The People Under The Stairs

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The People Under The Stairs

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The People Under The Stairs

AJ Langer, Brandon Adams, Brandon Quintin Adams, Everett McGill, Jeremy Roberts, Joshua Cox, Sean Whalen, Ving Rhames, Wendy Robie

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.

Id: 10902845

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The People Under The Stairs Recent Reviews
  • hobster1
    November 3, 2009
    hobster1
    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,
  • stopitgoaway
    May 25, 2009
    stopitgoaway
    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 !!
  • Redlats
    May 9, 2009
    Redlats
    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.
  • 366weirdmovies
    December 24, 2008
    366weirdmovies
    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.
  • lyndsiekivell
    December 10, 2008
    lyndsiekivell
    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!
  • OoHSoAmaZiNg
    December 9, 2009
    OoHSoAmaZiNg
    use to love this movie when i was a kid! stil love it as an adult! but funnier now!
  • 77FallenAngel77
    December 6, 2009
    77FallenAngel77
    definitely wanna see it
  • LYNNWOODS04
    November 27, 2009
    LYNNWOODS04
    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.
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    This was my ...( read more)favorite scary movie when I was younger. Loved it so much I bought on DVD. I have seen it so many times I can't count. Love the story line, the creepiness of the characters. The two creepers are a couple who are brother and sister who want children but can not have children and so they kidnap them. But the catch is, when the children misbehave and become imperfect, the couple locks them underneath the stairs and goes on the hunt for other children. The children start piling up underneath the stairs. It's directed by one of the greats (in my opinion) Wes Craven. So you have to see it just for that fact alone. LOL.
    There is a mixture of scary moments, some gore, comedy, and a little bit of cannibalism, oh, and sprinkled with a little bit of incest. LOL..
  • dethklok009
    November 22, 2009
    dethklok009
    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
  • onyxchris
    November 4, 2009
    onyxchris
    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!!!
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