Directed by John Carl Buechler
Starring Debrah Farentino, Brian Robbins, Pamela Bellwood, Vince Edwards, Jeffrey Combs and Yvonne De Carlo
It has come to this. The climax of the Halloween 2017 Empire-a-Thon, and it's a movie that I saw for the first time on some long ago Saturday afternoon on WGN of all places ('memba that?). Of course, this was before they combined with UPN to form the current kinda-teen-oriented-but-not-really ultra-hip lineup that they sport now and aired mostly syndicated stuff and old movies. I can't imagine that Cellar Dweller cost more than about 17 bucks to acquire the rights to, so their ineptitude was my gain as a bored 11-year-old.
All these years later, the flick definitely still has its moments. Of course, this movie was in and out of theaters in roughly seven days and sat pretty much undiscovered until Scream Factory rescued it in 2013. Kind of for good reason. Out of all the Empire movies I've seen, this one is probably the one that qualifies as a "slow burn" the most. It has a nice, long build up to the final 20 minutes or so, at which point the shit hits the fan and it suddenly becomes an insane movie. Up until then, it's pretty mundane, including a couple details that admittedly had me laughing out loud. But we'll get to those in due time. Still, you've got Charles Band producing, you've got John Carl Buechler directing (and those of you who have read this whole series of reviews are definitely familiar with his name by now) and doing the awesome creature effects, and you've got Debrah Farentino playing a character that I'm possibly more attracted to than any female I know in real life (/skeevy).
Once again, we get one of those classic Empire prologues that probably goes on for a lot longer than it should. But we have to pad out that 75-minute running time, baby. This one is a real doozy, as comic book artist Colin Childress is busy at work creating his most horrifying creation to date. The guy is meant to be an EC Comics-esque horrormeister, and since he's played by Jeffrey Combs you know that we're about to see some serious shit. He completes his drawing of a huge, furry creature complete with the slightly cliche upside-down pentagram symbol on his chest killing a beautiful woman, and said scene soon plays out immediately behind him before Childress decides to destroy his creation by burning his own drawing, an act that also kills himself in the process because...reasons. I don't know why. But the movie has my attention.
Warp forward thirty years to the present day of 1988 after an amazing credits sequence featuring a whole bunch of horror comic art. Meet your main character, Whitney Taylor, played by the aforementioned Debrah Farentino. Now, I could look her up on IMDB to see what else she has been in, but the only other thing that I've seen her in is the 1993 thriller Malice...and good lord, one of her scenes in that movie got me through some lonely nights. Man, this review is definitely turning out much more lascivious than anticipated. Here, she's years younger, pluckier...and obsessed with the work of Colin Childress and horror comics in general. I think I might be in love. Even better, this means that we are introduced to the setting of this film. Boy, it's something else.
See, Whitney is arriving at a COLLEGE. Said college is located in what looks like a 19th century English cottage in the middle of f**king nowhere, and inside, it's essentially a six-room apartment complex lorded over by the standoffish Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne De Carlo). If college was like this one, I might just go back. Of course, it's totally unbelievable, but it doesn't matter when you've got denizens like the one this one has. In addition to Whitney, there's also a dude who makes abstract finger paintings (seriously), a performance artist who does some truly unique stuff involving stabbing balloons and dolls (seriously), and some older guy who is some kind of actor and part-time private detective (seriously). Oh, and the bitchy girl who once stole a job from Whitney, but she doesn't matter too much. Three guesses as to who's the first one to die.
Well, Whitney eventually finds her way to the same cellar where Colin made all of his horror comic masterpieces. She sets up a pretty sweet studio down there with some help from finger painting guy (for those keeping score, his name is Philip, and he's played by Brian Robbins, one of cinema's truly great "that guy" actors and a man who eventually wound up having a pretty respectable directing career). Taking a cue from the Necronomincon-esque book that Colin left behind, she starts making drawings. The creature comes back to life, and since we're already something like 45 minutes into the movie by this point, it's time for people to start dying. Once it happens, we get some pretty damn cool stuff.
I'm not going to mince words. There are portions of Cellar Dweller that are terminally slow. In particular, a lot of the stuff with the bitchy girl and the private detective guy are moments that you'll probably spend desperately trying to think of other stuff to do. Like, deep clean your refrigerator or dust off your ceiling. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about here. I should also report that after watching a whole bunch of Empire movies in a row, this one had a little bit of a "more of the same" feel. Group of people all together in a small area, established past threat, slow build, occasional kill bits. It was a go-to plot for a small production company putting together short movies on small budgets, but I found myself wondering during this movie if this was really the only thing they could think of.
Fortunately, there's a lot that this film has going for it. You've probably heard me say it to the point of delirium in all of my reviews of Empire and Full Moon movies, but the tone of these films really can't be beat. Yeah, they're dumb. But they're dumb in such an honest way, completely free of pretense that you can't help but be caught in the infectious sense of fun. And then there's all of the stuff you get from John Carl Buechler. Every Empire regular director had their own trademark. Stuart Gordon was known for pure insanity. David Schmoeller did the more serious, heady movies. Ted Nicolaou had an awesome handle on Gothic atmosphere. And Buechler? His forte is amazing hand-made special effects, and you get plenty of them here. The scenes where the creature stalks, kills and eats (yes, eats) his victims aren't exactly scary, but they're fun to look at. It all results in a final act that gives us some pretty kickass awesome stuff. Trust me, guys, stick this one out. Just like every Empire movie, it's worth watching until the very end, no matter how tepid some of the stuff leading up to it might be.
With that, the Halloween Empire-a-Thon is complete and I can resume my regular life. This film isn't exactly a classic, but if you can find the double Blu-Ray with this and Catacombs, it's well worth a buy. *** out of ****.
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