Casino Movie Locations

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The film uses the southwest entrance of Main Street Station, 200 North Main Street, Downtown Las Vegas, as a stand-in, with the California Hotel and Casino in the background. No, it’s not a railway station, it’s another themed casino and hotel. Vegas Vacation (1997) Movies, TV, Celebs, and more. Oscars Best Picture Winners Best Picture Winners Golden Globes Emmys STARmeter Awards San Diego Comic-Con New York Comic-Con Sundance Film Festival Toronto Int'l Film Festival Awards Central Festival Central All Events. Here are the locations where the filming of Casino Royale took place. A lot of Casino Royale was filmed in the Czech Republic, although, for the most part, it was pretending to be somewhere else. There was no filming in Montenegro itself (a very country with a small railroad network). Casino is a 1995 American epic crime film directed by Martin Scorsese, produced by Barbara De Fina and distributed by Universal Pictures.The film is based on the nonfiction book Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas by Nicholas Pileggi, who also co-wrote the screenplay for the film with Scorsese.It stars Robert De Niro, Sharon Stone, Joe Pesci, Don Rickles, Kevin Pollak and James Woods. Casino Royale (1967) Movies, TV, Celebs, and more. Zig Zag Road, Boxhill, Surrey, England, UK (Returning from Scotland Sir James Bond in his Bentley is pursued by SMERSH).

Where Was Vegas Vacation Filmed
Casino Movie Locations
Casino Movie Locations Las Vegas

Over the years, there have been many movies produced that were either set in a casino or provided exciting casino and gambling themes. Viewers always love to see their favorite actors taking part in exciting gambling activities and those who love to play casino games will be curious to know which of the featured casinos can actually be visited. Luckily, many of the casino-themed movies that have been released have actually been filmed at land casino locations!

In Vegas, there are many amazing casinos that are located on the Strip, each with history and known for offering the most exciting forms of gambling in the world. Not only are the gaming floors packed with action, but the buildings themselves are things of art, which is why many of these casinos have been the chosen sites for movie shoots.

Below, we take a look at some of the casinos where movies have been filmed so you can plan your next getaway to a thrilling casino that has been featured in box office hits.

The Mirage

This casino, featured in Vegas Vacation back in 1997, is one of the top Vegas destinations for gamblers. The film, starring Chevy Chase, revolves partly around his character developing a love for gambling while visiting The Mirage. This casino has been open in Vegas for many years and features a stunning hotel with 3,000 rooms. With a massive gaming floor and thousands of gaming options, this casino remains a popular choice for anyone visiting Vegas.

The Bellagio

This is perhaps one of the most recognized names in Vegas, especially for poker players. The casino was featured in Ocean’s Eleven, in which a band of thieves pull off a casino heist. The Bellagio offers a taste of luxury and has an Italian theme. The beauty of the building is breathtaking and the casino is best known for the Fountains of Bellagio.

Caesar’s Palace

This is another well-known destination in Vegas, featured in The Hangover in 2009. Caesar’s Palace is located in Paradise, Nevada on the west side of the Vegas Strip. For more than 51 years, this casino resort has been attracting gamblers from around the world and offers an incredible gaming experience as well as some of the most luxurious hotel rooms in all of Vegas.

Planet Hollywood Casino

If you are a blackjack fan, Planet Hollywood Casino will have your attention, as it was the site of the movie 21. In the film, a group of MIT students take on Vegas to use their card-counting skills at the blackjack tables. The casino itself has many gaming tables as well as hundreds of slot machines to provide you with the ultimate gambling experience. While it is one of the newer Vegas casinos, it has already been placed at the top of the list for visitors, especially those who are fans of gambling themed movies.

Vegas is home to some of the best casinos in the world, but not all gambling films have been based there. There have also been movies that were filmed in Atlantic City and Dubai, both of which are known to offer some of the most thrilling gambling experiences in the world.

While you may not have the finances to plan a trip to these movie locations, you can engage in the same type of gambling thrills at trusted and reliable online casinos, such as by accessing casumo.com/en-gb, where you can engage in the same types of games you’ve seen on film.

Ace Rothstein (Robert De Niro) is surrounded by the press at a Nevada Gaming Commission meeting portrayed in Casino. Rothstein’s lawyer, Oscar Goodman (played by Goodman himself), stands by his side. Photo courtesy of Oscar Goodman.

Though the movie Casino was released more than 22 years ago, it still serves as a reference point for those hoping to understand what real Las Vegas mobsters were like when they were a sinister fixture in the news.

But most movies based on true stories, including Casino, twist the facts for dramatic effect and to compress long histories into a watchable timeframe.

What you see in Casino isn’t exactly the way things were. Case in point: the death of the Spilotro brothers, two mobsters originally from Chicago.

The way the movie portrays it, the brothers — or at least the fictional characters representing Anthony and Michael Spilotro — are beaten with baseball bats in a cornfield and shoved into a shallow grave while still alive.

Not true.

In his 2009 book Family Secrets: The Case That Crippled the Chicago Mob, journalist Jeff Coen details what really happened. Coen covered the Family Secrets trial for the Chicago Tribune. That 2007 trial resulted in convictions and revealed details that weren’t publicly known when the movie came out more than a decade earlier.

In the 1995 movie, it was baseball bats in a cornfield. But according to trial testimony, the Spilotros were lured to a residence near O’Hare International Airport in Bensenville, a subdivision of “modest homes,” and were beaten to death in the basement. (At the trial, one of the killers, Mob turncoat Nick Calabrese, said he could not recall which house it was.)

Anthony and his brother, Michael, a part-time actor and owner of the Chicago restaurant and Mob hangout Hoagie’s, went to the home in June 1986 believing they were to be promoted within the Outfit.

Although the brothers were suspicious, refusing to go was unthinkable.

When the Spilotros got to the basement, about 15 mobsters pounced on them. Michael had brought a pocket-sized .22-caliber handgun but could not get to it. Anthony was heard asking if he could say a prayer but was swarmed.

In addition to breaking Michael’s nose, the attackers inflicted blunt force injuries over his entire body. They severely bruised Anthony’s face, left temple and chest.

Anthony, 48, had blood in his trachea, lungs and nasal passages and hemorrhaging in the muscles of the larynx. The 41-year-old Michael had a fractured Adam’s apple.

Where Was Vegas Vacation Filmed

Neither man’s skin was broken, indicating the killers did not use a heavy object such as a baseball bat. The brothers were beaten with fists, knees and feet, according to a pathologist at the trial.

The Spilotros were dead when buried in an Enos, Indiana, cornfield about 100 miles south of the murder house. The brothers were placed in a five-foot grave in only their underwear, one on top of the other.

The cornfield is near land that Outfit boss Joseph “Joey Doves” Aiuppa used for hunting, according to Coen. A farmer discovered the grave, thinking someone had buried a deer. The Spilotros were identified by dental X-rays provided by a third bother, Patrick Spilotro, a dentist.

Why did this happen to Anthony and Michael Spilotro? Mob higher-ups felt the two had to be silenced.

Since the early 1970s, Anthony Spilotro had overseen street rackets in Las Vegas for the Chicago Outfit. He also was keeping an eye on Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal, a Chicago bookie handling the skim in Las Vegas for Midwestern Mob bosses.

Ultimately, though, news stories about Spilotro’s violent criminal activities, and his affair with Rosenthal’s wife, a former showgirl at the Tropicana hotel-casino, led to the gruesome outcome in that Bensenville basement.

Anthony Spilotro’s high-profile legal problems were jeopardizing the Outfit’s Las Vegas cash cow, prompting Aiuppa to order him “knocked down.” Michael Spilotro, facing a trial on extortion charges, had to go, too.

That terrifying outcome is not the only place where Casino misses the mark factually. In another example among many from the film, an animated Kansas City mobster pops off in an Italian grocery about the Las Vegas skim while federal authorities listen to his profanity-laced rant through a bug planted in a vent.

In reality, law enforcement authorities learned about the Las Vegas skim while eavesdropping on a conversation between members of the Civella crime family at a bugged back table in Kansas City’s Villa Capri pizzeria. Unlike the movie, there was no humorous scolding mom at the now-demolished Villa Capri nagging her mobster son about his vulgar language.

The only ones at the table were sinister Mob figures, behaving like real-life conspiratorial gangsters, not colorful movie characters.

Larry Henry is a veteran print and broadcast journalist. He served as press secretary for Nevada Governor Bob Miller, and was political editor at the Las Vegas Sun and managing editor at KFSM-TV, the CBS affiliate in Northwest Arkansas. Henry taught journalism at Haas Hall Academy in Bentonville, Arkansas, and now is the headmaster at the school’s campus in Rogers, Arkansas. The Mob in Pop Culture blog appears monthly.