4/28/2007

It’s a Svengoolie night tonight- and a modern favorite from Universal. I remember that people back in our offices, when I started screening this one, got very excited that it would be appearing on Svengoolie- it’s “the People Under the Stairs!” This Wes Craven flick is a great mix of the bizarre and black comedy- as a young boy from the ghetto, whose mother is sick, too poor to afford the operation that could make her well- AND behind in the rent to an unscrupulous landlord- is enlisted in a scheme to rob the landlord’s house, where there is supposedly a fortune in gold coins! Little are our Robin Hoods from the hood aware that the house is a huge trap- and that the landlord’s family is crazy- and deadly! The boy finds himself trapped in the house, where the basement holds strange misshapen freaks, and the walls hold skittering beings- while upstairs, the man and woman of the house keep a young woman a captive who never gets outside! The battle against the landlord duo, the quest to escape, and The discovery of just WHO the people under the stairs are, make for another modern horror classic from Craven. The story is that Wes Craven decided to write the film after seeing a legitimate news story about some parents who decided to lock their offspring up inside of their house- and never allowed them to go outside! He never mentioned if the real-life couple had the same reasoning as the people in his story. You get some people in this film that you’d hear much more from in the future- and that includes Ving Rhames, as Leroy, the guy who puts together the plan to invade the landlord’s sanctuary. Another guy who’ll look very familiar is Sean Whalen, who portrays Roach- you’ll recognize him from scads of bit parts in television shows and movies- but he’s most recognizable from a fairly recent milk commercial- where he’s a guy working in a history museum who hears a radio contest where he can win if he identifies who shot Alexander Hamilton in a very famous duel. However, since he’s got a mouthful of peanut butter- but he doesn’t “got milk”- he can’t be understood as he tries to say “Aaron Burr.” He’ll soon be appearing in the about-to-be-released “Delta Farce” movie- about some national Guardsmen who are accidentally dropped off in Mexico, but think it’s Iraq. I would guess that hilarity ensues. Hilarity, horror, and more will ensue tonight on Svengoolie with “People Under the Stairs!” And- be ready for NEXT week- for the one-time-only airing of one of the ultimate original classic Universal horror films!