Atomic Hotel Erotica

2014
Written and directed by Dean McKendrick

A seemingly innocent hotel turns out to be the home of secret Satanists out to steal your soul in Atomic Hotel Erotica! There is also some drama about rival engineers after a big bonus and marital strife, but as that has little to do with worshiping Satan, let’s put that on the back burner for now.

Strangely, the film that Atomic Hotel Erotica might be closest to spiritually is Manos The Hands of Fate. Both feature a strange hotel with a mysterious master and guests that check in but don’t check out. Or maybe the closest relation is a roach motel. Or maybe the Hotel California, that hotel that you can never leave.

Remember that old believe by some tribes that taking a photograph would steal their souls and everyone laughed and felt culturally superior? Well, the smug is on the other foot here as souls are stolen using a camera! Dun dun DUN!

The hotel in Atomic Hotel Erotica is actually named Atomic Hotel Erotica, complete with sign that is totally not a cgi sign in front of someone’s house. The rooms look like they were decorated by children in the 1950s, and nothing has been updated since then, which fits in with the name of the hotel.

As Atomic Hotel Erotica is a softcore flick from Synthetic Filmwerx, it features a lot of the things we’ve come to expect from a Retromedia production. The familiar songs, familiar sets, and familiar casts. Heck, besides the mains, there are photograph cameos from Christine Nguyen, Voodoo, Chad White, and Karlie Montana!

The plot is a bit thin and the film is caught trying to compensate for the tiny budget and cast, which keeps it from exploring just what is going on too deeply. This leaves things unsatisfied when the film does conclude, dropping Atomic Hotel Erotica down a bit in the rankings. The cast tries to make up for it, but are unable to work miracles. While disappointing, there are still a few things to like about Atomic Hotel Erotica, and plenty of speculative questions that only TarsTarkas.NET will be bold enough to inquire about the plot, as everyone else is just here for the nude people doing nude things to each other.

Rob (Ryan Driller) – Rob is married to Laura, and works hard for his family, though that means working long hours and somehow not making much money despite being a programmer in years where they are seeing record salaries. Gets invited to the Atomic Hotel Erotica seemingly at random. Laura (Krissy Lynn) – Married to Rob. Laura spends almost the entire film complaining. When she’s not doing that, she’s cheating on Rob. But she still loves him, she just wants more out of life than staying home while bored. Jason (Frankie Dell) – Works with Rob at the programming office, even sharing cubical space. Both are aiming to get a big bonus from work, Jason plans to steal Rob’s work and get the credit. If they worked together, they’d get done in like a day and still have a hefty bonus, but that requires not being jerks. Elena (Sophia Bella) – Married to Jason and approving of his nefarious theft schemes. Makes her husband late to work with all their sex having. Grismer (Michael Gaglio) – Grismer is the caretaker of the Atomic Hotel Erotica, and is secretly up to no good, which is obvious from the get-go. He lures in unsuspecting souls, and doesn’t stick to just a list of dumb people like he should have. Wilfred (Frankie Cullen) – The loyal butler for Grismer at the Atomic Hotel Erotica. Wilfred is not that gentle with bags, it’s almost as if being a butler is some sort of cover for what he’s really up to. The ladies love him like they love all butlers. It’s a fact, Jack! Susan (Mary Carey) – A stripper that Vince convinced to go along with him on his free vacation. Vince (Eric Masterson) – A Texan who got invited to the Atomic Hotel Erotica, and had to quickly find a date. It’s interesting to see how Eric Masterson has been stretching his acting muscles, before as a geeky nerd and now as a Texan with one of the most exaggerated Southern drawls you’ve ever heard.

Loyal butler Wilfred reminds Mr. Grismer that it’s time for another set of invitations, and Grismer picks some good ones, including a tall one for Wilfred. Wilfred likes the tall ones.

Elena’s hubby Jason is eager to get to work to do some coding for a big bonus. But before that, he and Elena do some bonusing of their own on the bed. Will this delay of coding cost Jason the bonus? Not really.

Rob is already bragging to Jason about how he’s going to claim the big bonus. Rob is also jealous that Jason and Elana are getting it on, as Rob and his wife Laura haven’t had sex in months. To put an emphasis on this, Rob heads home and immediately is in a fight with Laura because he wants to finish coding and get the bonus (so he can take her somewhere nice) and she’s upset he isn’t going to take her out right now.

Then Wilfred drops off an invitation outside their door in a golden envelope. Inside, there are 4 tickets for an all-expenses paid vacation to the Atomic Hotel Erotica, so they invite Jason and Elena to go with them. At no point does anyone get suspicious that this is a big scam and they’ll be forced into a room to hear about an exciting opportunity to invest in time shares. Jason agrees to go along, but it’s all because he is plotting to steal Rob’s work so he’ll get the bonus instead! Jason’s wife Elena approves of this devious deed.

The four arrive at the Atomic Hotel Erotica and are greeted by Winfred. He introduces Grismer and the and other two guests for this round of free hotel rooms – Vince and Susan. Vince has a big cowboy hat and Eric Masterson is putting on a crazy Texas accent. Grismer emphasizes that this weekend has no rules, and nothing is off limits or too extreme. Not even ordering an extra bit of whip cream on your sundae. I do live life the to extreme!

Vince got invitations for the hotel by himself, so he went to the strip club and asked Susan to come. That tale will soon be told in the latest Nicholas Sparks novel.

It’s now time to go to their rooms. They pass by the front desk, which has a display of photographs of prior guests, every single one of which don’t look happy at all. That’s not the kind of thing you want to see at a hotel you are about to spends a weekend at. Among them are Christine Nguyen and Voodoo.

Rob and Laura get their room first. It’s the Poodle Skirt Room – Decorated in 1950s diner style, complete with records on wall, a juke box, a pink shag blanket, and a pink stuffed poodle. That just ties the whole room together! Laura is not impressed at all with the room.

Vince and Susan get the SciFi Room with planets and rocketships, just the kind of place for a romantic weekend. If you were at Comicon. Wilfred steals an item from each of them, then leaves and Susan and Vince break in the room with some hired a stripper for the weekend fun.

Jason and Elena get the Mainstate Room, described (but never shown) as if Eisenhower threw up all over it.

Jason goes play tennis with bored Laura, while Elena says she’ll work on her tan (aka try to steal Rob’s laptop while he’s working at the pool). Laura is good at tennis and also very good at complaining, especially complaining about Rob. Which gives Jason the in road he needs to suggest that instead of tennis, they have sex. Which happens, including cutaway to Rob telling Elena that Laura is very good at tennis and Jason is getting quite a workout.

Elena gets Rob to put lotion on her back while dishing out relationship advice and having her clothes accidentally get loose. Soon they are getting it on in the kitchen. At one point he’s pounding away at Elena so hard he doesn’t notice her taking out a flash drive from her purse, plugging it into his laptop, and booting up his laptop ad copying all his files over. That’s some very focused boning!

Susan takes a close look at the creepy photos and they move – making screaming faces! She instantly wants to leave, and I don’t blame her. Grismer tries to convince them to take a photo before they go, Susan refuses until…Grismer hypnotizes her for a few seconds. The photo happens and the couple has disappeared! We later see Grismer putting up a photo of the pair on the wall.

The remaining two couples have dinner and awkward guilt and sexual innuendo clues. Laura is still an expert-level complainer and decides to skip the dinner. She goes back to the room to catch Wilferd going through their things, Wilford confesses to being an underwear sniffer over what he’s really doing. Being a pervert is good enough for Laura, who grabs Wilfred for a love-making session.

He still runs off with her undies and a comb from Rob afterwards.

At dinner, Grismer says the hotel was once home of devil worshipers two hundred years ago, and his great-great-grandpa helped drive them out. The rumor is now the place has magic powers. Elena excuses herself for the bathroom and runs into Wilford in their room with her hair clip. So she bones him as well!

Jason sees Grismer and Wilfred with the stolen items and overhears them talking about collecting souls. He grabs his wife Elena and leave, warning Laura on the way. Laura doesn’t believe him, until she remembers Wilfred took her panties!

By the time she gets to Rob he’s all apologetic and wanting to put in his vacation and take care of her and give her excitement in life. So she’s like “Oh, Rob!” and they get it on instead of leaving. Hey, you were just having excitement!

Now they are leaving, but Grismer insists on the complementary photo. Due to deft skill and maneuvering, they convince Grismer and Wilfred to also take a photo. And they’ve stolen items from the pair and click away, the evil duo now trapped inside a photograph.

Rob and Laura celebrate that now they own the Atomic Hotel Erotica!

My favorite part of this is the ending, because now they own the hotel that has a collection of people’s souls on the walls (aka moving portraits), including the previous evil owners. How do they legally own the hotel? Are they going to operate the hotel instead of making big bank as a software engineer? Or will they just live in the hotel with the decorations Laura hates? Is owning a hotel the excitement Laura craves? Did Rob and Laura become evil Satanists now that they own the hotel? All these answers and more are not present, the viewer is invited to make up their own theories. My theory involves bigfoot. What about yours???

Rated 6/10 (Envelope, Chad White!, Christine Nguyen!, Voodoo!, Karlie Montana!, invitation)

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