7Roulette - NIGHTMARE ON THE 13TH FLOOR

This movie aired on Halloween night in 1990, and I'm pretty sure I was there. I remember watching it and loving it enough that even after all this time, I made Paul find me a bootleg copy on eBay.

You can't go wrong with Satanists and the occult, and this one is oozing with both. It's just a perfectly good business trip that goes terribly awry. A travel magazine writer is visiting a prominent city hotel, and instead of critiquing the bed linens, she gets the story of her life, by nearly losing it.

 

It doesn't have to be gruesome to be scary. The all-red velvet decor of the setting of the murders is equally pretty and frightening. It was ingrained in me since childhood. The killer's office is filled with evil artifacts and creepy music to give it more flavor. His implement of destruction is an axe, which for cable TV, seemed risqué, but considering they never show carnage, they got away with it. I typically don't care for slasher movies, but I dig this one, and always have. Maybe because so much is left for the viewers' imagination. A-

-Babes

The idea of a scary movie premiering on Halloween Night that's aimed largely at grownups is wild to me. But in 1990 that's exactly what the USA Network did with Nightmare on the 13th Floor - a sorta Supernatural Murder Mystery that I picture old ladies watching while they sit around waiting for trick-or-treaters to ring the doorbell. The movie follows Elaine (Michele Greene), a Travel journalist who may (or may not) have stumbled upon an elusive 13th floor in the Wessex Hotel where people go in and never come out. It immediately becomes apparent that the hotel staff is aware of the phenomenon and are trying to cover it up (for reasons that are eventually revealed).

I like conspiracy stuff; the paranoid climate of "who do I trust" and "everybody's in on it". But this has such a gentle coziness to it that it rarely appears threatening - Elaine's biggest obstacles are a hotel manager and a concierge. None of this is a complaint, these are the kindsa low key thrills I crave from something of this caliber. The atmosphere is about as spooky as an episode of Murder, She Wrote but some mild violence, strong production value, and fun performances keep this broadcast on the move. B

- Paul