The People Under the Stairs starts as a young boy Poindexter nicknamed Fool (Brandon Adams) learns that his family is about to be evicted from their crummy apartment, then his sister's boyfriend Leroy (Ving Rhames) convinces Fool to help him rob the landlords house & get the money his family needs. Together they break into the landlords house but find themselves trapped inside the house which has electrified doors & bars on all the windows, there they discover mutilated people kept in the basement by the crazy owners who want to create the perfect American family & take a very dim view on anyone who doesn't measure up...

Written, executive produced & directed by Wes Craven who apparently wrote the film after seeing a newspaper article about similar sorts of child abuse The People Under the Stairs was made at a less than successful period for Craven, after the box-office success of A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) Craven spent the next decade trying to recapture that success before his huge come back teen horror Scream (1996). Between A Nightmare on Elm Street & Scream Craven's directorial output was erratic to say the least although he continued to make worthwhile films like The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988),for every giant sized turkey like Vampire in Brooklyn (1995) there was a The People Under the Stairs which convinced the public & the studios to stick with him. I actually think The People Under the Stairs is easily amongst Craven's best work, I think it's a terrific film that is only let down by some silly slapstick comedy that doesn't work (the chimney scene at the end comes to mind) & a really cheesy ending in which all the poor people of the neighbourhood make a stand against the evil landlords. There is much to enjoy here, the film moves along like a rocket, it certainly isn't boring or dull, the film has a jet black sense of humour running through it with some amusing one-liners & some funny scenes, there's plenty of chases, horror & downright weirdness, the man running around the house wearing full bondage gear with a shotgun is a memorably oddball image. The People Under the Stairs is also quite different to anything I have ever seen before, I can't think of another film like it. Maybe that's why some people don't like it, we all spend so much time saying how films are so unoriginal but when something fresh & different like The People Under the Stairs comes along it is still attacked for being to weird or unrealistic or offbeat. I love it's unpredictability & that there's nothing else quite like it out there, there aren't many films you can say that about.

Director Craven does a decent job here, although the house seems bigger on the inside than the outside would suggest there's plenty of tension, chases, near misses & lots of long winding claustrophobic corridors to keep the action tight & taught. I love the couple who own the hose, their names are never revealed but talk about the odd couple! They are just plain crazy yet have real personality, in fact all of the character's are well written. There's a very gory scene when someone is gutted & their sliced open body is seen several times, other than that there's some blood splatter & a severed hand.

With a supposed budget of about $6,000,000 the film has good production values & is well made with decent special effects. The acting is good, the kid is surprisingly not annoying while Everett McGill & Wendy Robie as the two psycho house owners put in suitably eccentric performances.

The People Under the Stairs is one of Craven's best films, it's not perfect but it tries hard to be different & it has a good story which mixes dark humour & horror to great effect. The sequel The People Under the Stairs 2 (2008) sees the return of a now grown up Alice.

"The People Under the Stairs" is usually listed as a horror movie, but I view it more as a social commentary. Basically, it shows how the landlords, far from the wholesome image that they project, are two of the vilest individuals imaginable. I've liked every Wes Craven movie that I've seen, and "TPUTS" is no exception. I think that part of the thing is that I saw it around the same time that I saw Woody Allen's repulsive "Everyone Says I Love You", which constituted excessive focus on neurotic rich New Yorkers. Wes Craven's movie presents a very negative image of rich people. Mom (Wendy Robie) and Dad (Everett McGill) make Ebenezer Scrooge look like Mother Teresa. Not even the landlady in "Gremlins" was as nasty as these two.

All in all, this is a horror movie in the sense that it's horrific not only what the landlords are doing, but what those in power have degenerated into overall. Worth seeing.

Also starring Brandon Adams, A.J. Langer, Ving Rhames, Bill Cobbs, Kelly Jo Minter, Sean Whalen and Jeremy Roberts.

Fool (Brandon Quintin Adams) is from the drug infested ghetto getting evicted along with his Mama and Ruby (Kelly Jo Minter). Leroy (Ving Rhames) gets Fool to join in a break-in to the home of the landlord evicting him. A couple (Everett McGill, Wendy Robie) at the house is keeping Alice (A.J. Langer) locked up in the house. There are creepy people in the walls and under the stairs. The couple leaves the heavily secured house. Leroy assumes that they are guarding valuable things. They break in. When the couple returns, they find that they're trapped in the house.

The ghetto start to the movie seems very fake and dated. It is probably better to skip most if not all of it. I don't find the ghetto slumlord storyline all that compelling. The movie would work well without doing the back story first. The three of them driving to the house is a perfectly good opening scene. Once Fool is inside the house, the movie become a simple freak funhouse movie. It has good gory fun. Quite frankly, I don't even want Fool to escape that first time. It's a pretty simple well made horror and who doesn't love daddy in his S&M gear.