Sixteen Tongues

May 24, 2005

Rated: NR Runtime: 80 min Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Sixteen Tongues takes place in the future at the Sappho Hotel. There are male and female prostitutes loitering in the hallways, as well as countless bondage and S&M torture rooms. Residents have to pay for all the things we take for granted in modern day hotels: ice, water and porn-free television. Yeah, you read that correctly… in every room the television plays non-stop porn. In order to turn it off, residents must slide their credit card through a reader to buy a few quiet, porn-free hours.

Sixteen Tongues Now for some of you reading, this probably sounds like the Adult version of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. But this is not a sexy movie. Instead, it is a dark and disturbing vision of what could happen in America if we don’t put a stop to outrageous sexual incidents, like Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction. Thankfully, the FCC is watching over us, ensuring that grown men will be paying for their porn in clean hotel rooms for years to come.

Anyway, Sixteen Tongues refers to the skin of Adrian Torque, a cop who lives in the hotel. While serving the military, he lost half his skin in an explosion that killed the rest of his unit. In order to save Torque’s life, the doctors used tongue meat from the other men in his unit to patch up his body.

Down the hall, killer-for-hire Ginny Chin-Chin and her hacker girlfriend, Alik Silens, are having relationship problems. They are searching for the person who killed Alik’s brother. And the path has led them straight to the Sappho Hotel.

There were some technical problems with this movie, mainly with the audio, but I really liked the disjointed “video-look” the director used to tell this story. It gave me the feeling that I was watching all of this happen live. It appeared as though the characters were walking the same hallway over and over, with different posters on the walls each time. But I have to give the production and set designers credit for making all the sets appear gritty and real.

Sixteen Tongues is not for everyone. In fact, I usually turn this type of movie off before finishing it. But I couldn’t stop watching it. I do think it’s probably the most original movie I’ve seen all year, and moviegoers who appreciate fresh ideas should definitely check this one out.

Posted by Chris Terranova | Filed Under 3 Stars, Alice Liu, Crawford James, DVD, Drama, Glenn Hetrick, Horror, Jane Chase, Jonny Tingle, NR, SciFi