Tarantino's Back In... Four Rooms

Tarantino's Back in... Four Rooms

"Four Rooms" weaves together the stories from four young renowned American directors. The film follows the goings-on in four rooms of a Los Angeles hotel on New Year's Eve. Each room segment is written and helmed by a different director. The anthology is linked by Tim Roth -- on duty throughout as a bellboy on his first day on the job, who is about to experience the worst night of his life.

In the segment by Allison Anders, "The Missing Ingredient," Roth's sperm is the necessary completion to a plan by a coven of witches (Madonna, Lily Taylor, Valeria Golino, Ione Skye and Sammi Davis) to raise their Goddess -- a 1950s stripper -- from the dead.

In Alexandre Rockwell's "The Wrong Man," Roth is caught up in a violent kinky sex game between a husband (Dave Proval) and his bound-and-gagged wife (Jennifer Beals).

In Robert Rodriguez's "The Misbehavers," Roth is ordered to babysit the spoiled children of a gangster (Antonio Banderas) and warned not to let any harm come to them. "The Misbehavers" is a Rube Goldbergian slapstick farce, enlivened by Banderas' nifty spin.

In Quentin Tarantino's "The Man From Hollywood," Roth is the "impartial" observer of a macabre bet (based on an episode of TV's "Alfred Hitchcock Presents") that involves a hatchet, a block of wood and a ball of twine, with the bet hinging on whether a cigarette lighter will ignite 10 times consecutively.

This segment is the most stylistically innovative, shot by Tarantino in long takes with his characters (Paul Calderón, Bruce Willis and Tarantino) dwarfed by theatrical sets, and ending with a smart punchline.

- excerpted from reviews by Shlomo Schwartzberg in Boxoffice, Nov. 1995, and Independent Marketing Edge's Fall Holiday Marketing Preview Guide.