The People Under the Stairs (1991)

Tagline: In every neighborhood there is one house that adults whisper about and children cross the street to avoid. Now Wes Craven, creator of A Nightmare on Elm Street, takes you inside…

Curiosity: Edgar Wright said it was good.

Plot: Fool (Brandon Adams, The Mighty Ducks) is sick of The Man (Everett McGill) holding down his people. Spurred on by his sister’s friend Leroy (Ving Rhames), the two decide to break into his house and steal enough money to pay for his mother’s much needed operation. But it turns out The Man is one freaky deaky dude, as Fool and Leroy uncover a house filled with traps, dead ends… and incestuous cannibals.

Also this represents the Reagan Administration.

Thoughts: The People Under the Stairs is a weird, weird movie. It’s hilariously dated, saturated in its early ’90s-ness by hip-hop, acid-washed jeans, and nauseatingly bright shirts. But here’s the thing: All of these slick signifiers actually boost the film’s surreal elements. The idea of a kid getting trapped in a house with cannibals is already strange; the outfits just up the ante.

People’s horror elements intrigue me. It came out after the crackdown on gore, so it’s surprisingly light on blood save for one scene. But this just makes Craven drive the characters towards a higher level of insanity. The Man and The Woman (Wendy Robie), who are never named, spend a lot of time screaming, dressing up in leather gimp outfits, and just generally acting crazed. While some aspects of the movie feel underdeveloped (the title characters don’t really factor in that much), The People Under the Stairs is still a bizarre romp. What’s truly bizarre about it is that it came out well before the Fritzl case, in which a man actually did keep his daughter and several of his incest-born children locked underground. Like I said, it’s a weird, weird movie.

Reflection: While I’m a little cool to the Reagan symbolism, I did enjoy the trickle down economics of the ending.