Oh, it’s a fairy tale. Well it’s a pretty fucked up one.
Since I was a child The People Under the Stairs has been one of those films that has lived in the very back of my subconscious. In all my years watching motion pictures (both talkies and silent) I had never seen it. It lived as an unnerving memory of walking through video shops as a child and venturing into the horror section where the artwork alone would instigate sleepless nights (Street Trash, Body Parts and The Serpent and The Rainbow were also memorable ones). With a demonic looking skull sitting over a foreboding house coupled with THAT title I could only imagine what unspeakably fucked up things lay within. Over time it became a near mythical entity in my mind. Having never seen it or ever really reading up on it to get a sense what it was actually about it remained this freakish sounding oddity to me.
So having received a copy of the new DVD release to review I was a little excited/nervous.
Unexpectedly the star of the film is that kid what was in Moonwalker and he’s called Fool, fantastic. What’s this here’s Ving Rhames looking like he’s walked out of a Tribe Called Quest video, spellbinding. Some stuff happens about evictions, sick mothers and then they rob a fancy house owned by Ed and his one-eyed wife from Twin Peaks. Whilst inside they end up being terrorized by a scary dog so Fool makes a run for it into the basement UNDER THE STAIRS. There he sees zombie-like people haunting the darkness, he is saved by a mumbling young man called Roach before getting back to ground level. Back upstairs there some hilarity as Tribe Called Quest Rhames is bitten by a dog and Moonwalker Fool grabs onto an electrified door handle to conduct a shock to subdue the dog. It’s as amazing as it sounds. Sadly then Ed from Twin Peaks kills Q-Rhames and Fool is left running around the seemingly massive house trying to escape. He comes across the fair young girl Alice who is being kept under lock and key by her evil parents. Oh yeah and she’s physically and mentally abused by the them. Whilst Fool and Alice become acquainted Ed walks around the house blithely firing a shotgun into the walls to kill Roach, all the while wearing a gimp suit (for a reason that’s never explained).
Needless to say that The People Under the Stairs is not the film I was expecting. Firstly it’s a comedy horror. The characters of Man & Woman (played by Twin Peak’s Everett McGill and Wendy Robie) tread a fine line between menacing and absurd. One moment gurning like fools, the next committing violent acts. In fact the whole film treads a fine line between a children’s fairytale and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s a mix that sometimes doesn’t quite work. There are scenes in this films of quite disturbing child abuse – particular a scene in which the Woman throws Alice into a boiling hot bath to scrub her clean of blood whilst they both scream. It feels as though it’s there to show the young maiden in distress but it’s just child abuse. Like I already mentioned one minute we’ve got the Man falling down like an idiot and making a funny face like a comical villain, the next he’s stringing corpses up and eviscerating them whilst eating their inards. Yes they are supposed to be monsters. Yes this is essentially a Brothers Grimm story set in the modern day but something seems off about it.
That being said it’s not a bad film and is enjoyable in places, there’s a bit of gore if you like that. Played a bit more straight it could have been a genuinely disturbing classic but so much is played for laughs that it becomes an uneasy experience for the wrong reasons. This was a time when Wes Craven may have been better served going back to the well of horror that spawned The Last House on the Left. Oh yeah and after all the terrifying scenes the film bestows on us we are given a jolly rap tune that sounds like MC Hammer’s The Addams Rap over the end credits.
In someways I kind of wish I had left The People Under the Stairs as the spooky un-seen film in the back of my mind.
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