The People Under The Stairs (1991)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Jeff "

  
  The People Under The Stairs is a drastic change of direction for director Wes Craven. Craven known for some of the most famous films in the genre, crafts a film that is eccentric, bizarre and off the wall. With The People Under The Stairs, he creates a totally different horror film.… More
  The People Under The Stairs is a drastic change of direction for director Wes Craven. Craven known for some of the most famous films in the genre, crafts a film that is eccentric, bizarre and off the wall. With The People Under The Stairs, he creates a totally different horror film. The film, I would say is good, but it doesn't deliver the stunning shocks that Craven has delivered in previous works. Despite the somewhat zany story, Wes Craven manages to pull out a few good jolts out of this unusual horror yarn. The film isn't one Craven's best, but it definitely isn't his worst. The film is marred with mildly effective humor, but at times it falls flat. The People Under The Stairs is still a decent enough horror film, and is fairly creepy for the most part. The talent involved in this film is really what makes this film a must see for Craven fans. Even if The People Under The Stairs isn't Craven's strongest offering, the cast make the film worthwhile viewing. Everett McGill and Wendy Robie, and terrific as the films villains, and they really make this film a must see. Even if it's not perfect, The People Under The Stairs is still a good horror film that Craven fans will most likely enjoy. I really enjoyed the change of direction of this Craven offering, and for the most part, it succeeds at being entertaining, even if it's flawed. But in the end, you have to admire Wes Craven's knack for trying something different. A good horror film with plenty of strange, eccentric moments.

• xGary X

  
  A young boy from the ghetto is trapped inside the house of a pair of ruthless cannibalistic slumlords who keep a group of kidnapped children in their basement. This is Wes Craven's attempt to jump on the ghetto bandwagon with this horror comedy that plays out like The Addams… More
  A young boy from the ghetto is trapped inside the house of a pair of ruthless cannibalistic slumlords who keep a group of kidnapped children in their basement. This is Wes Craven's attempt to jump on the ghetto bandwagon with this horror comedy that plays out like The Addams Family crossed with Home Alone. There's some attempt at social commentary hidden in here somewhere, as a gang of subjugated whiter-than-white people are kept helpless and voiceless under the control of the capitalist elite who drain all the money from a black neighbourhood, but the Scooby Doo script just has a group of kids running around dark corridors in a spooky mansion looking for buried treasure. The likeable cast do their best with what they have to work with but there's no plot, no context and little in the way of thrills. Juvenile in the extreme and mediocre in its execution, it's still far better than most things Craven has done.

• Tim S

  
  This is just classic Wes Craven. The plot may not make a lot of sense, but the execution is phenomenal. His style is written all over it.

• _kelly .

  
  There are some huge flaws in the story and I have to address these before I dig into what's good here. The motivation for entering the house is WEAK - you need rent money so you're going to steal it from your landlords? Poetic justice is nice, but there were too many… More
  There are some huge flaws in the story and I have to address these before I dig into what's good here. The motivation for entering the house is WEAK - you need rent money so you're going to steal it from your landlords? Poetic justice is nice, but there were too many sensible adult characters who could have stepped in and said "hey let's just move". I understand the idea is that this a poor neighborhood ruled by a greedy few, but there are surely other affordable areas in the city. There is still the compelling drive for the main character to save his mother from cancer (they are too poor to afford medical care), but the rent thing is just an excuse to set up the ending where the whole neighborhood gathers to confront the sinister landlords. The oddest non sequitur is Daddy's full leather bondage outfit; why for a people so obsessed with shunning "evil" do they embrace such an obvious symbol of "sexual debauchery"? I don't think it's a comment on the couple's hypocrisy; I think Wes wanted a cool full outfit for the Daddy character and the cheapest option wardrobe could offer was a standard store bought bondage outfit. Anyways, once we get into the house, there is much fun to be had. The setting is very strong and you truly feel trapped inside this house with Fool, our main character. "The People Under the Stairs", it turns out, may also be in the walls, and the evil duo's "good child" Alice understands them and the house in ways her keepers dare not dream of. One thing Wes does really well is set up action moment after action moment by propping a domino set of sequences. For the most part, it is logic propelling the story from one stressful bit to the next, but there are almost as many too convenient moments moving the story along as well. If you want a horror that keeps up the action pacing, this is your movie, but I found it to be tiring in the sense that some scenes felt re-trodden. Fool falls down the trick-staircase that turns into a ramp too many times, Daddy spends more than one sequence tromping about the house in his leather outfit shooting holes in the wall, both Mommy and Daddy walk away from many "should be seriously injured and immobile, if not dead" to keep the hunt going far too many times, but at least the dog running through the crawl spaces and walls bit is ended pretty early. The premise and "secret" of what occupies the basement is wholly intriguing and once revealed, still visually compelling enough for us to still be invested in seeing how things resolve (though I think the reveal comes too early and removes tons of suspense that could have been used to create a creepier film instead of an"ut-oh! watch out!" romp). The "final act" is dragged out into two central climaxes and about 10 mini-climaxes; I think the film could have done with just the one big climax and scrap the whole "going back in" bit. The labyrinthine house is definitely the star here and is used to its full potential.

• ♥˩ƳИИ &

  
  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… More
  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 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..

• Mark H

  
  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… More
  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 fantasy 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,

• Cassandra M

  
  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… More
  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 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 !!

• Red L

  
  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 one… More
  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 one movie.

• Greg S

  
  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… More
  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 tackle the role.

• Stephen M

  
  This movie is actually a lot less interesting than it sounds. It's a comedy-horror fairy tale with a social conscience(!), about a ghetto kid called Fool (Brandon Adams) who, threatened with eviction and saddled with an ailing mother, is coerced into burgling his crazy… More
  This movie is actually a lot less interesting than it sounds. It's a comedy-horror fairy tale with a social conscience(!), about a ghetto kid called Fool (Brandon Adams) who, threatened with eviction and saddled with an ailing mother, is coerced into burgling his crazy landlords' (Everett McGill & Wendy Robie) house. Caught in the act, Fool is hunted for sport - through a network of improbably vast wall cavities and heating ducts - by the couple's hungry Rottweiler and a shotgun-toting, gimp-suited McGill, whereupon he stumbles across a damsel in distress under house arrest and a cellarful of mutilated cannibals(!!!). Although fun for a while, "The People Under the Stairs" soon deteriorates into a tediously repetitive chase movie, the fairy story element of which lacks magic, and whose well-intentioned social pleas - for the redistribution of wealth, better access to healthcare for the poor, the pulling together of communities to battle evil slum-landlords, etc - are often embarrassingly naïve. Spirited performances and the occasional witty line of dialogue save the day. Craven fans may notice that the use of domestic booby traps harks back to "The Last House on the Left" and "A Nightmare on Elm Street".

• Emily A

  
  If your video store clerk is a horror nut, take his advice. It's the only reason I actually ended up seeing this movie. I was a young burgeoning horror fan I remember and this really took be aback. Very screwed up and cool.

• Summer W

  
  This movie is highly underrated, and often misunderstood.

• Drew S

  
  The People Under the Stairs is probably Wes Craven's first legitimately decent movie. He still had a little improvement to do before he hit his magnum opus (Scream), but this movie marks some newfound directorial abilities such as getting good performances out of his actors.… More
  The People Under the Stairs is probably Wes Craven's first legitimately decent movie. He still had a little improvement to do before he hit his magnum opus (Scream), but this movie marks some newfound directorial abilities such as getting good performances out of his actors. There are still some occasional glitches to be seen, like a blatantly obvious goof where a fire poker snaps in two like a twig, and the plot is almost too ridiculous to work. This is no masterpiece, nor is it particularly scary, but it's fun nonetheless. Fluffy black-comedy horror.

• Lafe F

  
  A funhouse of a movie! Each room has different traps, monsters and dangers, and little "Fool" Brandon Quintin Adams must find the treasure and escape. It's a suburban horror adventure. Apparently straight from their married roles on "Twin Peaks", Everett… More
  A funhouse of a movie! Each room has different traps, monsters and dangers, and little "Fool" Brandon Quintin Adams must find the treasure and escape. It's a suburban horror adventure. Apparently straight from their married roles on "Twin Peaks", Everett McGill and Wendy Robie, named simply "Man" and "Woman" in the credits, play a demented couple who rule the household and are the wardens to "The People Under The Stairs". I loved the design of the house. I'm pretty sure it influenced those who made "Saw 2"... There's a great variety of characters lurking in the house, some helpful, some downright deadly. I was amazed at the end of the second act, when "Fool" escapes the house -- he decides that he needs to go back in! This is an absolute classic from Wes Craven; I don't know any other movie like it, except Saw II that is...

• Michael G

  
  Not the greatest of movies, but getting kicked out of the theater was fun.

• Dean M

  
  Great little creepy about a young black boy attempting to save his mother from eviction ends up ensnared in a bizarre asylum run by a murderous pair of landlords.

• Todd S

  
  From Wes Craven comes The People Under The Stairs. A lovely little story about a young man who breaks into his landlords mansion, only to find that he and his wife are crazy. They have a habit of punishing their children, by cutting out the bad parts and holding them prisoner under… More
  From Wes Craven comes The People Under The Stairs. A lovely little story about a young man who breaks into his landlords mansion, only to find that he and his wife are crazy. They have a habit of punishing their children, by cutting out the bad parts and holding them prisoner under the basement stairs. It's a very original story, unfortunately the cast is so bad, that the film becomes more of a farce than a horror film. Brandon Adams plays Fool, the lead, and he is just plain bad. The parents on the other hand were completely hilarious, but I'm not sure it was done on purpose. There are a few funny lines thrown in, but I found them to be hilarious throughout the entire movie. Overall I found the story to be very original, but I just didn't see it as scary, it was more a comedy to me. I didn't get what Craven was going for and therefore I can only say the film was ok.

• Adam M

  
  Ok Wes Craven film from 1991 about a boy who wants to help his povert stricken family from getting evicted from their shitty flat by the rich and mental owners. When he, along with Ving Rhames, investigate the house of the owners they find the house contains some dark secrets. Its not… More
  Ok Wes Craven film from 1991 about a boy who wants to help his povert stricken family from getting evicted from their shitty flat by the rich and mental owners. When he, along with Ving Rhames, investigate the house of the owners they find the house contains some dark secrets. Its not scary or particularly gory, more of a cat-and-mouse horror/thriller that looks pretty dated now but has its moments.

• Marcus W

  
  A film to go into blind so as to get the full effect. Therefore, I'm not going to say anything except that the film veers brilliantly between horror and comedy, is very original, and features a man running around in a gimp suit hunting children with a shotgun. It also has… More
  A film to go into blind so as to get the full effect. Therefore, I'm not going to say anything except that the film veers brilliantly between horror and comedy, is very original, and features a man running around in a gimp suit hunting children with a shotgun. It also has elements of Home Alone.

• Lee K

  
  neet little thriller, that had me yelling at the screen at times i found it somewhat original

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