Cellar Dweller
The same year that a serial killer named Charles Lee Ray turned into a legendary doll named Chucky, screenwriter Don Mancini had another movie that went largely ignored... though Mancini had his name taken off it (he's credited as Kit Du Bois) and he tries to sidestep it in interviews. Directed by legendary FX man John Carl Buechler (who'd directed Troll for the same company a few years prior) and featuring Jeffrey Combs in the near 10 minute prologue, Cellar Dweller (not to be confused with the 1996 porn flick) is a likable but highly flawed low-budget trashterpiece...
Hmmm... I feel like I've seen this in another film...
The story begins with E.C.-like comic book artist Collin Childress (Jeff Combs) working on a new panel for his popular book "Cellar Dweller." Like many misguided people in horror movies, he turns to an ancient grimoire for inspiration and recreates the symbol on the front of the book on the chest of his monster. Not surprisingly, the monster's soon standing behind him, ready to eat the girl from the comic strip.
Hey! It's the dude from Head of the Class!
Flash forward 20 years and Whitney Taylor (Debrah Farentino) is arriving at the small school where her hero, Childress, worked on his books (not surprisingly, in the cellar). Whitney's plan is to come up with a new series of Cellar Dweller comics, an idea that doesn't bode well with resident house mother Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne DeCarlo). Soon Whitney stumbles onto Childress's final works and decides to finish them, so the cycle begins anew.
Is that a Cellar Dweller or a Gremlin?
The movie's got a lot of problems. It's frequently corny, secondary characters have no real purpose (an over the hill Vince Edwards stars as one of Whitney's psycho peers), it cuts back and forth to comic book panels during action scenes, a few cool ideas weren't followed up on, the monster's supposed to be menacing but he's downright adorable, and the running time is short.
Just follow this instructional video and you too can draw monster ass!
However, the film's extremely likable and somewhat reminiscent of the anthology shows of the day (Monsters, Tales from the Dark Side, etc.), with a little bit of nudity and a few expletives thrown in for good measure. But more notable, the movie includes the coolest beheading this side of Deadly Friend, as well as posters adorning the walls for Troll, Re-Animator and other Empire Pictures releases (very odd that there's a poster for a Jeffrey Combs film displayed in a film with Jeffrey Combs!). The movie's surfaced on Chiller in recent years, but sadly has never been released on DVD.
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