This is a bizarre one. Somewhere in here is a very disturbing, very good movie. The traces of it are so strong, it must have just left the room, and it's almost as though if we hurried we could catch it. But we got distracted in this room full of perversities that we're stuck here only with a sickening sensation deep in our stomach. In other words, I can't really tell if this movie was successful at what it was trying to do or not. The back of the DVD box promised "camp", but there's something different going on here.
Basically, this movie fits smack-dab in the middle of Psycho and Peeping Tom conceptually. A sexually frustrated young woman, escaping from her abusive roommate, goes to stay in her aunt's hotel. This hotel is filled with various unsettling characters, including a gay priest, a half-dead alcoholic, and a obsessed photographer. It's a Wonderland without an Alice--and quite literally, a character named Alice is alluded to, a woman who inhabited the hotel but is already dead. Without Alice we're given Cheryl as our protagonist, but herein lies a problem: Cheryl is just about as insane and perverse as the other people in the hotel are, meaning there's very little real sanity to be gleaned from this movie.
Now, there's this whole theory about storytelling that says you can only have a sane person in insane situations or insane person in sane situations, but not both. I'm not too sure I really agree with that philosophy, but this movie makes a good case-study for comparison. The thing is, Cheryl is a believable character by all means--remember that one woman who married the stalker who almost killed her? These things do happen. But she's NOT relatable, and so its hard to really understand what we're supposed to get from this movie. Her relationship with George is disturbing, sure, but to what purpose? And I'm not really getting the point of the transgendered twist.
I think the filmmakers had watched precisely those movies Psycho and Peeping Tom, along with other sexploitation and horror movies of the time, and decided to make their own exploration into sexual anxiety. However, I'm not entirely sure what they were to have discovered and revealed, here. There is, however, the lingering sensation that they were attempting SOMETHING. At any rate, neither am I too sure I want to know what that is, either.
--PolarisDiB
Basically, this movie fits smack-dab in the middle of Psycho and Peeping Tom conceptually. A sexually frustrated young woman, escaping from her abusive roommate, goes to stay in her aunt's hotel. This hotel is filled with various unsettling characters, including a gay priest, a half-dead alcoholic, and a obsessed photographer. It's a Wonderland without an Alice--and quite literally, a character named Alice is alluded to, a woman who inhabited the hotel but is already dead. Without Alice we're given Cheryl as our protagonist, but herein lies a problem: Cheryl is just about as insane and perverse as the other people in the hotel are, meaning there's very little real sanity to be gleaned from this movie.
Now, there's this whole theory about storytelling that says you can only have a sane person in insane situations or insane person in sane situations, but not both. I'm not too sure I really agree with that philosophy, but this movie makes a good case-study for comparison. The thing is, Cheryl is a believable character by all means--remember that one woman who married the stalker who almost killed her? These things do happen. But she's NOT relatable, and so its hard to really understand what we're supposed to get from this movie. Her relationship with George is disturbing, sure, but to what purpose? And I'm not really getting the point of the transgendered twist.
I think the filmmakers had watched precisely those movies Psycho and Peeping Tom, along with other sexploitation and horror movies of the time, and decided to make their own exploration into sexual anxiety. However, I'm not entirely sure what they were to have discovered and revealed, here. There is, however, the lingering sensation that they were attempting SOMETHING. At any rate, neither am I too sure I want to know what that is, either.
--PolarisDiB