Desire and Hell at Sunset Motel is a 1991 neo-noir black comedy written and directed by Alien Castle and produced by Donald P. Borchers. It stars Sherilyn Fenn, Whip Hubley, David Hewlett, David Johansen, and Paul Bartel. It was partly filmed at the deserted Flamingo West Motel in Santa Monica.

Plot
In 1955, a toy salesman and his wife turn a business trip into a brief vacation by planning to visit Disneyland, which has just opened. They stay at the Sunset Motel in Anaheim, California, where affairs and sexual crimes among the motel guests and staff quickly develop and cause trouble.

Cast
  Sherilyn Fenn as Bridget "Bridey" DeSoto
  Whip Hubley as Chester DeSoto
  David Hewlett as Deadpan Winchester
  David Johansen as Auggie
  Kenneth Tobey as Captain Holiday
  Paul Bartel as The Manager
  Parker Whitman as The Boss
  Shannon Sturges as Louella

Critical reception 
A review for TV Guide stated the film "strives for a jokey, stylistically dense parody of 1950s potboilers, but fails completely. Castle, with clunky direction and a badly paced over-the-top screenplay containing dialogue dipped in a curious amalgam of Somerset Maugham and James Elroy ('They say radioactive things have a half life as they decay. I think I'm radioactive'), is seemingly unable to muster enough energy or inspiration to take advantage of Jamie Thompson's impressively evocative cinematography." In his review for Empire, William Thomas wrote, "Twin Peaks' Audrey Horne (Sherilyn Fenn) is the provocative heart of this strange, shambling and daft dialogue-heavy black comedy, which tries very hard, but doesn’t quite hit the mark."

References

External links
 
 
1991 films
1991 comedy films
1991 black comedy films
American black comedy films
American independent films
American neo-noir films
Films set in 1955
Films set in Orange County, California
Films set in motels
Films shot in New Orleans
Films shot in Los Angeles County, California
1990s English-language films
1990s American films