Haunted Hotel

Ms. Spenser has a cold, which means she doesn't have the strength to work, which means she gets to watch a movie - a horror movie: Hokum (2026).

Hokum starts in a desert. A conquistador with a treasure map in a bottle is trekking a wasteland, followed by a boy. When he feels he is close, he finds out that he can't get the map out of the bottle - and he can't break the bottle because everything around is soft. So he has the kid turn around, and gets ready to use his skull to break the bottle.

Then you find out that this is a story, being written by Scott Adams. He lives in a sterile, modernist house, and he's stuck on the ending. He decides that it's time to spread his parents ashes, and decides on Ireland, in a place where they were happy.

He shows up in Ireland at a little hotel and is immediately a jerk to everyone - the desk clerk, the owner telling ghost stories to the kids, the bellboy, the groundskeeper killing the goats that keep getting up on the parked cars. He is only civil to Fiona (Florence Ordesh), the bartender. She even helps him figure out the exact location of a great tree his parents visited. 

Out in the forest, he finds the tree and leaves his parents ashes - then discovers that he has an audience. An old hippie or bum (David Wilmot) is watching him, sipping magic mushrooms in goat's milk. Seems nice.

Back at the hotel, the bellboy chats with him, and tries to get him to read his book. Scott is dismissive, and finally burns the back of the bellboys hand to get him to leave. Later, when Ordesh wants to return his tape recorder, she finds him hanged in his room. She cuts him down.

He wakes up in hospital, happy to be alive. He wants to thank Ordesh, but she's been missing since Halloween. Wilmot, the hippie, is suspected. But when Scott meets Wilmot, he thinks she is being held captive in the hotel, possibly in the honeymoon suite. 

Now, the honeymoon suite has been locked up for a few years, possibly to keep a witch in. But as the hotel is going to be closed and empty for the off season, Jerry proposes that they sneak in when everyone has left and find Ordesh. 

As you can imagine, they get locked in, and the hotel is not empty. There is at least one human villian, and more than likely, some who are not human. 

It's more than a little weird watching Scott in a non-comic role. He starts out so obnoxious, you wonder if you should be laughing. In fact, a lot of the movie is sort of maybe funny, before it gets hairy. 

And it gets quite hairy. As usual, the witch is the least of the problems - it's the humans that are really evil (Ms. Spenser is tired of this, and prefers real ghosts and monsters). The setting, an old hotel with some hidden features, is used pretty effectively. I have to say, there isn't a lot of Irishism going on, but that's probably for the best. At the risk of spoiling -SPOILER- there is a possible explanation for all the odd stuff going on - mushroom milk. 

And in the end, Scott re-writes the end to his story. The conquistador offers his own head to break the bottle and he and the kid embrace.