Synopsis

Young Cheryl (pronounced "CHAIR-ul") is a runaway shacking up with her friend Judy. After Judy throws her out for watching her have sex with a guy, Cheryl packs her suitcase and takes off, along with Judy's wallet, and heads out into the sleaziest part of L.A. looking for her long-lost Aunt Martha's rundown hotel.Aunt Martha is a stout, homely woman with no tolerance for worldly ways. She insists that Cheryl wash "that paint" off before joining her for dinner, and lectures her on the evils of sex. Cheryl plays along for a place to stay, but she soon finds out that the hotel is full of loonies of all types. There's a gay priest who has a thing for male bodybuilders, a drunk guy who doesn't do anything except pass out in his room, and an old lady who wanders around looking for a girl named "Alice". Perhaps the weirdest tenant is a reclusive photographer named George, who shows his affection for Cheryl by spying on her through cracks in the wall, leaving her pornographic reading material in her room, and offering her fetish gear to wear for his amusement. Cheryl craves the attention, but she's not aware that people are being murdered in the hotel. A hunky stud who comes looking for Cheryl gets his head cut off with a machete, and the other tenants of the hotel start dropping off too. Cheryl's arrival seems to have set somebody off.Despite Aunt Martha's objections to men, Cheryl secretly begins dating Jeff, a young man who takes an interest in her. She must take great pains to ensure that Aunt Martha doesn't find out.George will not directly interact with Cheryl, choosing instead to spy on her and photograph her. In one of the film's most disturbing scenes, he engages in a most unusual sex act. He fills a vinyl blow-up doll with water, simulating a body as best he can. He dresses it like Cheryl and attaches a closeup photograph of Cheryl's face to the doll's head. He then gets in bed with it and simulates sex, climaxing with a bizarre moment: he draws a syringe of blood from his body and injects it into the doll.Judy shows up at the hotel looking for Cheryl and is murdered while nosing around in the basement. Eventually we learn that Alice, the girl who used to live at the hotel, has met with the same fate, after becoming the object of George's strange affection.Finally all is revealed. Aunt Martha is the one who has gone machete-happy, murdering anybody who interferes with her notion of morality, as well as anybody who will go near George, who is her child. Note that George is not her son--George is actually female, urged by Aunt Martha to avoid embracing feminine wiles. This explains George's need for a syringe to complete the sex act, as well as his unstable condition. It is also suggested that Aunt Martha is not really a woman herself, but rather a man who has adopted the opposite gender to avoid the moral pitfalls of being male.Before Cheryl can fall victim to George and Martha, Jeff and his father intervene with some rather inept policemen. The film concludes as we learn that Cheryl has taken over Aunt Martha's hotel. Has she also taken over Aunt Martha's strange outlook on life?

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Jun 22, 2023 at 03:31 PM