Starring Jeff Bridges. Rated 14A

What do you get when you take a chunk of the Coen Brothers, a hint of David Lynch surrealism, a wonderfully retro R&B soundtrack, and a whole lotta Quentin Tarantino? A dog’s breakfast that is supremely enjoyable for the first hour at least.

Unfortunately, Bad Times at the El Royale is 141 minutes long, and almost all the drag—not to mention the body count—is in the last half-hour.

There’s nothing but fun at the start, when a priest (Jeff Bridges), a vacuum salesman (Jon Hamm), and a backup singer (Cynthia Erivo) show up at the nearly deserted El Royale hotel. The line between Nevada and California runs right through the lobby of this gilded palace (actually built and filmed in B.C.), which had its heyday 10 years earlier, as seen in a nifty preamble with Nick Offerman as a guy with a suitcase full of cash and motel-based plan to stash it.

Now it’s 1969, though, and Nixon is in office, suggesting that Vietnam, high-level corruption, and counterculture weirdness will all be on the menu.

The three new arrivals, shepherded by a lone, Barton Fink–ish desk clerk (Battle of the Sexes’ Lewis Pullman), are all other, or at least more, than what they seem.

Hamm’s salesman is more interested in hotel spy devices than in pushing Hoovers, and indeed the place is a creepy voyeur’s delight.

Father Flynn is plagued by memory loss (a subplot that itself comes and goes rather randomly) that might be connected to that loot.

And cast standout Erivo’s Darlene Sweet is looking to trade her BG career for solo stardom—and man, can she sing!

Another bravura sequence shows Darlene at a gloriously raucous, late-’50s recording session. But this is followed by a tediously long-winded sequence in which a pompadoured producer lectures her menacingly about the show-biz pitfalls of working with, you know, men like him.

In the early going, laggardly scenes and illogical plot points don’t matter much, because writer-director Drew Goddard (best known for the more down-market Cabin in the Woods) keeps throwing fast twists and new characters at you. These include a shotgun-wielding “hippie chick” (Dakota Johnson) and her unwilling cohort (Cailee Spaeny), and the film gets increasingly bogged down in their back story.

There’s even a Mansonlike cult leader played by Chris Hemsworth and his abs.

I’ve probably said too much already, but it could help to know that you won’t be crazy if you want to check out of El Royale just a little early.