The Cellar

This isn't a bad movie. It's a little slow, but it has a good plot. It's about some evil creature which is resurrected by a young boy. If you're bored, and want to see something different, this movie is for you.

In THE CELLAR, a boy finds a monster / demon living in the cellar of his dad's new house. It seems that the local natives put a curse on the land many moons ago. Of course, no one believes junior, even when people start vanishing.

The story is clunky, the characters are rather lifeless, and the monster is only shown for about 30 seconds. Still, the creature is just cheeeze-tacular enough to make the rest endurable.

If you enjoy the schlocky horror of the 1980's, then this is a must-see...

The Cellar opens with a load of mystical native American hogwash about evil Commanche spirits that wait to punish the white man. The ancient Indian curse is a lazy plot device that, once established, allows a film-maker to chuck a load of supernatural nonsense on screen with little need for logic or narrative cohesion: occasionally it works (Tobe Hooper's Poltergeist, which benefitted from a decent cast, a big budget, and Spielberg's guiding hand); mostly it doesn't, The Cellar being a prime example.

In Kevin Tenney's film, a savage creature conjured up by a powerful medicine man lurks in the cellar of an old house. The new owners, the Cashen family, are blissfully unaware of the monster that comes with their home, but youngster Willy (Chris Miller) realises the danger when he catches sight of it trying to come up through his bedroom floor. Willy's father Mance (Patrick Kilpatrick) doesn't believe his son's story, so it is up to Willy to try and kill the creature before it eats him, his dad, step-mom Emily (Suzanne Savoy), and baby sister April (Ryan and Anthony Childs).

The pacing of this film is awful: a very dull fifty minutes or so pass before we get a brief glimpse of the creature, when Willy manages to maim the thing in one of his bear traps. Now you might be asking yourself what a young lad is doing messing around with potentially lethal steel traps unsupervised, but that's just the tip of the iceberg. Mance worries about whether his son really loves him: perhaps that's because he doesn't pay him enough attention, which is how the boy is able to make a home-made flame-thrower, give his baby sister a rabbit's foot necklace (a choking hazard if I ever saw one), rig up a high-voltage booby trap in the cellar, and steal sticks of dynamite and detonators to make some bombs -all without being noticed.

As if being totally oblivious to his child's numerous dangerous activities wasn't bad enough, Mance continues to not believe the kid about the monster, eventually losing his temper with the lad and locking him in the living room with the door to the cellar nailed open. Fortunately, Emily breaks open the door just in time to see the creature, at which point Mance realises his mistake and plays the hero. Someone give the guy a 'Father of the Year' award! The final battle with the creature is actually a lot of fun, even though the monster effects are a bit on the rubbery side, and the film ends with a nice big explosion, which is cool.

Actually, scratch that: the film ends with some more nonsensical mumbo jumbo about Native American wind spirits and other mystical guff, which isn't cool.

3.5/10, rounded up to 4 for IMDb.

Ther Cellar isn't brilliant but it does have its good points. It starts off very slowly and for the most part of the first half, it's boring. Things start looking up in the second half though, as we are introduced to the monster. The cellar setting is very effective, as are the tunnels where the monster lives. There is a suspenseful scene close to the end where the father locks his son in the kitchen to prove that "there's no monster". Of course, the monster comes out to attack the boy.

I wouldn't urge anyone to seek this out, but fans of cheap 80's horror might want to add it to their collection.

So the film was an okay B-budget horror movie, not one of the best from the 80s but certainly not one of the worst. However, the main reason for me writing my first ever review on imdb is because an error needs to be corrected. The young actor that plays the character of the little boy Willy is listed on imdb as Chris Miller, born in 1968, the guy who does voice performances and directs such animated films as Shrek and The Penguins of Madagascar. In actual fact Willy is played by Chris J. Miller who was born in 1983, a child actor. The fact that this error has been made is really quite unforgivable considering that if it was the Chris Miller listed on imdb he would have been 21 yeaes of age when he appeared in this film, the character of Willy is quite clearly not 21!