A high water mark of Washington license plate history was the starring role one plate played in the 1987 family comedy classic, Harry and the Hendersons.
Filmed in the spring of 1986 at locations across Seattle and the surrounding mountains, and at the Pacific Northwest Studios soundstage in Seattle’s Fremont district, the movie told the story of a Seattle family who adopted Bigfoot after hitting him with their car, only to fall prey to a maniacal hunter bent on capturing the Sasquatch. And a battered license plate on the side of the road was the key plot driver that connected them.
The movie opens with the Henderson family driving home from a camping trip on densely-forested Northwest roads. As the sunlight strobes through the trees, a huge shadowy figure shoots into the middle of the road right in front of the Hendersons’ station wagon (doomed for continuous destruction throughout the movie), and is run over.
The stunned family emerges from the car to find an unconscious Bigfoot laying in the road. Reasonably, they decide to haul him onto the top of the car and bring him home to Seattle. When he wakes up, it turns out Bigfoot is pretty fun dude and the family names him Harry. Hilarity ensues!
But in all the chaos of the accident, the family failed to notice that their front license plate fell off the car when it hit Harry and was left behind on the side of the road. Bad news…. Not only was the car now in violation of Washington state motor vehicle licensing laws, but it turns out an evil Sasquatch hunter, Jacques LaFleur, was in hot pursuit of Harry.
Later that night, as LaFleur followed Harry’s path, he stumbled across the Henderson family’s plate right where he lost Harry’s trail.
In a rarity for movie productions, this was a genuine license plate, not a prop. Movie prop license plates are generally made of plastic or fiberboard and almost always look glaringly fake. Given how the scene required close-ups of a crumpled plate, the production team probably decided to obtain a real example instead of fabricating one with the right look. In that era, the Washington Department of Licensing would routinely send expired, turned-in license plates to collectors or anyone who had requested a sample plate, and it’s likely that this one had briefly been used on a vehicle before being turned back in to officials, who in turn provided it to the movie crew.
And so, Washington license plate number WEA-079 gained a starring role in a major motion picture.
The realism of using a genuine license plate for these key scenes is to the movie’s credit. This particular plate was a perfect representation of what was being issued to cars in Washington state in the spring of 1986 (however, if we wanted to be really realistic, the Hendersons’ car in real life, being a 1970 model year per the DMV records shown in the movie, would have had an older, fully-embossed license plate issued when the car was new. A recent issue such as this one in the movie would have meant the family recently moved to Washington and got new plates, recently bought a used car from out of state and licensed it locally, or intentionally applied for new license plates. But really, who even cares that much).
After finding his license plate clue, LaFleur visits the motor vehicle department to track down the registered owner, this being a different era where data privacy was less strict.
The licensing clerk’s computer screen shows a basic summary of the registration information for WEA 079. George Henderson’s address was fictitious, and the expiration date of 3/29/88 was an obvious prop error for all of the people paying close attention to the license plate details (maybe dozens of people – dozens!), because the prop plate on the back of the Henderson car had tabs for June 1987. Oh well.
Having obtained the Hendersons’ address, LaFleur goes to their home under the pretense of returning their lost license plate, looking closely around the house for signs of the Sasquatch.
With Washington’s license plates only requiring validation tabs on the rear, this plate is correctly sticker-free, although the green boxes for the stickers would have been visible. The dirt pattern has a noticeable dark rectangle over the sticker box area, so for whatever reason it appears the propmasters intentionally blanked out that area.
After taking the plate from LaFleur and closing the door on him, Nancy Henderson, not a license plate collector (or someone particularly concerned about clean furniture), drops the filthy plate behind a sofa cushion.
But no matter, the license plate had served its plot purpose and from then on, the villain was on to the Hendersons and hot on the scent of Harry the Sasquatch.
Other Starring Plates
Unlike the plot-driving front plate, the rear license plate on the Henderson’s car appears to be a prop made to match the number, although a fairly good one.
The giveaway is the over-rounded corners and thicker border, along with the state name position located too close to the top border.
Dr. Wallace Wrightwood’s truck wears similar props with an appropriate truck-format license number, XJ-7613.
Both prop plates, the WEA-079 on the Hendersons’ station wagon and the XJ-7613 on Dr. Wrightwood’s truck, are likely from the same source that made these very similar props below, from my collection and of unknown origin or usage, but dating to the same time period.
Made of plastic, they have the same over-rounded corners as the Harry and the Hendersons props. The passenger vehicle plate on the left has an almost-perfect representation of the state name and reasonably good approximation of month and year stickers (painted on), but shares the same too-high location of the state name as the prop on the back of the Hendersons’ wagon. The City Exempt prop at right correctly embosses the state name and “EXEMPT” legend, like a real plate would have, but with very different lettering. The embossed serial numbers appear identical to that used on Dr. Wrightwood’s truck, especially apparent in the number “3.”
Seattle Police Cars’ Starring Roles
When Harry runs away from the Henderson home, he wreaks havoc across Seattle. The movie shows fun glimpses of the city from 40 years ago, with real police cars and media vehicles making appearances, all wearing their regular, non-prop license plates. A Jeep Wagoneer from KOMO TV and a Dodge Caravan from KIRO make realistic set dressings.
Multiple Seattle Police cars are shown in chase scenes, all wearing their regular city exempt license plates.
The Climax Chase Scene
The final scenes of the movie involve the Hendersons scrambling to get Harry back to the woods for his own protection, with a dramatic chase through freeway traffic between the Hendersons, in Dr. Wrightwood’s truck; LaFleur, in the Hendersons’ increasingly battered station wagon; and the hapless Seattle police.
The Hendersons manage to escape their pursuers by taking the very non-existent “Mt. Rainier National Park” exit from I-5 in Seattle, and Harry returns to his home in the woodsy Pacific Northwest mountains.
License Plate Blooper Reel
For a film that otherwise paid close attention to detail, one slip-up made its way into the final moments that again is jarringly obvious to super nerdy people the keenly observant.
When editing the final chase scene, someone in the production must have decided that there absolutely had to be a point-of-view shot of one of the police cars parting the gridlock traffic. Apparently no such shot was made on location, because that brief scene was either re-shot in southern California, or existing footage from another production was recycled and added to the movie. All four license plates visible in this sequence are from California!
Overview of Filming Locations
A great compilation of then-and-now comparisons of filming locations is available here:
Danny's License Plates 