Difference between revisions of "Nightmare on the 13th Floor"

The plot revolves around Los Angeles hotel with a hidden 13th floor inhabited by a cult trying to murder 16 people in order to gain eternal life. The film stars Michele Greene as travel writer Elaine Kalisher, James Brolin as Dr. Alan Lanier, and Louise Fletcher as Letti Gordon.

Travel writer Elaine Kalisher (Michele Greene) arrives at the Wessex Hotel in Los Angeles, California to write a story about the hotel for her travel magazine. She is warmly welcomed by the entire staff, except service department head Letti Gordon (Louise Fletcher), who is put off by her presence at the hotel and treats her coldly.

In the meantime, hotel guest Moselle Beecher, an old woman in town for a crystal convention, awakens in a bedroom on the mystery floor and is murdered by an unseen person with an axe while ragtime music plays on a record.

Detective Madden (John Karlen) arrives and they search the hotel floor by floor, but are unable to find the location where Elaine claims to have witnessed the murder, having been confident it was on a floor with gaslights. During this search, a policeman remarks that the elevator does not go to the 13th floor due to superstition regarding the number 13.

During breakfast with Dr. Lanier, he suggests that Elaine check the hotel's furnace to see if the clothes were stolen from the garbage. While there, she witnesses Letti Gordon invite Peddler into the hotel for a meal, but despite running into the kitchen behind them, Peddler disappears, having been sent up to the 13th floor by Letti, who used a secret knob to cause the elevator to stop at the otherwise hidden floor. Peddler is murdered after arriving on the floor.

Elaine begins looking into the history of the hotel and discovers that in 1900, Avery Block, the leader of a [[Satanism|Satanic]] cult, took a fire axe from the wall and murdered 16 people seemingly at random. He believed he could achieve immortality by killing 16 people on the 13th floor of the Wessex because the 13 floor was a gateway to [[Hell]]. Block was never captured and after the murders, the hotel owner sealed the floor, going so far as to conceal its existence by constructing a decorative concrete frieze to cover the exterior windows around the outside of the building.

After Gail Myers from the city engineer's office mysteriously disappears, Elaine partners with Detective Madden to successfully access the hidden 13th floor by stopping the elevator between floors and climbing through the hatch in the ceiling. Madden is quickly murdered and Elaine is forced to flee into the hotel as she is pursued by the other cult members including Letti.

Although it is presumed that all the cult members died, an epilogue scene shows concierge Judith Teller at a hotel in Seattle, Washington, cheerfully checking in a guest, leading to speculation that the cult successfully achieved immortality before the explosion and has moved on to another hotel.

* James Brolin as Dr. Alan Lanier, the hotel doctor and leader of a [[Satanism|Satanic]] cult.

* Harvey Vernon as Father Thomas Bergen, a priest whose father investigated murders at the hotel in the 1920s.

Although model/cheerleader Christy Sandoval was twice mentioned by ''Weekly World News'' as being in the film, there is no mention of her in the credits. It is not known what role she actually played (if any).

The interior scenes which take place on the 13th floor were all shot on a specially designed set.

Music for the film was composed by American musician Jay Gruska in one of the first movies he orchestrated himself. He composed three songs which play repeatedly throughout the movie without reading the script beforehand. His goal was to evoke an atmosphere reminiscent of Bernard Hermann's orchestrations for Alfred Hitchcock. His orchestration included a midsize string orchestra with 2 woodwinds.

''Nightmare on the 13th Floor'' was premiered on the USA Network on October 31, 1990.

The film is especially notable for having been released in numerous countries around the world with either native-language dubbing or subtitles. This telecast premiere was one of the first of its kind for a movie of the week and was an incredible feat of electrical engineering that helped set the standards for global telecasts used across the world today.

''Nightmare on the 13th Floor'' was released on VHS by Paramount Home Video on October 17, 1991. When Paramount released the film in the United States, CIC Video handled international distribution of the VHS in almost every country it was originally televised in utilizing the dubbed or subtitled versions with minor differences from the original.

As part of the "apartment-horror" sub-genre, ''Nightmare on the 13th Floor'' has been unfavorably compared to ''[[Rosemary's Baby]]'', and film which also had [[occult]] overtones.