The Dead Mountaineer's Hotel
1979 ‘'Hukkunud Alpinisti' hotell’ Directed by Grigori Kromanov
Synopsis
Police gets a call-out to a lonely hotel in the Alps. When an officer gets to the hotel everything seems to be alright. Suddenly an avalanche cuts them out from the rest of the world and strange things are going to happen. Seems that some visitors may be extraterrestrial.
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Wow, quite an experience... an Estonian sci-fi detective flick from 1979, THE DEAD MOUNTAINEER'S HOTEL is a truly stylish, atmospheric and near-hypnotic movie with a fantastic soundtrack that veers between atonal synthesised noodlings and cracking, tripped out prog-rock.
DMH also appears to point the way to Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER (released three years later) through the way it approaches 'neon noir'. The DVD I have from Tallinnfilm seems to be rather grainy and murky, but maybe the original print was itself (the film was obviously shot by director Grigori Kromanov on a paltry budget).
Also included on the DVD are trailers for other Russian sci-fi ultra-obscurities such as THE PURPLE BALL and TEENS IN THE UNIVERSE - I'm gonna have to track down those two very soon!
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I was really looking forward to this film. Based on the Boris and Arkadiy Strugatskiy novel of the same name (they wrote Tarkovsky’s Stalker as well as the underrated Ugly Swans) the synopsis and isolated hotel location sounded like an Estonian The Shining, unfortunately that is not what we get here.
Instead it is an Agatha Christie-like murder mystery with a potentially intriguing science fiction twist. The problem is down to the shoddy execution. Looking on IMDb it appears that any fans of the novel hate the adaptation so I can’t blame the source material for this lacklustre effort. Estonia isn’t renowned for its cinema (in fact I’m struggling to think of any other films I’ve seen from the country)…
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Prog-scored, Strugatsky-penned sci-fi detective story. Weird sets and slow, shaky zooms. More of a visualized screenplay than a movie.
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A grizzled police inspector turns up to investigate a murder at an isolated hotel in the alps. The residents are all creepy/freaky and he tries to get a handle on the place's dynamics with Poirot-like efficiency.
What starts beautfiully ends in bewilderment but the journey is always fascinating and looks stunning. The synth score perfectly matches the bizarre imagery and stilted performances all gel in this Estonian sci-fi thriler.
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Wow, quite an experience... an Estonian sci-fi detective flick from 1979, THE DEAD MOUNTAINEER'S HOTEL is a truly stylish, atmospheric and near-hypnotic movie with a fantastic soundtrack that veers between atonal synthesised noodlings and cracking, tripped out prog-rock.
DMH also appears to point the way to Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER (released three years later) through the way it approaches 'neon noir'. The DVD I have from Tallinnfilm seems to be rather grainy and murky, but maybe the original print was itself (the film was obviously shot by director Grigori Kromanov on a paltry budget).
Also included on the DVD are trailers for other Russian sci-fi ultra-obscurities such as THE PURPLE BALL and TEENS IN THE UNIVERSE - I'm gonna have to track down those two very soon!
-
I was really looking forward to this film. Based on the Boris and Arkadiy Strugatskiy novel of the same name (they wrote Tarkovsky’s Stalker as well as the underrated Ugly Swans) the synopsis and isolated hotel location sounded like an Estonian The Shining, unfortunately that is not what we get here.
Instead it is an Agatha Christie-like murder mystery with a potentially intriguing science fiction twist. The problem is down to the shoddy execution. Looking on IMDb it appears that any fans of the novel hate the adaptation so I can’t blame the source material for this lacklustre effort. Estonia isn’t renowned for its cinema (in fact I’m struggling to think of any other films I’ve seen from the country)…