Cellar Dweller (John Carl Buechler, 1988)

Cellar Dweller doesn't have the greatest reputation among hardcore horror fans, and screenwriter Don Mancini (who sold his screenplay for Child's Play the same year) was so convinced the movie would be bad that he chose to be credited as Kit DuBois, but I think it's a pleasantly entertaining movie with an unusual story and some charm. It's not a neglected classic by any stretch of the definition, but it's hardly a dud.

There are a few reasons for the film's less than stellar rep. Re-Animator and From Beyond star Jeffrey Combs is listed near the top of the credits and was prominently featured in the film's marketing, but he has what amounts to a cameo, appearing in the pre-credits opening scene and a dream sequence in the first third. His character drives the story, but he's not onscreen very long. Cellar Dweller's approach to horror is also relatively mild. Except for a few gore effects, there's never any real sense of darkness, danger, or impending violence. As my wife described it, "this is like a children's movie with boobs." The producers could have easily marketed it as one of those gateway horror movies for kids if they cut the two nude scenes and re-edited two gore scenes.

The other major reason Cellar Dweller gets a Rodney Dangerfield-esque lack of respect is in the film's origins as a poster-turned-movie. Roger Corman disciple, independent producer, and head of the Full Moon and Empire production companies Charles Band had an idea for a monster design and the title "Cellar Dweller." He commissioned a poster and hired Mancini, a UCLA student about to hit franchise gold with his Child's Play screenplay, based on the strength of an earlier Mancini script that never got made. Band's instructions: Write a movie using the monster and title in this poster for an existing set we need to use in Rome for a $1 million budget. The then-inexperienced Mancini says he wrote an overly ambitious screenplay that Buechler had to rewrite to fit the budget, hence the requested credit change of "Kit DuBois."

The poster-turned-movie begins "30 years ago" in the home studio of comic book writer and illustrator Colin Childress as he works on another issue of his horror comic Cellar Dweller. (The comic art in the movie was drawn by Frank Brunner.) He has an ancient, Necronomicon-looking book by his side that he frequently consults as he draws. If you're guessing that this book is cursed, you're hardly a genius, but you are correct. Colin's drawings come to life, and the dang ol' Cellar Dweller shows up, rips a young woman's shirt off, and kills her. Colin freaks out and burns his work, sending his creations back into the void, but accidentally kills himself in the process.

Back in the 1988 present, Colin's home has been refurbished and is now an art colony called the Throckmorton Institute for the Arts. The newest artist-in-residence at the colony is Whitney Taylor (Debrah Farentino), an aspiring comic book writer/illustrator obsessed with Colin Childress. She wowed the Institute's board of directors, but live-in Institute head Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne De Carlo) is not pleased. Briggs is a snob who thinks comic books are populist drivel, not serious art, and she's determined to make Whitney's life at the institute difficult. Whitney is the only member of the colony with any real talent, however. The other resident artists are bad painter Phillip (Brian Robbins, teenage actor on Head of the Class, Hollywood producer, director of Good Burger, Varsity Blues, and Norbit, and, since 2018, president of Nickelodeon), bad performance artist Lisa (Miranda Wilson), bad wannabe hard-boiled crime novelist Norman (Vince Edwards), and bad video artist Amanda (Pamela Bellwood). Amanda was Whitney's arch-nemesis in art school and is now Mrs. Briggs' accomplice in sabotaging Whitney's aspiring career.

Though the basement room where Colin died is off-limits, Whitney convinces Mrs. Briggs to let her move down there, freeing up her own room, which will allow the Institute to add another artist to the colony. Briggs enlists Amanda to spy on Whitney after she moves into Colin's old space, and a plot is hatched to get Whitney kicked out by framing her as a plagiarist. If this intrigue isn't intriguing enough, Whitney finds the cursed book and begins drawing some very Colin-reminiscent comic book stories, bringing the dang ol' Cellar Dweller back from the void to wreak havoc on a house full of bad artists.

Yeah, the whole thing is goofy as hell, and a little soft besides, but the creature effects are cool, many of the jokes land, the limited setting is used well, Yvonne De Carlo is great, there's a quality decapitation (this is a pro-decapitation website) and the movie manages to touch on several creative issues with a non-heavy hand, including the burden of an active imagination, the gap between ambition and talent, and the tension between popular and highbrow art. Come on, people. Cellar Dweller is a fun movie.

Cellar Dweller was the second feature film directed by special effects wizard John Carl Buechler, following 1986's Troll. His other directing credits include Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood and Ghoulies III: Ghoulies Go to College. His special effects and makeup career was long and successful and lasted from the late 1970s until his death in 2019. He may be the only guy to work on both Bikini Drive-In and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (he did some uncredited work for the prosthetics team). Buechler's effects CV includes Dr. Heckyl and Mr. Hype, Mausoleum, Re-Animator, Ghoulies, From Beyond, Dolls, The Garbage Pail Kids Movie, A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Prison, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Robot Jox, Bride of Re-Animator, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, Tammy and the T-Rex, Red Rock West, Necronomicon, Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers, and Hatchet. He still had several projects in the works at the time of his death.