Wes Craven’s The People Under The Stairs

• 31st Mar 2011

With its impressive and imposing video cover artwork – a human skull looming over a dark house – this is Craven’s twisted love letter to spooky fairytales. It almost has a Brothers Grimm vibe and is possibly something they might have churned out had they been around now. It’s essentially a dark children’s fairytale, except for adults. This creepy haunted house tale is a vastly underrated little gem from Craven’s back-catalogue. Deliciously twisted, this feels like a modern day fable complete with evil step-parents, a – more modern – ginger bread house and a hero proving his worth as a young adult.

It certainly has all of the hallmarks of a classical children`s tale but with its copious amounts of blood, cannibalism and child abuse this is far from acceptable family viewing. The story – again written by Craven – focuses on a 13 year old boy named Fool who lives with his family in a poverty stricken apartment block. With no money, his sister’s boyfriend – played by a young Ving Rhames – hatches a plan for himself and Fool to break into their crooked landlord’s house and steal the ‘Legendary Treasure’ it supposedly holds. Things soon take a turn for the worse and Fool finds himself locked in the house andup against a deranged mother and father as well and dirty secret:  the people under the stairs.

Personally I think this is one of Craven’s most enjoyable films as it provides some standout moments and was certainly his most action-orientated before the Scream series. Of all of the standout moments in the film there are many which instantly spring to mind: Fool punching a vicious dog in the face, the perversely dressed Daddy in his S&M gear   wielding a shotgun and shooting at ‘the thing in the walls’, and, lest I forget, the moment where the ‘children’ rise up against the psychotic Mommy as they burst through the floor boards. The explosive finale is also worth a mention for its bombastic conclusion.

Both Fool and Daddy are interesting characters. Fool makes for an interesting protagonist and one the viewer constantly roots for, never straying into ‘annoying pre-teen actor’ territory. Everett McGill proves a worthy antagonist – Daddy spouts some comical one-liners in a brilliantly pitched gravel voice and also shows his psychotic side with his fondness for a shotgun.

I mentioned the inclusion of child abuse earlier and Craven stays away from sugar coating the subject matter for a mainstream film. The sequence where Mommy becomes unhinged and forcibly pushes her daughter Alice into a scalding hot bath, proves to be the film’s most horrifying moment. As Mommy, Wendy Robie is very much the ‘evil witch’ of the piece with her dated 1950s hairdo and clothes. She is also a more frightening parental figure then Daddy’s more darkly comic performance, injecting real menace into her character.

It does – for better or worse – contain some impressively cheesy one-liners. At one point Ving Rhames character exclaims ‘We done popped this house’s cherry!’ Or the rather strange comment of ‘Yeah, and maybe the president will make me secretary of pussy’… Craven does have a way with words.

Most of the best one-liners come from Daddy as he stomps around the house, but one line of dialogue does stick in the mind from Mommy’s mental rampage. She spouts this little ditty:

“What’s a mother to do? Lazy brat sits in her room all day, sewing dolls. Children misbehaving in the basement! And one in the wall, doing his business God knows where. You kids will be the death of me… the death of me.”

This provides good old fashioned foreshadowing of the character’s demise, predictable maybe but without a doubt essential to this film’s tone.

Ultimately The People Under the Stairs does tread a fine line between camp and schlock, but the action rarely lets up. Each set piece is more enjoyable then the next, while the booby-trapped house is a labyrinth-inspired nightmare. What makes it more grand – or rather, more fairytale like – is Craven’s shooting style, opting for a more stylised and disorientating aesthetic with a variety of tilted angles.

From the Craven films I’ve watched over the years this is certainly one of his most enjoyable. Personally, I think this is an under-rated piece of genre cinema from Craven, as it shows how his style had progressed by including elements from his varying past efforts, albeit honed and better executed. Give it a go even if you are not a fan of Craven – it’s an enjoyable thrill ride and one which I will continue to revisit.

Dominic O’Brien