Subject: REVIEW: THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS

From: [email-masked] (Mark R. Leeper)
Date: 7 Nov 91 16:04:55 GMT

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			 THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS
		       A film review by Mark R. Leeper
			Copyright 1991 Mark R. Leeper

     This is not a review--it is a symposium of ideas about THE PEOPLE UNDER
THE STAIRS based on an after-film discussion.  It will contain spoilers in
the same sense that a road sign that says "Bridge Out" is a  spoiler.

   - Kate Pott, acknowledged film viewer, cautions us that it really would
     be unfair on the basis of one psychotic cannibal film to condemn all
     the psychotic cannibal films being made and that many are considerably
     better than THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS.

   - I think it somewhat politically simplistic for this film to suggest
     that there is sufficient money in the black ghetto for everyone to have
     a high standard of living, but that the money is all going to killer
     psychotic slumlords who, through inbreeding, have become crazy as
     bedbugs.  Even if you accepted that premise, I am not sure that their
     dementia would take the form of kidnapping children for their own and
     then, when the children become unhappy, imprisoning them in the walls
     of a house.

   - Evelyn Leeper points out that this house that appears small on the
     outside would not have walls three to four feet thick.  Much of this
     film takes place within the walls of the house and we can see the
     inside of the walls are excessively spacious.

   - Evelyn pointed out that door-to-door salesmen are a much rarer
     phenomenon than they used to be.  The few salesmen who came to the door
     could not be rendered into sufficient meat to feed the twelve growing
     children living in the walls of the house.

   - I would add that if so many door-to-door salesmen have disappeared it
     would be fairly easy for the police to pinpoint the trouble spot in the
     neighborhood.

   - I was less than pleased with a plot structure in which all but about
     ten minutes of screen time is taken up by two over-extended chases
     through the walls, basement, and roof of a single house.

   - Evelyn was not totally pleased with plot elements like having the
     African-American boy who is the main character mostly trying to earn
     enough money for a cancer operation to save his mother's life (and
     wanting to become a doctor someday) and getting advice from his kindly
     uncle Booker and his somewhat shady friend Leroy.

   - I found that in spite of the fact that our main character has found
     rooms full of money wrested from ghetto tenants, it seems unlikely that
     the explosions at the end of the film would shower only money on the
     neighbors waiting outside.

   - It was the overall impression of the three of us that this film sucked
     pond water.  Kate rated it a -2 and Evelyn and I each gave it a -3 on
     the -4 to +4 scale.

					Mark R. Leeper
					att!mtgzy!leeper
					[email-masked]