In desperate need of money to pay the rent, a teenager breaks into his landlord's home, only to discover it booby-trapped and full of 'prisoners' who live within the walls and under the floorboards in this darkly comic horror movie from the mind of Wes Craven. As others have noted, the film is structured as a fairy-tale with the young protagonist taking it upon himself to liberate the prisoners and foil the evil landlord and landlady so that the poor folks in his neighbourhood can survive, yet the film works best when Craven concentrates less on the story and more of the sheer strangeness of the situation. The narrative has quite a few gaps (most strikingly, why the landlord and landlady feed their prisoners, give them flashlights and let them survive) but the absolutely uncanny nature of the story keeps things afloat and this is one of few films equally as funny as it is scary. While much of the humour is very dark, give or take Everett McGill and Wendy Robie's deliberately accentuated performances, there is some highly amusing slapstick humour in the mix such a dog sliding out of the laundry chute like a kid on an amusement park ride! The architecture of the house is also a wonder to be hold with hidden passageways, rigged staircases and electric shock door handles. Whether the film has a lot to say as a satire is debatable, but the central concept works fairly well with the landlord and landlady literally driven insane by their greed and their greed finally reaching such an extent that it leads to their downfall. As mentioned, the film is a fairy-tale of sorts. Imagine 'Hansel and Gretel' meets 'Robin Hood' and you will have half an idea of what to expect, though nothing matches the experience of actually watching this bizarre little gem.
Review of The People Under the Stairs
