The People Under The Stairs
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Movie Reviews of The People Under The Stairs
Movie Review: Wes Craven's best movie
Summary: 3 Stars
After that disaster called "Shocker", Wes Craven directs this darkly humorous suburban dark horror-comedy. A boy living in the ghetto needs tons of money to help his sick mother and he gets his uncle and his uncle's friend to help him steal money hidden under the stairs of their landlords house and soon he discovers that the couple keep people under their house. A very well-made horror flick from the 90s with a good cast,good director, and a well-written storyline. The atmosphere and the house are equally creepy and the couple of the household are bizarre. One of Wes Craven's best movie. Movie Review: Wes Craven Does It Again!
Summary: 4 Stars
I liked this movie and found it to be pretty scary and slightly disturbing. Watch it in the dark and you'll appreciate it even more.Movie Review: From the twisted mind of Wes Craven comes....
Summary: 4 Stars
..one of the craziest movies I have ever seen.
"People Under the Stairs" is about a brother-sister duo, who steal babies and raise them as their own. That is, until the child see, hears or speaks evil. At that point, the brother "takes out" whatever is wrong with the child and locks them in the basement.
Our main character 'Fool', a 13 year old boy, who aids his friend Leroy(Ving Rhames) in an attempt to rob the house, which alos supposedly has a rare gold coin collection. In fact, the brother-sister duo are also the landlords of the building that 'Fool' lives in and his family has just been made aware that they are to be evicted.
Let's just say that Rhames and 'Fool' find a lot more in this house than they had anticipated. There is a child running through the walls, constantly being chased by the Brother. There is a locked cage in the cellar where all of the 'unwanted' children roam(and are fed flesh). There is a killer dog. And, there is a young girl named Alice, whom the brother-sister duo have yet to find anything wrong with. Alice is played by a young AJ Langor(My-So-Called-Life) and gives a really good performance.
I don't want to blow the ending or anything else that goes on in this movie, but I will say that this is very entertaining. There is hunor, suspense and a really cool house, full of passages and nooks. I have seen this movie about a dozen times and am never disappointed. Wes Craven fans will love this one!
Movie Review: Funny, Over-The-Top Horror
Summary: 4 Stars
I've always gotten a kick out of this movie. The story line is original (or at least it seems so to me). The gore is startling in a couple of scenes but isn't overpowering. The acting is outrageously over the top but also is endearing.
Thirteen-year-old Fool (Brandon Ames) finds himself in a large suburban house owned by the two slum lords who are about to evict his sick mother and others from a ghetto tenement. He's in the house because he agreed to help two burglars make a score on treasure they heard was hidden there. Unfortunately for Fool (and his two grown-up accomplices), the owners are a brother and sister who call each other Mommy and Daddy. The man (Everett McGill) is a homicidal maniac who goes in for head-to-toe, studded, black leather bondage suits and pump action, single barrel shotguns. His sister (Wendy Robie) is just as looney and just as murderous, a screaming dominatrix. They also have a large vicious dog you wouldn't want to hand feed...that is, unless you had a hand to feed it.
Fool finds hidden in the house a young girl, Alice, who he thinks is the pair's daughter. He also finds a number of boys, stolen when they were children and a few perhaps the product of Mommy and Daddy themselves. They've had their tongues cut off and ears chopped. Seems they were part of Mommy and Daddy's deep need for a perfect child...and when they didn't measure up, off with the tongues so they couldn't shout for help, and down they were put to the basement. They seem to have been fed by Daddy on the butchered parts of unfortunate salesmen and meter readers. It becomes a race for Fool to find a way out, rescue Alice and the people under the stairs, locate the treasure and see that Mommy and Daddy get what's coming to them. And after him is a relentless Daddy, with Mommy urging Daddy on.
What makes this movie work for me are three things. First, the set-up in which the hero is a kid, and the horror is what has happened to other kids. Second, Brandon Adams' performance as Fool. He does an excellent job playing a fast-thinking, brave, resourceful young boy. And last, there is the Grand Guignol performances of Everett McGill and Wendy Robie. They are so over the top, so demented and so murderous that I never know whether to laugh or sit stunned at their doings.
Once the premise is established and the characters are known, the movie does become one long set of narrow escapes through the house, and the house appears to have an infinite number of secret openings, narrow passages, sliding stair cases and slamming doors. Still, the movie works for me.
The DVD's picture is very good; so's the sound.
Movie Review: cool movie
Summary: 4 Stars
Not the masterpeice you feel it could've been, but still a quality horror film from a director who has been shocking audiences for a very long, long time. And think about it- John Carpenter, Dario Argento; it is with sadness that i watch their recent films, for although I enjoy and love many of them, I am conscious of the fact that the movie's influence upon popular cinema- is very limited. Unlike their earlier works... Craven however, he has rejuvinated the horror genre at least three times throughout his career. 1st- Last House on the Left, (just think about all the films that owe credit to this movies release), then in the 80's- A Nightmare on Elm Street (just think...) and then in the 90's with Scream (i dont even need to go into it). People Under the Stairs fits into the middle section of his career, at a time when his works, allthough competent- all seemed to fall short of what they could have been. This film unevenly mixes horror, humour, satire and social commentary in a manner which dosen't really work as a serious film, yet works very well as a horror romp... and for this i am most grateful. Some wonderful, scary ideas, backed by some wonderful design and some insane, wacky performances (Mother and Father are great, a post Twin Peeks Ma and Pa Kettle, who love home-made foods and stringing up carcasses in the basement)... A nice return for Craven, who again indulges in the horrors of the househould after a decade of working in his head and it is here that Craven succeeds best; Under the Stairs, in the last house on the left, in campervan- lost in a dessert where the hills have eyes and in Casey Becker's house as she quizzes for her life in Scream... Don't get me wrong, his other films are great, but it is his comentary of the savagery of family politics that works best and it is this that makes this film shine, even through the smoke...