The People Under The Stairs
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Movie Reviews of The People Under The Stairs
Movie Review: DVD Please!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is probably (along Serpent and the Rainbow and NOES) one of Craven's finest horror films. I can't figure out why the pointless and turgid "Last House on the Left" is on DVD with extras while this isn't! Where's the dvd guys!?Movie Review: Weird/campy/funny horror tale
Summary: 4 Stars
This film was written and directed by master horror director Wes Craven. In it Dexter, who friends call Fool, lives in poverty, with his sick mother. A few of his older "friends" tell him the only way they can get some money is to steal it. So he goes with them to a house of two rich people who own all the homes in the ghetto where Dexter lives. But when they arrive they find out how sick these two are. The house has a full lock and electrical system to trap them inside. There have been dozens of people trapped inside for a long time. They are kept under the stairs. Can Dexter survive, and save the young girl Alice, as well as the people under the stairs? This film reminds me a lot of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as how people come to a house, only to be met by a crazy murderous family. While Texas is more serious, and scarier, this film is very campy, and has a lot of funny moments. Wes Craven surely knows how to direct a horror film, as he does here. If your a fan of horror, or camp, I'd recommend this. You should definitely watch with friends, as you will be laughing a lot. To most other people, who are annoyed by B movies, don't watch this. 4 stars because the direction is great, and there are a lot of funny moments, as a lot of the stuff in this film is kinda unrealistic.
Movie Review: The best Wes Craven film, still with no DVD... in the U.S.
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the last film Wes Craven made before he went on his pitiful and too unpersonal "Scream" series. And miracle, this is also his best film, and one of his most personal! It's a fine and hard mixing of the most repulsive 'gore' images we can see on the screen, and the funniest humor we can hear. And it's also a social and racial pamphlet.Like in "The last House on the Left" or "Hills have Eyes", Craven describes a family of degenerate people, actually a white couple who get rich by using the misery of the L.A. black ghetto, who steal babies (the movie could have been titled "Baby Snatchers") and feed themselves and also their ferocious dog with human flesh. If I add that the 'couple' is actually a brother and his sister, the last ones of a generation of definitely insane folks, then you'll see better what I'm talking about. About to be evicted with his mother and sister, a young black boy from the ghetto (Brandon Quintin Adams, seen before in "Moonwalker" with Michael Jackson) gets in their big house, looking for gold coins, and soon gets trapped in what is to be a real fortress and hell. Unceasingly chased by the crazy, savage man of the house, in his leather suit, he manages to escape thanks to the help of two kids among those who were kidnapped (especially a young, still fresh girl). But he'll come back to rescue her and all the others rotting under the stairs, along with a real treasure... millions of dollars, taken from the ghetto.
For the first - and last? - time, Craven includes a social message in a personal work and this makes this movie much better and interesting to the others. This exercise is perfectly conducted from the beginning to the ending, the humor never misses, neither does the horror. Once again, the mixing is very successful. The artistic result is a total success, along with the casting, including the powerful and too rare Everett McGill ("Quest for Fire"), hilarious as the nutcase among all - BURN IN HELL! -, Ving Rhames, two years before "Pulp Fiction", and Alice J. Langer - as Alice -, the main actress in John Carpenter's "Escape from L.A.", four years later - remember, she's the President's rebel daughter. With "The People under the Stairs", we're not very far from a real masterpiece.
Fellows, if you want the DVD, come to Paris...
Movie Review: Ed and Nadine?
Summary: 5 Stars
Like everybody says, it's occasionally scary, but what makes People Under the Stairs stand out from other horror films of the late 80's and early 90's (a time at which horror movies were pretty low creatively) is the humor. Bleak humor, yes, but funny nonetheless.As a quick sidenote... few people remember this (or even knew it in the first place), but the casting of the movie itself was somewhat of an "in" joke at the time... the man and woman who play the parents (who, to the best of my memory, don't even have names) also played husband & wife Ed and Nadine Hurley on David Lynch's "Twin Peaks," which aired around the same time this movie was released.
So yeah. If you like to laugh at your horror movies (and not because they're bad... because they're genuinely funny), or if you'd just like to see what Ed and Nadine were up to behind closed doors, check this movie out. Although, don't buy it from Amazon. Just go rent it. Cuz if I can get away with Amazon letting me publish that... that'd be cooler than Ed Hurley in S&M gear.
Movie Review: Fast-paced horror entertainment.
Summary: 4 Stars
Brandon Adams is a child living on the slums who's trapped inside his evil landlords' house. Superior horror/thriller plays somewhat as a mix of satire and fairy tale, and it's also one of Wes Craven's best films, complete with lots of fast-paced thrills, suspense, and even some laughs. The house itself, an elaborate maze of traps and secret hallways, is an intregal part of the movie's success. A couple of silly moments and weak slapstick humor are the movie's only real cons.