"Haunted Hotel": 8 Stories from 8 Writers and 8 Directors. How Many Gay Characters?

 

Haunted Hotel (2021) is an anthology: eight decades, eight ghost stories (with eight writiers and eight directors) set in the same creepy English hotel, the Great White Horse in Ipswich, Suffolk.   There are two guys in old-fashioned nightgowns hugging in the trailer, so at least one of them involves gay people.  I assume. 

Story 1:  In 1836, a young and very cute Charles Dickens (Reece Ritchie) is trying to sleep, but troubled by an overcoat that keeps moving on its own. He receives a mysterious visitor in his nightgown, who reveals that he got lost in the labyrinthine hallways and accidentally entered the wrong room and...well, you can read the rest of the story in The Pickwick Papers.  

Story 2: In 1985, the very hot hotelier David (Peter Barfield) welcomes the elderly Mr. Gibson to the hotel.  He takes his usual room, and meets his elderly wife for their 40th wedding anniversary.  They discuss how times have changed, have dinner, and have a dance.  You can guess how this one will turn out.

Story 3:  In 1924, a scary, well-dressed man (Patrick Marlowe) peers from the window as a flapper drives up to the hotel: Francesca Happer-Rishorn of the Ghost Club.  He helps her carry her heavy ghost-detection machine, the Spectre-O-Meter, to her room.  The extremely timid milquetoast Mr. Urlowe appears to tell her about a woman who murdered her husband, then killed herself.  Their ghosts haunt the hotel.  By the way, the machine doesn't work.

Story 4:  In 1973, the young clerk sits behind her desk, during a thunderstorm, reading a horror novel by Peter Fearless.  Suddenly a creepy elderly  man with bags appears: Peter Fearless himself!  He checks in to research his new book, Hunted or Haunted.   He calls his publisher, Malcolm, to tell him about it: a traditional ghost story based on Suffolk legends.  Oh, and he's recently had a nervous breakdown, and has to keep taking his medication.  Oh, and Malcolm is an aspiring novelist....

Story 5:  In 1952,  Eddie (Andrew Hollingworth) and his girlfriend Betsy register as Mr. and Mrs. Jones.  The dour desk clerk catches on that they're not married, but rents them a room anyway.  Unfortunately, it's a room with odd airplane noises and ash falling from the ceiling.  Betsy is too scared to continue with the sex.  Eddie tries to force her.  The desk clerk's wife appears out of nowhere and helps her get away.  Years later, Betsy returns with her new husband to thank the clerk's wife for her help, only to discover....

Story 6: In 1997, the blowsy hotel manager gives new hire Maisy her nametag (which says Daisy) and tells her to report to her supervisor, the extra-cute and super-nice Tom (Joshua Dickinson).  She begins cleaning rooms. Room 116 was trashed; it takes forever to clean it.  Then, a moment later, it's trashed again!  She cleans it again; it's trashed again.  And why is there a nametag with her correct name on the bed?

Story 7: In 1968, you can take a tour of "Suffolk's Most Haunted Hotel."  The manager has hired the wacky ghost Bob (Miles Jovian) to scare guests, but he just pops in and out of rooms.  "You can't just drift around.  You have to be scary!"   He tries dressing as Norman Bates in drag (from Psycho) and chasing a family with an axe, but that's too scary.  How about being headless?  Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?  A bedsheet with eyeholes?  Being scary is not as easy as it sounds.

Story 8: In 2019, five elderly men who speak in Cockney Rhyming Slang enter the abandoned hotel with flashlights, and find their way to a room where the sixth, the young, hip Hobbit (Kyle Malan) is waiting with beer and money.  They congratulate each other, and get down to some sort of gangster business. The Boss collapses. When he regains consciousness, there are only five, and they don't remember that the sixth ever existed.  Then four.  Then three.

Beefcake: No. 

Gay Characters:  Nothing specified.  Bob the Ghost is a veritable drag queen with a hot pink bedroom and lots of wigs and things around.  The two hugging guys I saw in the trailer are Charles Dickens and Mr. Pickwick.

Heterosexism: In five of the eight stories, the major interactions involve a man and a woman.  Two of the remaining have men manipulating, betraying, and murdering each other.  Only one has a positive portrayal of men together.

My Grade: The stories are entertaining, but the incessant male-female dyads become annoying.  C.