Feel my Roth

Rating: 5/10 (27 March 2006)

There's a sickness pervading Roth's promo for the Youth Hosteling Association. Having said that it's hard to dislike a movie which features attractive Eastern European women in permissive sexual mode - prone to large bouts of unnecessary but welcomed nudity and not too concerned about changing in view of male roommates. Such cynical devices are employed to get round the critical sensibilities of horror hating people like me who think this stuff is terminally devoid of merit, invention or wit and Roths pulled a blinder. For 45 minutes I was putty in his sick, gelatin covered hands and then, having got to the crux of it with those ignorant, hormonally retarded backpackers getting horrifically tortured for the pleasure of maladjusted 13 year olds and man-child fan-boy mastabators throughout the world, I strangely found myself drawn into Roths dirty little web - the Vincent Price like fly to his predatory house spider. Not in any way what you should be doing with your free time but nevertheless far better than you might dare to hope - Hostel may be a good advert for hotels as well as 90 minutes of well tooled disturbance. Hard to hate - especially when watched backwards.