Four Rooms

Four Rooms is a 1995 anthology film directed by four different directors, Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, and Quentin Tarantino. Tim Roth stars as Ted the Bellhop , a quirky hotel bellhop who serves as the linchpin tying all four tales together. It’s Ted’s first night on duty at the Hotel Mon Signor, and it happens to be a busy New Years Eve. The film also features performances by Bruce Willis, Madonna, Jennifer Beals, Antonio Banderas, Quentin Tarantino, and more.

Main details and contents

Release dates: December 25, 1995 (USA)

Also known as: Silvester in fremden Betten (Germany) | Groom Service (France)

Directors: Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino
Writers: Allison Anders, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino
Producers: Lawrence Bender
Cast: Tim Roth, Antonio Banderas, Jennifer Beals, Paul Calderon, Sammi Davis, Valeria Golino, Madonna, David Proval, Ione Skye, Lili Taylor, Marisa Tomei, Tamlyn Tomita… [click here for full credits]

Releases: BluRay | DVD

The Story

The Hotel Mon Signor, is the main setting of the film Four Rooms. The hotel was once very popular, and played host to many of Hollywoods biggest stars, but it lost most of it popularity in the early nineties. The hotels staff include Ted the Bellhop, Betty the manager, and another older bellhop (Marc Lawrence), who retired at the start of the film. So for this New Year’s Eve it is up to Ted to deal with the hotel’s eclectic assortment of guests….

The first segment is The Missing Ingredient (directed by Allison Anders). In this segment, Ted becomes part of the solution to a covenant of witches’ devious plan to resurrect their goddess. The witches are Diana, Athena, Elsbeth (Madonna), Eva, Raven, Jezebel (Sammi Davis) and Kiva (Alicia Witt), staying at the “Honeymoon Suite”.

The second segment is called The Wrong Man (directed by Alexandre Rockwell). In this segment, Ted gets entangled in a sick game between a couple, Angela (Jennifer Beals) and Sigfried (David Proval), which turns out to be not the regular type of adultery, but rather quite an interesting role game.

The third segment is The Misbehavers (directed by Robert Rodriguez). A husband and wife (Antonio Banderas and Tamlyn Tomita) plan to go out to a New Year’s Eve party with their two children before they decide they would have more ‘fun’ leaving the children in the hotel. Ted is paid $500 to keep an eye on the children by the father, who gives them the stern warning not to misbehave. As Ted is responsible for the entire hotel, he is unable to actually stay in the room with the children, but instead instructs the children to amuse themselves by watching television. After Ted leaves, the siblings quickly begin to squabble and proceed to both explore and vandalize the room, exploding a bottle of champagne in the process. The children call Ted on the phone to ask for milk and cookies, at which point he delivers them stale crackers and milk and attempts unsuccessfully to put them to bed. After being summoned back to the room once more, Ted stumbles into a scene of mass chaos, and finds the source of the terrible odor in the room, a dead prostitute stuffed under the mattress. While Ted tries to quell the chaos in the room, the children’s parents reenter the room and ask “Did they misbehave?”

Trivia: The woman dancing on the TV is Salma Hayek. While the children are watching television, the first image seen on the television is a scene from Robert Rodriguez‘s short film Bedhead.

The fourth and final segment is called The Man from Hollywood (written and directed by Quentin Tarantino). The segment features a flamboyant film Producer named Chester Rush who plays a game with Ted the Bellhop. The other characters are Leo, Norman, Angela (from the third segment).

Trivia: In the film the Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode mentioned by Chester is called “The Man from Reno/Rio”, when in actuality it was titled “The Man from the South”. Check out our related essay diving into this connection.