To start with we are led to believe the setting is a country-hotel of some sort. In the end we discover this is a State Rehabilitation Facility and everything that happens is a carefully orchestrated escape plot by some of the inmates. The film was shot on location at an isolated boarding school in Saelingsdalur in the west of Iceland. The school is used as a hotel during the summer months but the film takes place in the wintertime.
In the late fifties Iceland was isolated and backwards. Industrialisation had really just begun and the country was taking it’s first steps towards the ultra-modern society we know today. The US military set up a base next to the sleepy fishing village of Keflavik on the south coast turning everything on it’s head. The Americans outnumbered the locals three to one. Culturally it was as if a UFO had landed. The young people were more open to cultural influences than the older generation and this triggered a rock and roll explosion which then swept the rest of the country. It was the birth of Icelandic teenage culture. Because of Iceland’s location right between America and Europe the cultural influences mixed to produce an unique blend.
