Room 666 Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		5.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		5.0

Room 666 Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 28, 2025

Note: This film is available on Blu-ray as part of the Room 666 / Room 999 double feature from Criterion.

It's maybe just slightly hilarious that the only hotel accomodation Wim Wenders could find during the 1982 Cannes Film Festival for a little project he had in mind had a rather, well, memorable room number, but in this case the only "horror" element was Wenders' assertion that cinema might be a dying art, a thesis he then asked a variety of remarkable filmmakers to react to, first person and alone in that very room, with a 16mm camera and tape recorder documenting their responses. The result is absolutely riveting, despite its presentational constraints. Forty years after Wenders' fascinating mini documentary was released, Lubna Playoust returned to the idea, if not the same hotel room, and asked a whole coterie of "new" filmmakers to react to Wenders' original "storm warning". Once again, the results are often provocative.

The filmmakers interviewed in Room 666 are:

• Jean-Luc Godard
• Paul Morrissey
• Mike De Leon
• Monte Hellman
• Romain Goupil
• Susan Seidelman
• Noël Simsolo
• Rainer Werner Fassbinder
• Werner Herzog
• Robert Kramer
• Ana Carolina
• Maroun Bagdadi
• Steven Spielberg
• Michelangelo Antonioni
• Wim Wenders
• Yilmaz Güney

This is an absolutely fascinating aggregation of folks, and a similarly wide gamut of reactions to Wenders' kind of doomsday prophesying. It's really interesting to hear, for example, Godard make what he considers a prime differentiation between going to a film and watching television, namely the size of the screen, which might beg the question as to what he may have thought about contemporary oversized wall mounted affairs. In the kind of funny department, it's also at time hilarious to see how the various people react to the very room, and to the fact that Wenders left a television on. Only the inimitable Werner Herzog walks and in and pretty much shuts the damn thing off (after having removed his shoes and socks.

Room 666 Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Room 666 is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Criterion with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. While the foldout leaflet included with this release has no technical information, there is a text card before the presentation offering this, which may suffer a bit from a bit of "lost in translation" syndrome:

For the restoration, the 16mm camera negative was scanned in 4K using the wet gate method, then retouched and color corrected in a 2K resolution.

In 1982, the mix was recorded analog on 17.5mm magnetic track. The audio was digitized and carefully cleaned up from noise and static clicks, while leaving the originally intended cinematic sound composition untouched.

All work was carried out at L'Immagine Ritrovata, Bolgona, Basis Berlin Postrpdocuktion and Eurotape, Berlin.

This is an appealing looking transfer, and for those who worry about color timing when they see L'Immagine Ritrovata, to my eyes the palette looks natural and well suffused, albeit within the confines of a rather short documentary set entirely in a pretty bland, generic looking hotel room. There's not a wealth of opportunity for dazzling fine detail levels, since everything is more or less a midrange framing, except for those iconoclasts who get up and walk around the room, occasionally rather close to the camera. Grain resolves without any issues.

Room 666 Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Kind of interestingly, Room 666 features Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono mix, though admittedly a lossless codec probably wouldn't have added that much to the proceedings. This is simply a procession of people speaking, and as such the Dolby Digital track suffices perfectly well. There's some patently odd music utilized, which may creep right up to the edge of distortion a couple of times. Our language specs only allow for one principal language, but this is a multilingual affair, with optional English subtitles.

Room 666 Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This is obviously a double feature of sorts, with the disc offering the following supplements:

• Meet the Filmmakers (HD; 14:35) is an appealing interview with Lubna Playoust and offers a bit more context on her effort.


• Trailer (HD; 00:43) is for Room 999.

The insert leaflet contains an essay by Michael Joshua Rowin.

Room 666 Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Room 666 is a fascinating curio on a number of levels, and it will be a treasure trove for those wanting some at times rather piquant responses from some of that era's star filmmakers to Wenders' predictions of calamity. Technical merits are great (video) to passable (lossy audio). Even with Dolby Digital audio and no real supplements tied to this film, Highly recommended.