By JESS BLACK
The sun rises on another bleary-eyed Monday morning. You’ve got to go to work, do the shopping, make sure your dog doesn’t shit in the house again.
But fret not, for monster movies exist and there’s no better way to take the edge off the beginning of the week. I’ll be looking for the most gruesome, fearsome and trashy monster movies to wipe away your Monday morning blues, and today we start with CELLAR DWELLER!
Recently released as a shiny new Blu-ray by the fine folks at Arrow Films, this Empire Pictures classic is as monstrous and “comic-booky” as it gets. With decapitation, naked mauling and Jeffrey Combs being Jeffrey Combs, this one’s really gonna get you outta bed on a Monday.
“It’s dark, it’s gloomy, it’s full of terror… So why can’t people stay out of the cellar?” intones the chilling narrator in the trailer for this 1988 creature feature. And it’s a fair question, as budding comic-book artist Whitney Taylor (Debrah Farentino) is preternaturally obsessed with the cellar in which her art hero, Colin Childress (Combs) burned alive under mysterious circumstances. Inevitably, this goes poorly both for her and the art school that is built atop this dank, accursed hole because there is, indeed, a dweller in the cellar.
And what a dweller! The monster design in this movie is stellar, thanks principally to the legendary John Carl Buechler, who not only directed this flick but made the monster, too. His special effects graced not just this picture but also Friday the 13th Part VII – The New Blood, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and Hatchet among many others.
Having the principal special effects technician double as director pays off big-time, as Buechler knows how best to show off the Satanic star of the show. And he did not hold back when making this freakazoid. Towering, furry, and with a fucking pentagram carved into its chest, it’s a sheer joy to watch this bad boy rip off heads and pull art students into comic pages.
That’s right! This movie is just like that comic book kill in A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child but for the whole running time. Comic book craziness pervades the movie, heightening its campiness and strangeness to a whole new awesome level.
Whether it’s Combs’s horrifying EC-style art coming to life (we just know he’s to blame for the Comics Code Authority!) or Farentino’s Whitney seeing her friends murdered on the pages in front of her, Buechler makes sure that the comic book core of the flick does is not forgotten. I should also stress that this movie is highly odd, even for an ’80s Empire Picture film. In one memorable moment, the house fills with terrified shrieks – only for us to discover it’s just an art student releasing her stress in a new-age kinda way. Odd.
We have another fake-out scare when what appears to be a gunman runs in and everyone starts screaming – and then it turns out this was just an immersive piece of theatre staged for our hero’s benefit. Odd.
And as we approach the finale, we get the shot we never knew we needed: Satanic, furry monster beast wearing a headmistress’s clothes. Also odd.
Still, it’s oddities like these that keep you watching when the monster is away and the art gets a little heavy.
So, there we have it – an odd and bloody monster movie that I guarantee will make you forget it’s Monday for an hour and seventeen minutes. After that? Guess you’ll just have to pick up some old EC comics and find your own cellar dweller.
Until next time, have a monstrous Monday.
