The Refrigerator

Young married couple Steve and Eileen Bateman (Dave Simonds and Julia McNeal) move from Ohio to New York City, where they rent an apartment that comes complete with appliances, which sounds good, except that the refrigerator turns out to be possessed and is a portal to Hell.

A film about a fridge that eats people needs to be seriously schlocky and over-the-top, preferably with tons of gore, but The Refrigerator rarely hits the mark: it's weird, for sure, with bizarre performances and random moments of strangeness, but it's also rather boring and uneventful for the most part. Most of the time, all we see is a coloured light emanating from the appliance's interior, and brief shots of people disappearing behind the fridge door.

The film only comes close to the levels of lunacy required in the final act: a man has his leg bitten off by a waste paper bin and his face is mutilated by the blades of a table fan. This unexpected late-in-the-day spot of gore only serves to highlight just how uninspired and lacklustre the rest of the film is. 3/10.

Low-budget cult films like this keep me alive! The acting is awful and so is the directing, but The Refrigerator is just such a hillarious killing machine. It just moves and grabs someone. This film was so funny and just plain wonderful. Ranks up there with one of the surefire cult classics. If this isn't a cult classic, I don't know what is. Try to find this film on video. If you can ever find it, buy it because it's rare and hard to find and A MUST HAVE for anyone serious interested in the horror genre. I found it for $2.00 in some mom and pop store in New Jersey, and I watch it every now and then. You'll get more then one or two chuckles! ***1/2out of****With writing that's so bad, it's good!

THE REFRIGERATOR is one of the more cleverly original ideas for a campy horror flick and is pretty much played for laughs. While a bit slow moving at times, this is a must see for all fans of the slapstick comedy/horror sub-genre. If you're a fan of any of the following, then this movie is for you: EVIL DEAD II, STREET TRASH, BASKET CASE, BASKET CASE II, BASKET CASE III, DEAD ALIVE, MEET THE FEEBLES, RABID GRANNIES, or any of Troma's better known releases. If you can imagine an large, evil appliance which is somehow alive, a ghost-in-the-machine device which when opened, has all the ooze and spew of a Peter Jackson special effect, then you have the basic concept of THE REFRIGERATOR, in which machines terrorizes a young NYC housewife. For a low budget flick, this one is very well made, with excellent special effects (though mediocre acting). Highly recommended if you're looking for something a bit different.

Much more entertaining then it probably had any right to be, a couple of newlyweds move into a new apartment with... you guessed it, a killer refrigerator. The wife seems to have some issues with some incident involving her mother and a knife in the past, whilst the husband is increasingly seduced by the refrigerator into insanity. Neither plot angles are resolved or explained, but most funny of all is moustached plumber Juan who is dressed in chains and leather (even doing an exotic dance at one point), something of a hero though there is no climax for him to have done anything heroic, and the whole racial stereotyping of the Latino community living around the slum block of flats who are in constant contention with the husband who is typical 80's white go getter ego. This film has depth! There is absolutely no explanation to the motives of the refrigerator as far as I could tell, and the imposing, nightmarish focus on it is extremely campy. It's a fun watch, but it is a truly abysmal movie.

Imagine you rent an apartment and the landlord neglects to tell you that the fridge is possessed and the gateway to hell. Okay, it sounds really bad but make no mistake, this low budget masterpiece is the business. The delivery is sometimes stilted, the characters are a little two dimensional and the script is over the top in places, but gloriously so. Jacob's direction is spot on, great camera work, smart lighting, good atmosphere and more than a few laughs to be had. plus: not since Brazil and House 2 have the plumbers/handymen of the world had such a hero to call their own, even if you hate schlocky horror films, watch this one for Angel Caban's impossibly smooth Juan, a hispanic Chow Yun Fat.