Sunday, November 04, 2007

A movie question for y'all

I was chatting with Whim from The Babblings of Whimsicalbrainpan the other day and we got on the topic of horror movies. I mentioned a movie I've been trying to track down for several years, to no avail, and we realized that perhaps if I turned the question around to the readers of this blog, somebody might know the answer. It worked before with my "Musical unanswerables" - and, coincidentally, this movie is connected to that post.

Here are the facts, as succinctly as I can put them:

  • I saw bits of this movie on the Independent Film Channel.
  • I believe I saw this movie sometime on Sunday, May 15, 2005 (the day after the last HFStival I went to.) The movie looked pretty recent.
  • The movie may be set in Baltimore.
  • The plot involves someone (a woman, I believe) digging into the mysterious history of an old hotel.
  • The hotel dates back from either the Depression or some time before when there was great hardship and famine.
  • The hotel restaurant in those days was frequented by the local elite.
  • The hotel restaurant always had plenty of fresh meat, even when there was no meat to be found anywhere else in the city.
  • I believe local disappearances of area children were connected to this hotel - and its supply of fresh meat.
  • The truth behind what had happened was a closely guarded secret among the descendants of the people involved.
  • There was at least one rotting-corpse-in-the-mirror-behind-you shot.
  • The cinematography of the movie was fairly conventional, for the most part, but the edits felt very film-schoolish. The acting was uneven - a few good performances, several atrocious ones.
Everything that I saw of this movie made me think it might be an exploration of the "facts" behind the legend of the Blair Witch, as seen in The Blair Witch Project. Lots of elements seemed to mesh, including the location and the disappearances of the children. It seemed pretty clever: during a time of starvation, the wealthy elite of a region engage in casual cannibalism, feasting upon the sweet tender children of the lower classes, and then concoct a story pinning the blame for the disappearances on an old hermit lady who lives in the woods - who is then dealt with by an angry mob. Yet aside from Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2, I am not aware of any other Blair Witch movies out there.

So, how about it? Some of the "facts" I have listed above may be wrong, and may therefore be red herrings. Does anyone know of a movie that seems to fit this description?

5 comments:

anne said...

As soon as I got to the words "horror movie" I knew I wouldn't be able to help.

And now I'll have to remember to avoid mirros for a few days until I forget about the rotting corpse.

Not that I have an over-active imagination or anything...

whimsical brainpan said...

I hope you get the answer DB. I want to check out this movie.

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

Nope, sorry Harold. Never heard of it. Not really much for horror films either.

Anonymous said...

I'm searching, but I'm having about as much luck as I had with the 80s song lyrics! But, I'm not ready to concede defeat just yet.

hedera said...

Sounds like a Baltimore-based remake of Sweeney Todd but probably isn't. Sorry, can't help any more than that, as I don't watch horror movies either ;-)