A great mix of horror and dark comedy. (The People Under The Stairs (DVD))

Member Name: Burning_Darkness

Product:	The People Under The Stairs (DVD)
Date:	25/10/09 (35 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Inventive, dark, funny in places, some good SFX

Disadvantages: None

Released back in 1991 and directed by Wes Craven, 'The People Under The Stairs' is about a group of three youths from a poor black ghetto who decide to burgle the house of their rich and uncaring white landlords. The central protagonist is a young boy whom everyone calls "Fool", who is coerced into going along on the robbery by his older brother Spencer and his sister's boyfriend Leroy, played by Ving Rhames.

Things quickly go wrong after they break into the heavily-fortified house however. Spencer goes in first and never comes back, and when the other two go in they quickly discover that the family that live there are utterly disturbed, cannibalistic serial-killers, and Fool quickly finds himself on his own, trying to stay alive in the house whilst pursued by a massive and deadly rottweiler and the head of the household, who runs around in a full leather bondage suit complete with a gimp mask, firing his shotgun at the walls in an attempt to kill Fool as well as Roach, an adopted child who had his tongue cut out but escaped into the walls before he could be killed, and has been living like that ever since.

Meanwhile Fool and Roach have an ally on the inside in the form Alice, but she is utterly under the dominion of her deranged adopted parents, who are in fact brother and sister living out an incestuous life as husband and wife. The labyrinthine house has other zombie-like people living in the cellar, and the film is a great mix of sinister and disturbing horror and over-the-top, evil-dead-style silliness. The performances are solid, the music is great and the film possesses considerable inventiveness and charm, and remains one of Wes Craven's most creative and entertaining films to date.

Summary: A much ovelooked horror film