The Beach House

I'm wondering too. The beach looks like southern California, but I can't quite place where.

I'm sure there aren't many short tunnels (where you can see the end as soon as you drive through) by the beach that only lets one car through at a time.

Today, I wouldn't be surprised if that same beach has multiple houses instead of 1 house having the whole beach to itself. All worth several million.

No two persons ever watch the same movie.

I don't think the back lot included the cottage. It was a real location next to the Pacific Ocean... but not a set. I suspect the producers found a small cottage set to be sold or demolished and arranged to shoot the interiors there, as well as the exteriors, and then to burn it down. The interiors may have been on a sound stage, but I thought the use of Flare Squares for wall paper all looked too new and modern (not worn nor discolored) but were very much in use in the early 1970s. The first house we bought still had similar Flare Squares covering one bedroom wall in green arches and foil patterns, so it was a nice touch to see similar designs in this film.

I just watched this movie for the first time and I thought it was the same house which appears in Kiss Me Deadly with Ralph Meeker. Its the house at the end of the film where the nuclear device is about to go off while Mike Hammer and Velma are in the surf.