Cellar Dweller (1988) – Review

While Charles Band was notorious for churning out low-budget horror flicks, with varying levels of success, he was like Roger Corman in that he tended to give those loyal to him a shot at exploring different careers. This led to him giving special make-up effects artist John Carl Buechler a chance to direct a film of his own, sadly, two years after his directorial debut of the disastrous film Troll, Buechler proved with Cellar Dweller that a talent for creating special effects does not necessarily translate to the skills needed to helm a movie.

The plot of Cellar Dweller is as simple as it is nonsensical, we get an opening prologue where popular comic book artist Colin Childress (Jeffrey Combs) unwittingly calls forth a demonic power – drawing inspiration from a book that looks like the Necronomicon is bound to result in that sort of thing – the beast he conjures feeds on artistic merit, which means this film’s director should be safe, and it devours a beautiful woman before Colin can dispatch the creature by setting fire to the drawings depicting the beast, unfortunately, the fire also consumes Childress as well and he later considered a murderer who ended his own life. My only question is “Why was Childress cos-playing as Herbert West?”

If guilty of anything, this film wasted Jeffrey Combs.

We fast forward thirty years and find that Childress’s home has now become a colony for artists and the plot of the film kicks into gear with the arrival of our protagonist, Whitney Taylor (Debrah Mullowney) a comic book artist.  She is obsessed with Childress’s story, which causes a bit of a stir because the school’s headmistress, Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne De Carlo), considers comic book art to be low brow and not worthy of being considered true art. This is odd when you factor in the other pupils at this school, there is Phillip Lemley (Brian Robbins) who produces abstract art that wouldn’t pass muster in a kindergarten class – he is also this film’s supposed love interest – and next there is Lisa (Miranda Wilson) who is a performance artist, which brings the added question of “What kind of art school has but a handful of students and that broad of the curriculum?” Then there is Norman Meshelski (Vince Edwards) a private eye who wants to be the next Raymond Chandler, who gains inspiration by bursting into rooms to act out various scenes, and once again I must ask “What kind of art school provides lessons in writing crime fiction?”

“Whitney, is this an art colony or some kind of cult?”

Whitney is told that no one is allowed into the cellar, where Childress worked and met his untimely end, but before you can say “Bluebeard” she’s poking around the dust and cobwebs of her idol’s old studio and discovers the mystical tome that brought forth the demon/vampire/werewolf thing that ended Childress’s life. Clearly, this is not drama enough for a movie clocking in at 77-minutes so one of the other students, Amanda (Pamela Bellwood), is an old college rival of Whitney’s who tortured her mercilessly during their academic days.  She teams up with Mrs. Briggs to get rid of Whitney but that just moves her up the list to that of first victim. What follows is Whitney drawing the creature killing one of the other pupils, – whether her drawings create them or if there are other demonic forces at play is never made clear – and then the demon brutally attacks and devours them. And that pretty much sums up the plot of Cellar Dweller, and it’s just a mater of “Can Whitney and her pal Philip figure out what’s going on in time for Spring Break?” and  “Will the Comics Code Authority condemn this school on grounds of malpractice?” and most importantly “Would anyone sit through this movie a second time?”

A cool monster and gratuitous nudity will only get you so far.

Stray Observations:

• We get a shaky-cam POV tracking shot up to and through a cabin door and I have to assume the director is a fan of Sam Rami and this is an homage and not a rip-off of Evil Dead.
• I would absolutely enrol in an art school run by Lily Munster and would only hope that her husband Herman would drop by with Cousin Marilyn.
• Whitney has the horror poster for the Stuart Gordon film The Re-Animator in her dorm room, which prominently features actor Jeffrey Coombs, which I find oddly meta in this instance.
• Philip comments “Aren’t you a little old for comics, Whitney?” which is not only moronic because comic books by this point in time were intended for all ages, but she is a comic book artist and not just a reader.
• Whitney finds the cellar dusty and full of cobwebs but as we saw the room engulfed in flames during the prologue I’m not sure how any of the furniture or art survived. Do the dark forces also work as firemen and furniture restorers?
• The demon rips people apart and devours them in a rather messy fashion yet when someone later enters the room there is no corpse or any evidence that anything untoward happened. Do the dark forces also provide crime scene cleaning services?

No sense in losing your head over this film’s logical issues.

One of the film’s major drawbacks is its lack of character development as the entire cast of characters is fairly underdeveloped and often falls into predictable horror tropes. The performances are generally subpar, with the actors failing to bring depth to their roles and while Jeffrey Combs delivers a commendable performance as Colin Childress, his character has limited in screen time. This will most likely anger fans of Re-Animator and From Beyond who were most likely hoping this movie starred him and not a bunch of annoying kids. Another area where Cellar Dweller falls short is in its narrative structure as it suffers from a lack of cohesion with the transitions between scenes often feel disjointed. The film also fails to build suspense effectively and while the gore effects are decent you don’t really care about anyone so that lessens the impact, not to mention the “twist ending” that was predictable as it gets.

“If we burn the script they’ll be no evidence of our crimes.”

John Carl Buechler‘s Cellar Dweller falls short of its promising premise resulting in a bland horror experience, one that fails to captivate or even remotely entertain. The disjointed narrative, lack of genuine scares and forgettable characters make it difficult to recommend this film to anyone other than die-hard fans of 80s B-movie horror. With its dated effects and underwhelming execution, Cellar Dweller fails to leave a lasting impression and quickly fades into the abyss of forgettable horror misfires.