Behind The Red Motel Door

The evocatively titled Behind The Red Motel Door smacks of cult indieness and an expectation of being a sex’n’drugs’n’oddness cult curiosity and while it dances around the edge of black comedy blended with sex-and-violence it can never quite overcome its low-budget origins.

Shot in just two days on a pretty thin budget, the film is an ambitious experiment in shooting quickly and using a single location.

As made by the multi-hyphenate TheWorldFamous Ike (who directs, writes, produces and works on sound design) it is an engagingly ambitious experiment in interlinking a series of increasingly oddball vignettes all taking part in a sleazy motel on Route 66. The results are mixed – to say the least – but there is a real energy on show here. Festival life, though, is likely its only cinematic home.

Things begin with a respectable family heading to Dinseyland and looking for a cheap motel to stay at…they find a place where most guests pay by the hour, and where all sorts of things go on behind those red motel doors. From hookers and drug dealers to robbers and even an illegal dentist there are some colourful types plying their trade in this sleazy venue.

Shot in just two days on a pretty thin budget, the film – a black comedy, though real laughs are short on the ground – is an ambitious experiment in shooting quickly and using a single location, and while it lacks polish it is a odd effort that succeeds sporadically.