Sunday 19 April 2015

Cellar Dweller

"Cellar Dweller" (1988, John Carl Beuchler, Empire Pictures) is my kind of movie. B-movie, that is. Ah, 1988, a fabulous year: I was born and movies like this were being released!

In the '50s, a comic book (definitely not an EC Comic... no...) artist named Colin Childress (the fabulous Jeffrey Combs of "Re-Animator" fame) is brutally murdered when his iconic horror comic characters come to life in his basement studio thanks to his satanic demon A-Z book, and do what horror comic characters do best: violently assault everybody. Because that's not exactly an every day event, he is instead assumed to have committed suicide.

Fast forward 30 years to the '80s and his house is now being used as a retreat, studio and college for young aspiring artists. The college is run by Mrs Briggs (Lily Munster herself, Yvonne De Carlo), who takes an obvious dislike to our picture's heroine, Whitney (Debrah Farentino, then Debrah Mullowney). Whitney is an aspiring horror comic book artist herself with a great admiration for the work (and mysterious demise) of poor old Colin, and can't help herself as she makes all the trademark errors that he clearly had also. Poor Whitney doesn't realise the power of the pen until it is almost too late. But, by then has she gone too far to stop her creations from wreaking havoc?

A fun 80s B-movie that uses some very "Evil Dead" techniques in filming its stalking monster scenes and captures great imagination to work as a film with enough gore, body part munching, demon suits and nude showers thrown in to make it an ideal movie marathon candidate.

Whilst our artists are of a pretty questionable talent (seriously, someone should have told these kids that they were wasting their time and would be better looking for other forms of work!), the film is suitably hokey, funny and chalk-full of green zig zags (80s CGI).

The start credits do drag on for a good while though!

Definitely one for my B-movie vault!

[Image: Empire Pictures]

Hani 

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