The Refrigerator

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.

Geeez! Not nearly a quarter of the fun the title promises this movie to be. A refrigerator is terrorizing a couple who just moved into an apartment. Is the damn thing possessed? Is it just a freezing fridge-monster killing people? I have no idea... No explanation, no story, no gore... Just silly nonsense (and some occasional cheesiness that might have you cracking a smile or sigh deeply) in a flick that takes itself way too serious for whichever reasons I can't imagine. I mean, its title is "The Refrigerator" and it's a horror movie. What went wrong? I secretively was hoping this could just be as much fun as "The Slime" (AKA "Slime City"). Sadly, it's not. As soon as I figured that out, I started wondering if this was going to be a profound piece of art cinema filled with philosophical ponderings about frozen meat & vegetables and uplifted by loving musings at a temperature below zero. I think I just saw the wrong movie. Or something got lost in translation. Whatever.

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.

lol.. i saw this movie 8 or 9 years back, and! i still feel obligated to give it a comment.

This is a movie for example when you sit down with friends this movie suddenly runs up in conversation.I personal don't remember much but i do laughed allot, the characters are all first class "beasty boys". And i remember a scene when huge arms came out of the refrigerator and grab someone haha totally wacko.

I'm thinking of renting it again :-)

According to the quoted line on the cover of the VHS-box, The New York Post claimed this film is a nearly perfect and extremely tense amalgamation of "Poltergeist", "The Amityville Horror" and "Rosemary's Baby"…. What the hell? And that's an actual newspaper that said this? "The Refrigerator" isn't the worst 90's horror film out there, but it's VERY silly, totally incompetent and extremely cheap. The premise is retarded and seems to come straight from the over-imaginative mind of a flipping Marihuana-junkie. Dig this: a young couple (he strangely resembles Jerry Seinfeld and she looks a little like Heather Graham) invests their money in the crappiest apartment of the most pauperized New York ghetto area. The building's owner may very well be Satan himself and the fridge in the kitchen is actually a direct doorway to hell! Pretty soon after they moved in, the cooling device from hell causes Steve to hallucinate (he wakes up screaming he's the waffle maker, and similar crazy things) and begins to terrorize Eileen. The fridge then starts to kill random visitors and Eileen teams up with the flamenco-dancing janitor to defeat it. "The Refrigerator" features absolutely no horrific atmosphere of tension, but it's still warmly recommended to fans of cheesy & nonsensical 80-90's horror. Quite logically, if you spot a movie with this title, you know not to anticipate brilliantly written dialogs or intelligent plot twists. You get a couple of ridiculous situations, grotesque make-up effects and demented characters. Especially the climax is a total laugh riot. Preferably a movie to watch when there's beer and friends around.