The Cold Room

The Cold Room is a made for television film dating from 1984, and features Amanda Pays in her film debut.  It is based on a Science Fiction novel by writer Jeffery Caine, published in 1978; and also stars George Segal, Warren Clark (of Clockwork Orange fame, seen recently in "Bleak House"), Anthony Higgins and Renée Soutendijk.  

The plot centers around a young woman, recently arrived in Berlin airport, where she meets up with her father from NYC whom she hasn't seen in a long.  He promptly takes her to East Germany, and to a hotel that is out of the way and never used by tourists.  The next day the father introduces her to his new East German girlfriend, who whisks them away to the Museum of German history.  Here she experiences her first taste of communist propaganda, and becomes concerned that her father might actually relocate here permanently.  After this, things get weird!  Upon her return to her hotel room, she starts seeing flashes of another young woman in the wardrobe mirror that is definitely not her.  Her father and his stern girlfriend begin to think that she is going insane; not that there is really anything wrong with the room or the hotel.  Hearing what she thinks are rats behind the wall, she becomes determined to check it out.  Suspecting that there might be some sort of secret room behind the wardrobe.  When she finally investigates, she finds a disused "cold room"--a room once used for meat storage, and a Jewish dissident name Erich.  She begins sneaking him food, and things progress from there.  The only problem:  these people might actually be shades from World War II.

This actually makes a really good double feature with Polanski's The Tenant, there are similar themes in both, and the stories progress along very like ways.  Only this time it's a young woman in a foreign situation, not a French national trying to find a home in a country that is very suspicious of him.  

Here's The Whole Film Embed