Julian Sands (1958–2023)

A film crew arrives in Cyprus to shoot the pilot for a paranormal investigations show. They will be filming in a hotel where 100 dinner guests were fatally poisoned on a Monday night 30 years ago. Local lore reveals that the hotel is built on the site of an ancient cult which practiced human sacrifice and was dedicated to the god, Teshub. Shortly after arriving at the hotel, the TV show’s primarily nubile crew members begin to meet gruesome deaths.

This unintentionally funny slasher film has all the production values of a low-budget cable network’s made-for-TV movie. It contains lots of gore, tons of completely unnecessary foul language, the obligatory ‘naked girl showering’ scene, & a completely insipid and incoherent plot.

It also contains an endless amount of really, really bad acting from virtually everyone in the cast. By far the worst is Eric the TV show’s haggard director, played incompetently by an actor called Mark Huberman who seems utterly stupefied and annoyed by the fact that he has actually been cast in a film; his freakishly bad hairdo and his unflinching googly-eyed expression further succeed in making him appear both daft and demented.

The story can’t seem to make up its mind what it is about. Ironically, given the title, the movie features no ghosts of any kind. There is the human-sacrifice obsessed ancient cult. There are the creepy hotel staff who can’t leave the confines of the hotel. There is the half-fish monster who lives inside the water leak in the basement. There is the masked killer who goes around knifing random people in the hotel. And then there is the mass poisoning that took place in the hotel thirty years ago which constantly gets mentioned, but doesn’t actually seem to have anything to do with anything. It’s all just a convoluted jumble of scary tropes and none of it ever comes together into a lucid point.

And does anyone else giggle at the fact that the evil, destroyer god’s name sounds remarkably similar to ‘bathtub’?

The only redeeming quality of this film is the presence of the always effervescent Julian Sands, who plays the role of Bruce McPherson, the host of the paranormal TV show & Eric’s former father-in-law. No matter how bad the film, Julian always manages to bring joy and charisma to any role he plays and this turkey is no exception. Julian seems to realize from the get-go how over-the-top ridiculous this film is, so he hams it up for all it is worth and the result is positively enchanting. For most of the film Julian’s role revolves around unsuccessfully asking everyone around him to join him for a drink, over and over and over again. It’s stupid and silly, but Julian overcomes the dim-witted script and makes it fun.

Joel Hodgson and company could do magic with this movie because it gives them endless riffing material with which to work.

For those of us who adore Julian Sands, this movie is a must-see just because he is so eternally delightful.… (mais)