Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (1979)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Dead Mountaineer’s Hotel (1979) – G. Kromanov

I happened to be on Letterboxd and was checking out what some of the people I follow were watching and film critic Glenn Kenny had this one on his recently watched list (and he gave it five stars with a three word review: “more mind expansion”).  This piqued my interest but I could only find it at the internet archive.  It’s an Estonian film from 1979, so it has that 70s vibe (real phones with cords, European fashion/habits).  You might say it is a film noir (in colour) or perhaps it is one of those murder mysteries that takes place in a hotel where all of the guests are suspects.  This hotel is high in the mountains and the plot includes an avalanche that cuts off power and the roads and keeps everyone there, including the police inspector who got a mysterious call-out only to find that there was no crime to solve.  (An anonymous note soon advises him that a murder is about to be committed).  There is the usual allotment of suspects: a businessman and his flirtatious wife, a canoodling young couple, a paranoid man with TB, a physicist with an obsession about aliens, and then there’s the hotel proprietor and a Saint Bernard (rescued from the Dead Mountaineer who lent his name to the hotel).  Against the odds, the film held my interest when one of the young folks is found dead and the detective (Uldis Pucitis) begins to question the suspects.  Odd events start to pile up (including the arrival of a half-dead “foreigner” who seems to have a link to some of the guests) -- and then, somehow, everything gets very weird: as in, who thunk this (!) in 1979 (!).  Stay for the finale – it’s worth it!