A mildly amusing title and a cameo appearance from Jeffrey Combs (dressed in his RE-ANIMATOR coat, apparently, and appearing for ten minutes at the beginning before going off to cash his pay cheque) are the best thing about this otherwise appalling movie from Empire - so at least with that company making it, you can't say you were surprised. Once again the director turns out to be John Carl Buechler, who is quickly becoming one of my most hated directors of all time - sure, the man makes good special effects, but must all effects men try directing too? It's obvious he has no talent yet still he churns these movies out.
The plot is a non-existent excuse to throw a few bad actors together and have them get picked off one by one by a huge slimy demon that somehow lives in the cellar due to a comic book - childish isn't the word for it. As usual for the genre, there's plenty of poor humour, false scares and naked women being menaced by big monsters. The demon is actually quite an effective-looking monster so it's a shame that its not appearing in a better movie, and it just gets relegated to lurking around in the cellar, roaring. The violence is surprisingly kept to a minimum, and I think limited to a singular bloody decapitation scene and some severed body parts. Meanwhile, the cast is made up of boring unknowns, aside from the presence of Yvonne De Carlo who enjoys hamming it up as an unpleasant landlady - whatever happened to her career?
The biggest enjoyment I had from watching this movie came when I realised that it only ran for seventy-something minutes and it was nearly over. It's one of those films which you get the feeling was only created in order to make money - neither the cast nor the crew seem to have any interest in it whatsoever, instead going through the motions and picking up their pay cheque at the end of it all. This makes it nigh on impossible for the viewer to be interested in it either. A cheap, pointless, shallow piece of drivel.
The plot is a non-existent excuse to throw a few bad actors together and have them get picked off one by one by a huge slimy demon that somehow lives in the cellar due to a comic book - childish isn't the word for it. As usual for the genre, there's plenty of poor humour, false scares and naked women being menaced by big monsters. The demon is actually quite an effective-looking monster so it's a shame that its not appearing in a better movie, and it just gets relegated to lurking around in the cellar, roaring. The violence is surprisingly kept to a minimum, and I think limited to a singular bloody decapitation scene and some severed body parts. Meanwhile, the cast is made up of boring unknowns, aside from the presence of Yvonne De Carlo who enjoys hamming it up as an unpleasant landlady - whatever happened to her career?
The biggest enjoyment I had from watching this movie came when I realised that it only ran for seventy-something minutes and it was nearly over. It's one of those films which you get the feeling was only created in order to make money - neither the cast nor the crew seem to have any interest in it whatsoever, instead going through the motions and picking up their pay cheque at the end of it all. This makes it nigh on impossible for the viewer to be interested in it either. A cheap, pointless, shallow piece of drivel.