MovieChat Forums > Radio On (1980) Discussion > What is the Bristol hotel in the film?

What is the Bristol hotel in the film?


Does anybody know what is the hotel in Bristol next to the motorway which features towards the end of the film? It is a striking white Art Deco building, tall and narrow with one rounded end.

It is called the Grosvenor Hotel in the film, but there is no hotel of that name in Bristol today. I don't think it is now the new Grosvenor Casino in Bristol, judging from a photograph I have seen (which showed the casino is a squarish art deco former cinema).

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The Grosvenor Hotel, along with the "temporary" flyover which stood in Bristol for years, were taken down in the late 1990s.

I lived in Bristol as a young child and have always remembered the hotel, a striking though somewhat bleak, marooned building.

There's a half-hour film called "Radio On Remix" commissioned by HTV in the West Country which revisited many of the film's striking locations in 1998(?) and has some shots of the demolition of the traffic overpass.

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The flyover is gone but The Grosvenor is still there...derelict in the middle of the roundabout but still the most striking building in Bristol.

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An audacious claim indeed given much of Bristol's architecture!!

www.chrismrogers.net, a website for architecture and visual culture

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"Radio On Remix" is indeed available as a DVD extra on the recent Plexifilm release of this fine film. Well worth checking out.

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The Grosvenor was knocked down some years ago after it was found to be unfit for human habitation. It had become a bed and breakfast for the unemployed and was in a bit of a state. The flyover beside it has been taken down as well.

The sequence where the lead character enters Bristol on the M32 and immediately drives over the flyover is a massive cheat. The flyover was no where near the M32 and was actually located in the opposite direction.

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A correction and apology, after having mistakenly said that the Grosvenor had been taken down along with the flyover.
I was in Bristol two weeks ago (August 2008) and am suprised and pleased to confirm that Grosvenor hotel building is indeed still standing and has an unmistakable derelict beauty. It is weirdly stranded now between several main roads and a roundabaout, and would be an unlikely plot for any new property developer to want to build on. So, can I suggest a 'List the Grosvenor' campaign?

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Hhm, funny it's been asked, I only came to this page after seeing this.

http://www.totalfilm.com/features/25-cool-movie-locations/page:12

Never heard of Radio On before, is it recommended?

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http://jontk.blogspot.com/

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Oct 2013 and the hotel is still there. Unused and covered with cloth hoarding to mask its ruin.

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