Ligonier area provides props as 'The Pale Blue Eye' film crew arrives at Compass Inn

Staff at Fort Ligonier and the Laughlintown Antique Mall will be watching carefully when a locally filmed Netflix movie becomes available for viewing.

There’s a chance items from either of those sites could make an appearance in “The Pale Blue Eye,” a period murder mystery that is being shot at locations around the region, including two days this week at Laughlintown’s historic Compass Inn Museum.

Christian Bale heads the cast, portraying a veteran detective in the 1830s who attempts to solve a string of murders at West Point with the assistance of a cadet who will later become famous author Edgar Allen Poe.

JoLee Snyder of West Deer, who operates an antiques business, Cabin Goods, will be scanning the completed film for a glimpse of a distinctive early 1800s lift-top desk. It’s among several period furnishings she had on display at her booth in the Loyalhanna Antique Mall until they were purchased for potential use in the Netflix production.

“They also took a lot of hearth and cooking items and early lanterns and candlesticks,” Snyder said. “They’re definitely the best customer I’ve had.”

Snyder struck the deals for her antiques over the phone.

Lois McGinity and her daughter, Kim Kinneer, who own the antique mall, completed their transactions in person.

“They made several trips here,” McGinity said of the prop seekers. “They were looking for certain items, and we have a lot of primitives here.”

Other antique items mall vendors sold for the production included a bed warmer, redware bowls and a stoneware bottle.

“We’re glad that they came here,” Kinneer said. “It would be nice if we get to see Christian, but I doubt it.”

Customers who arrived at the mall on Wednesday were curious after spotting tents that popped up on the grounds of Compass Inn as filming got underway.

“A lot of people are asking what’s going on,” McGinity said. “It’s pretty exciting.”

Four cannon from Fort Ligonier, replicas of originals that were used during the French and Indian War, have been loaned for the filming, according to Julie Donovan, the fort’s director of marketing and public relations.

Donovan said the staff at the reconstructed 18th-century fort is excited to have the 6-pound cannon, each capable of firing a 6-pound ball, included in the filming.

The artillery pieces aren’t to be part of the location shoot at Compass Inn, but Donovan said they were transported for use by the production at nearby Penguin Court and at Westminster College.

“They’re not firing them,” she said. “They’re to provide a backdrop, to show a military setting.”

The cannon are being securely stored for additional filming to take place after Christmas, she said.

“Fort Ligonier’s 18-century artillery train is considered the most extensive reproduction in the world,” Donovan said. “The train is a faithful recreation of that amassed by the British army for the 1758 Forbes Campaign to take the French stronghold at Fort Duquesne,” which preceded Pittsburgh.

Compass Inn, where spirits once were served to stagecoach travelers and drovers, is standing in for a period tavern in the film. The same-named Louis Bayard novel that is the basis for the movie includes scenes at “Benny” Havens’ tavern, which was a popular spot near West Point.

“I want to get the book so we can read it,” Kinneer said.