AJ Langer, Brandon Adams, Brandon Quintin Adams

A bookish and poverty-stricken young boy becomes involved in a scheme in order to pay for his mother's operation but is met with unsuspecting horrors.

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62% liked it

39,307 ratings

Critics

69% liked it

13 critics

R, 1 hr. 42 min.

Directed by: Wes Craven

Release Date: November 1, 1991

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DVD Release Date: October 7, 2003

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Flixster Reviews (1,540)


  • November 3, 2009
    Entertainingly campy horror film is the story of a boy who stumbles upon a group of strange people that have been locked away in the basement of an old house. Shlocky movie effectively blends comedy with scares for an uneven story. Director Wes Craven combines some compelling f...( read more)antasy elements with a socially minded story about child abuse for a bizarre tale that is captivating. Actors Everett McGill and Wendy Robie are enjoyably over-the-top as the Robesons, the cruelest parents/landlords ever,
  • May 25, 2009
    Fool is a ghetto kid about to evicted who decides to break into the house of the greedy landlords and steal enough to pay the rent. Big mistake - the landlords turn out to be a loony-toon brother-and-sister act who live in a labyrinthine mansion and literally eat little boys for ...( read more)breakfast. Can Fool get out alive, rescue the imprisoned Alice and save his neighbourhood from the bulldozers ? This is a terrific film, one of Craven's best, and one of a handful of great little horror movies made in the late eighties / early nineties by Shep Gordon's Alive Films company. It works wonderfully on several different levels; it's basically a great horror-adventure film with lots of action and scares, but it's also a weird culture-clash drama, a mythic adventure with a princess to be freed and golden treasure at the end, and even a lefty citizens' rights story. It's gloriously all over the place. The cast are excellent, especially young Adams, who holds the movie squarely on his small shoulders, and McGill and Robie (who played husband and wife on the TV show Twin Peaks) as the thoroughly psychotic Mom and Dad. A great visceral movie with lots of horrible moments - Adams battles with the vicious rottweiler, McGill gleefully chewing bits of Rhames' corpse, the ominous piles of dead flies in the kitchen. The art direction is tremendous; the gigantic, gruesome Bad Place of a house is horrifically cavernous and foreboding, crammed full of crawlspaces, archaic plumbing, ghoulish brickdust and crumbling plasterboard. Full of intriguing ideas and sociological riffs (gun culture, S&M tendencies, incest, racism, class exploitation), this is a movie bursting at the seams with cinematic creativity. Brilliantly written and directed by Craven, this is a fine example of the rare breed of multi-layered movie I adore which is automatically derided by snooty film critics who want to keep entertaining films and intelligent films mutually exclusive - may they burn in hell !!
  • May 9, 2009
    A horror movie. The bad guys are crazy and keeps kids prisoner and kill others to feed to the prisoners. It is an average movie. Full of inconsistencies. The people under the stairs cannot get out after being there for years, but our hero, Fool, figures it out in the space of...( read more) one movie.
  • December 24, 2008
    A good-hearted ghetto youth nicknamed "Fool" is dragged along to a burglary inside a mazelike house of psychosis and horror. Interesting but uneven update on the haunted house theme; the attempts at black comedy are often mood-breakers, and the young lead isn't quite ready to ta...( read more)ckle the role.
  • December 10, 2008
    This movie really freaks me out. Sure it has some gore, sure it has some corny moments, but the psychosis of the family is realistic enough to be scary. Besides - it stars AJ Langer!
  • November 22, 2009
    This movie is an absolute CRACK UP lol.
    I was brought up with this movie, because it was a movie my Father enjoyed lol.
    But, I have been in love with this movie since I can remember. Shame I can't find it anywhere. Kinda GRINDS MY GEARS ffs
  • November 4, 2009
    This movie scared me when I was younger, and is still excellent when I watch from time to time now. The people living in the house were just plain creepy wow. The ending was good too when Fool bluffs the leather dude(I wont spoil it for you peeps who aint seen it). It came out in...( read more) 1991, if you missed it then ya need to watch it now!!!
  • October 26, 2009
    A near perfect Wes Craven movie. Next to Deadly Friend, Elm Street and Last House on the Left, this is my favorite. It reminds me of Home Alone for adults meets Tales from the Hood. There is a lot of humor and horror but a good balance of both. The movie never lets up and keeps y...( read more)ou entertained the whole time.
  • October 26, 2009
    "Because sometimes in is out"
  • October 16, 2009
    This here falls under the category of "subtextual horror". Basically it's about the oppression of the poor black man by the white man. This and some interesting imagery give the movie all it's steam. It becomes repetitive quite often with some pretty standard horror/thriller stuf...( read more)f, but it at least has those 20 minutes worth of interesting content. And that's better than what I can say for a lot of movies.

Critic Reviews


June 3, 2005
Nick Schager, Lessons of Darkness

Perhaps the most staggeringly incompetent movie in the director's uneven canon. full review

View more The People Under The Stairs reviews at RottenTomatoes.com

Comments


  • XXXXGoodbyeXXXXX
    December 5, 2007
    This movie is awesome scared the idk out of i cant even go uptstairs without checkin under them.....
  • Aritosgold
    November 21, 2007
    This movie rules^^

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The People Under The Stairs Trivia


  • In what Wes Craven movie does a brother and sister married couple, have a son named roach who lives in the walls?  Answer »
  • A boy who lives in the walls that had his tongue cut off helps out a character named "Fool".  Answer »
  • In "The People Under the Stairs," what is the name of the stolen kid that helps the main characters?  Answer »
  • In this film, a not-so-nice fatherly figure gets what he deserves when he accidentally slays his beloved Rottweiler:  Answer »

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