CellarDweller

Cellar Dweller (1988)

This one starts off with a bang. You have a cartoonist Colin Childress played by genre actor Jeffrey Combs. He draws horror comics and as the movie opens one of his creations comes to life with the help of a spell book. Some terrible things happen and then the movie moves to the “present day” (that being 1988!). The artist’s house has become a school of sorts for artistic people to explore their talents. A new artist, a young woman, who is a fan of Childress, comes to the home to work on her own art. Unfortunately she ends up discovering the same book and unknowingly unleashes the beast on the house. The bodies pile up as she eventually figures out what is going on and tries to stop the beast.

This is one of those movies that immediately reminded me of growing up in the ‘80s. Not only because of the hair, clothes, and music, but also it just has that unique made for the video market vibe to it. This is an Empire Pictures flick, so it has the Charles Band feel right away. What do I mean by that you might ask? Well you get a cheesy looking rubber suited monster with some nudity in the first 5 or 10 minutes. Then after introducing the new set of victims we get more of the same, along with some fun kills. It didn’t take much to keep genre fans entertained in the ‘80s and Band knew how to deliver the goods. The movie is also fairly short, clocking in at just less than 80 minutes. It really doesn’t waste much time and is paced pretty well.

Cellar Dweller has a solid cast that does a good job. You have Yvonne De Carlo as the older woman who runs the house, and T.V. “star” Brian Robbins as the young brash artist Phillip. The rest are definite “B” actors, but all do pretty well in their roles. The best actor in the movie is Jeffrey Combs, but after chewing the scenery up for the first few minutes he never reappears. I was kind of bummed by this. I figured that after starring in Re-animator for Empire just a couple of years earlier they would have used him more. Guess not.

The effects in Cellar Dweller are decent. I mean this wasn’t a big budget feature here, so the creature looks kind of silly and you never really get to see all of it. This sort of hurts the kills, which all seem a bit tame. That is of course except for a really nifty bit with a severed head that I enjoyed (my wife always cringes when I say things like that…). But when it comes to practical effects I have a bit of a sliding scale when I know that a movie had a low budget. For what they had to work with, I think it turned out pretty well.

I get the distinct feeling that director John Carl Buechler knew exactly the kind of movie he was making and created a tightly paced, by the numbers horror movie that follows the formula of beast, boobs, and blood. While not terribly original it is worth checking out.

2 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer