Macabre...ish Horror Review: People Under The Stairs

 

 

People Under The Stairs, 1991/ 102 min.

 

 

The Robesons aka Mommy (Wendy Robie) and Daddy (Everett McGill) are a couple who are deranged and also slumlords in the ghetto.

 

 

 

 

A few of their soon to be evicted renters, Poindexter 'Fool' Williams (Brandon Adams), Leroy (Ving Rhames) and Spencer (Jeremy Roberts), decide burglarize their house.

 

 

 

 

Spencer poses as a municipal worker but never returns so Fool and Leroy break in to find him. And they do find him, dead in the basement, a dungeon like space with a crowd of pale ragged children, locked in a pen.

 

 

 

 

 

The Robesons return home before they can leave so Fool and Leroy run for it. Leroy is shot to death and Fool escapes to another part of the house and finds another child, Alice (A.J. Langer). She explains that the people in the basement are all children who broke the see/speak/ hear no evil rules of the household. And she has so far escaped this fate by following the rules.

 

 

 

 

And there is one, called Roach (Sean Whalen), who was cast into the basement for speaking evil, after his tongue was cut out. He escaped from the basement and roams the passageways in the walls.

 

 

 

 

Fool is eventually discovered by Daddy and thrown into the basement to the children, who have evolved to cannibalism, in order to survive.

 

 

 

 

Fool survives when Roach rescues him and gives him a bag of gold coins and a note asking him to save Alice. Meanwhile, the insane Robesons’ are shooting the walls trying to kill the kids. Spraying buckshot wildly throughout their house. It’s all sport to them.

 

 

 

 

But Fool escapes without her, when she's too afraid to jump from a window but he promises to return. He finds out more terrible truths about the Robesons, the children and Alice, contacts authorities and goes back for Alice.

 

This is a creepy movie, somewhat graphic or gory but more creepy than anything.

 

 

 

This is what happened to Leroy and likely everyone else that went into that house.

 

 

Just a note, this movie is based loosely on a case that Wes Craven was aware of in the 1970s where 2 burglars broke into a house and which caused the police to discover 2 kids discovered locked away, by their parents.

 

 

 

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