Four Rooms
The film begins with Ted the Bellhop (Tim Roth) in a room filled with hotel memorabilia talking to Sam the Bellhop (Marc Lawrence) about what a bellhop is. It's New Year's Eve.
"The Missing Ingredient" begins with a bunch of women (including Madonna and Lili Taylor) converging in the Honeymoon Suite, where there's a huge cauldron in the room's center. The women send Ted to get a bunch of ingredients, mostly from the kitchen. With the ingredients in hand, the women, some of them topless, enact a ritual. They are witches. One says they intend to reverse the spell that turned their goddess Diana into stone in this very room 40 years ago.
The witches dance around, then they begin putting ingredients into the huge cauldron. Alas, Eva (Ione Skye) was required to get the key ingredient: fresh semen. However, instead of keeping the sample, she swallows it. Ted returns to the room. A witch gives him a $50 tip, telling him he has to make Eva smile. The witches leave Ted alone with Eva, whom Ted tries to entertain by acting silly. Eva says it doesn't matter if she smiles or not and explains that they are a coven and the situation with Diana. After Ted resists Eva's advances, she casts a spell on him, causing him to be swept away with her. Ted kisses Eva.
Later, we see them kissing some more. Ted leaves the suite as the witches plus one more return. Eva says she's "a woman now," telling them that she and Ted did it in the cauldron. The witches continue the ritual. Diana rises from the cauldron, in physical form.
The second segment is "The Wrong Man." Ted walks into a darkened room 404. The light comes on. A man (David Proval) points a gun in Ted's face. A woman (Jennifer Beals) is tied to a chair and gagged behind the man. The man pops some pills. He accuses Ted of being the woman's beau. She is the man's wife. Ted says there's a mistake. The man hits Ted in the face with the gun, knocking him down. The man pulls Ted up and says he demands an apology. He puts the gun down and has Ted mouth an apology for saying he f---ed another man. The man tells Ted not to move a nose hair, picking up the gun. The man dances over to the bathroom. The woman mumbles at Ted and he pulls the gag out of her mouth. She tells him to untie her. He argues that they're complete strangers, and she says "it's where we end up that counts." They realize the man is coming back, and Ted puts the gag back in her mouth.
The man catches Ted doing this and points the gun at him. He tells Ted to "nibble" on his wife. The man calls Ted "Theodore." Ted corrects him, telling him to call him "Ted." The man says his name is Siegfried. He agrees to call Ted by his chosen name. He then kisses Ted, twitches, says "my heart," and collapses. He tells Ted to get his nitro pills in the bathroom. Ted enters the bathroom and searches the medicine cabinet. He sees the window and worms his body halfway through it. Ted notices a man halfway out of the window above his window. He asks the man if he could call the police. The man twitches and vomits, just missing Ted, who jumps back into the bathroom.
Ted exits the bathroom, finding the woman and Siegfried on the floor. He picks the woman up and un-gags her. She yells at him to get the nitro. Suddenly, Siegfried stands up. He tells them it was a test, saying he's happy because he knows the woman loves him. The woman takes a wry attitude, accusing Ted of having sex with her. Ted asks what he ever did to her and Siegfried. The woman mentions that Ted has "a huge cock." Ted denies this. Siegfried tells Ted to show him his cock. The woman does, too. Siegfried says to stop talking about Ted's cock. The woman then says countless synonyms for the phallus, driving Siegfried into a fit. Ted sees an opportunity and hurries out of the room.
The third segment, "The Misbehavers," starts with Ted answering a call at the front desk. A man (Antonio Banderas) orders a bottle of champagne. His wife (Tamlyn Tomita) combs the man and the wife's son Juancho's (Danny Verduzco) hair, trying to get the right look. The man takes over combing Juancho's hair, while the wife goes to work on their daughter Sarah's (Lana McKissack) hair. The man and wife finish the kids' hair. The kids go into the main room to watch television. The wife asks the man if they're going to have fun tonight. The man mentions that they could leave the kids in the room with the television.
The man tells the kids that he and his wife are going to leave them alone and to be in bed before 12. He tells them, "don't misbehave." Juancho opens a window, saying it stinks in the room. The man comes back, saying "Behave." Ted arrives with the champagne. The man gives Ted 500 dollars to check up on the kids every thirty minutes. The man and his wife leave. Ted and Sarah argue a bit as to when the kids should call him. He says to call only when necessary, watch TV, and if they're good, he'll bring them some milk and cookies. He leaves. Sarah tells Juancho that his feet stink.
Juancho turns on a station on the TV with a half-naked female dancer (Salma Hayek) dancing. Sarah calls Ted on the phone, telling him to turn "the nudie station" off. The kids keep complaining about the bad smell in the room. Sarah finds a syringe in a drawer and calls Ted to mention it to him. He tells her not to bother him again unless it's an emergency. Juancho shakes the champagne bottle until it blows its cork. He drinks some champagne.
The kids use a framed picture in the room as a target with Juancho throwing the syringe at it. Ted comes back with milk and saltines, telling the kids they're going to bed. The kids dislike the saltines. Ted has the kids lie down and tells them to close their eyes. He pulls out some mentholatum ointment. He dabs the ointment over their eyes, telling them not to open them or it will burn. Ted exits the room. Fireworks go off outside the room's window.
Sarah walks with her eyes closed to the bathroom and rinses her eyes off. She opens them. She turns on the TV and drinks some champagne. Juancho then walks to the bathroom and washes his face off, too. Vexed by the bad smell in the room, the kids get up. Sarah pulls the bed's top mattress aside and they find a dead woman stuffed in the bottom mattress. Sarah calls Ted, who becomes livid. Sarah tells Ted to get his ass to the room.
A discombobulated Ted sees the man walk into the hotel carrying the passed-out wife. Ted runs to the elevator and goes upstairs. He rushes into the room to find Sarah drinking and Juancho smoking. Ted slaps the cigarette out of Juancho's mouth. Sarah moves the bed's top mattress aside to reveal the dead woman. Ted vomits. He knocks the champagne bottle out of Sarah's hand. Champagne spills from the bottle and moves toward the lit cigarette on the floor. Ted calls the police, saying there's a "dead whore" in the room. Sarah tells Ted not to call her a dead whore. Ted does it again and Sarah stabs Ted in the leg with the syringe.
Ted screams, dropping the telephone. He steps on the TV's remote, putting the TV onto the station with the dancing woman. The man gets to the room's door, carrying his wife. Flames erupt around the room. Ted grabs the dead woman's leg and yanks the syringe out of his thigh. The man walks in to see Ted standing with his hand on the dead woman's leg and the syringe in the other hand, with Juancho smoking and Sarah holding the champagne bottle, the "nudie station" on the TV and the room on fire. The man says, "Did they misbehave?"
The last segment is "The Man From Hollywood." Ted knocks on a penthouse door. The formerly tied-up woman from the earlier segment opens the door and announces that the bellhop is here. Men's voices shout in appreciation. The actor Chester Rush (Quentin Tarantino) struts over to Ted and offers him some Cristal, which Ted refuses at first, but then drinks. Chester invites Ted in and introduces him to his friends: the woman, whose name is Angela, Norman (Paul Calderon), and Leo (Bruce Willis).
Chester notices that a bottle of Cristal has gone flat and launches into a tirade against his friends. He opens another bottle. Chester talks about his movies. He pours Ted some more Cristal. Ted shows Chester and Norman the objects he's been asked to bring to the room, which include a block of wood and a sharp hatchet. Leo argues in a bedroom with his wife over the phone, and it ends badly. Leo has a temper tantrum, yelling and cursing.
Leo asks Ted if he's seen a TV episode called "The Man From Rio" starring Peter Lorre and Steve McQueen, in which Lorre makes a bet with McQueen that McQueen can't light his cigarette lighter ten times in a row. If McQueen lights his lighter ten times in a row, McQueen gets Lorre's car. If he doesn't, Lorre gets to chop off McQueen's pinky. Leo goes on that Norman has bet his pinky that he can light his cigarette lighter ten times in a row. Either Norman will do it, thus winning Chester's 1964 Chevy Chevelle, or not, getting his finger cut off. Ted says that the guys are drunk. Norman says they'd probably chicken out if they weren't intoxicated. Chester says in the event that Norman loses his finger, after they put it on ice, it can hopefully be reattached.
Chester says that the men want Ted, who is something of a stranger, to be the finger-cutter. Ted says, "I've gotta get out of here" and runs to the door. Chester offers Ted $100 to sit and listen to what he has to say. Ted sits down. Chester stacks a thousand dollars on the counter and persuasively asks Ted if he'll want to remember for the rest of his life that he refused it for a second's work. Ted says he'll be the finger-cutter.
The men get into their positions. Norman gets his thumb on his lighter and flicks it. It doesn't light, and Ted instantly drives the hatchet through Norman's pinky, severing it. Norman screams in pain. Ted scoops up his money and leaves, getting onto an elevator. Leo and Chester scramble to get the shrieking Norman and his severed pinky into the elevator.
Four Rooms, one Bellboy, a whole lotta fun!
