The People Under the Stairs

When people think of Wes Craven and the wonderful horror movies he has created, they usually think of the Scream trilogy or the A Nightmare on Elm Street series. Occasionally some even mention The Last House on the Left, but rarely do people recall The People Under the Stairs, which always surprises me, because I feel it is one of his all time best movies, one that is ten times better than the Nightmare series and almost as disturbing as The Last House on the Left.

I first saw The People Under the Stairs in 1998 during my freshman year in high school (the same year that I discovered how scary the first two Friday the 13^th movies were) during winter break just after Christmas. I remember the day vividly. Christmas had come and gone and my brother and I were enjoying our gifts, him the new Zelda game for Nintendo 64, me some new Odyssey short irons (this was back when I played a lot of golf, before finally realizing the game was just too expensive). That night, once the golf clubs were put away and my brother had given up on Zelda for a few hours, I went into the basement family room and turned on the TV, my mind realizing that Joe Bob Briggs was probably hosting his Monstervision show since it was Saturday evening (at this point I wasn't a regular viewer of the show, but that was all about the change). Monstervision was on and Job Bob Briggs was hosting a movie I had never seen before, one that featured a young kid inside a house that seemed booby trapped, which was a situation that had me instantly hooked.

The movie has a simple premise, a young kid from the slums of a major city (probably Los Angeles, but one never really knows for sure with this film) agrees to help his sister's boyfriend break into a house and steal gold coins, which would help his family stay in their apartment and help his mother have a routine operation that would save her life, but which they can't afford. However, the house they break into isn't what it seems. In fact, it is a fortress that the crazy family has built, one which keeps all the kids they have acquired over time locked inside, one of whom the father is hunting with a shotgun because he escaped the basement dungeon and is living in the walls, which is why the house is booby trapped. Once inside the kid and his companions realize they are stuck and eventually the man the kid is helping is shot dead. The kid, however, with the help of the family's innocent daughter, escapes into the walls where he desperately tries to find a way out of the house.

Over time I have convinced many people to sit down and watch this movie and every single person I show it to thinks it is really good, yet none of them had ever heard of it before. I don't know why this is. The movie is fast, fun, and scary, and the characters are people you can identify with and want to succeed. It is the type of story I really enjoy, one which is certainly plausible and could be happening at this very moment, which may be why this movie didn't do well. It is too real. The themes are those we deal with everyday and hear about on the news all the time: poverty, murder and child abuse, not to mention one other disturbing theme that I won't reveal because it is quite a twist in the movie. So, if you are in the mood for something scary that has a good storyline and will keep you guessing until the very end, go grab a copy of The People Under the Stairs. You won't be disappointed.