Oasys MiniHollywood

I am currently in Spain on holiday and yesterday went to a place called Oasys MiniHollywood. I decided to do a blog on this as it was the capital of the production of many of the Spaghetti Westerns made in the 60’s and 70’s, linking very nicely with my interest in media.

Oasys MiniHollywood is now a theme park in the Tabernas desert in the south of Spain. However due to its natural aesthetic, it made for the perfection location to film Spaghetti Westerns as the scenery is almost a replica of areas such as Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico in the USA, where the Spaghetti westerns were set, and due to its location being in Europe, film companies could save money as it was cheaper to film here than in the states.

The Western Town

Oasys MiniHollywood is now primarily a theme park, equipped with a zoo, aquatic park and an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. However the park also has the “Western Town”. This is a basically a film set town of the wild-west.

As well as walking around and in the sets, the western town has a wild-west shoot out show, a can can dance and also a cinema museum.

 This was the entrance to the Museum. inside contained loads of filming machinery, some which where gigantic, and showed just how quickly technology throughout cinematography history has moved on. Also aligned at the top of all the walls in the museum are movie posters for all the films filmed here. These movies include “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Cleopatra”, “The good, the bad and the ugly”, “Death had a price”, “Indiana Jones and the last crusade”, and many more.