is a hodge-podge of many different cities in the general area, including many locales in Ohio. Chief among them is the St. Theodosius Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Cleveland, where the wedding between John Savage’s Steven and Rutanya Alda’s Angela occurs. As Movie-Locations noted, the church in Clevend’s Tremont district looks so authentically Moscow-like because it is supposedly “a replica of the Czar’s cathedral inside the Kremlin.” You can also find the Eagle Supermarket, where Streep’s Linda worked a few blocks west of the church, with the building repurposed for a local business, Lilly Handmade Chocolates.
Other notable locations from The Buckeye State include Lemko Hall in Cleveland, where the wedding reception scene was filmed, the saloon scene at the fictional Welsh’s Bar at Mingo Junction, and the steel mill scene filmed at U.S. Steel Central Furnaces in Loraine, as Giggster.com pointed out.
Despite The Deer Hunter being called out for inaccuracies in its depiction of Saigon and other aspects of the Vietnam War, in general, as it pertains to overseas, many of the movie’s scenes that take place in the U.S. were praised for their authenticity. This includes filming steel mill scenes at an actual facility and the VA hospital scene at the Louis Stokes VA Medical Center in Cleveland. Other filming locations in Ohio include Steubenville and Struthers.
Pennsylvania and West Virginia locations
Pennsylvania filming locations for The Deer Hunter include Pittsburgh and the actual city of Clairton. In addition, the cemetery where Walken’s Nick is buried in the film is located at the Pennsylvania Versailles Cemetary in McKeesport. The West Virginian cities of Follansbee and Weirton were also used as filming locations.
Other Locations
When it comes to the actual warfare scenes — whether that is between hunters and deers or soldiers on opposite sides of loyalty lines in Vietnam — that is where the movie takes the most liberties in its filming location accuracy.
For instance, the Saigon scenes were actually filmed in Bangkok and Kanchanabur, Thailand. In addition, the prison camp scenes were filmed on a constructed set on the famous River Kwai, the setting of the acclaimed World War II drama The Bridge on the River Kwai.
As far as the deer hunting scenes, they were mostly filmed in Washington State’s Heather Meadows in Deming. Despite this, the scenes are meant to be taking place within the narrative in the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia.