''Cellar Dweller'' is a 1988 American-Italian

monster A monster is a type of imaginary or fictional creature found in literature, folklore, mythology, fiction and religion. They are very often depicted as dangerous and aggressive, with a strange or grotesque appearance that causes Anxiety, terror ...

horror film Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit physical or psychological fear in its viewers. Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with Transgressive art, transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements of the genre include Mo ...

about a

comic book A comic book, comic-magazine, or simply comic is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panel (comics), panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and wri ...

artist who unleashes a demon after drawing it. It was directed by

John Carl Buechler __NOTOC__ John Carl Buechler (pronounced ''Beekler''; June 18, 1952 – March 18, 2019) was an American special make-up effects artist, film director, producer, screenwriter, and actor. He was best known for his work on horror and science-fictio ...

, written by

Don Mancini George Donald Mancini (born January 25, 1963) is an American screenwriter, director, and producer. He is best known for creating and writing the Child's Play (franchise), ''Child's Play'' franchise (1988–present). Career Having been a horror ...

(credited as Kit Du Bois), and stars

Debrah Farentino Debrah Farentino (born Deborah Mullowney) is an American actress, producer, and journalist. She began her career starring in the CBS daytime soap opera '' Capitol'' from 1982 to 1987, before moving to prime time with a female leading role in the ...

and

Brian Robbins Brian Robbins (born Brian Levine, November 22, 1963) is an American film producer, director, and executive. He is the Co-CEO of Paramount Global; President and Chief Executive Officer of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon; and Chief Content Offi ...

. As of 2024, this is the only film not in the '' Child's Play'' series that was written by Mancini.

Plot

Colin Childress, a highly successful comic book artist who gains inspiration from a mystical book of horrific drawings, inadvertently summons an evil spirit into his basement studio. Decades later, his house has become a small art institute run by the stern Mrs. Briggs. One night, comely student Whitney Taylor goes rooting around the sealed boxes in the cellar and releases the supernatural forces trapped there.

Cast

as Whitney Taylor (credited as Debrah Mullowney) *

as Phillip Lemley *

Vince Edwards Vince Edwards (born Vincent Edward Zoine; July 9, 1928 – March 11, 1996) was an American actor, director, and singer. He was best known for his TV role as Dr. Ben Casey and as Major Cliff Bricker in the 1968 war film '' The Devil's Brigade' ...

as Norman Meshelski * Cheryl-Ann Wilson as Lisa *

Jeffrey Combs Jeffrey Alan Combs (born September 9, 1954) is an American actor. He is best known for starring as Herbert West in the ''Re-Animator'' film series (1985–2003) and portraying multiple characters in the ''Star Trek'' universe, most notably the ...

as Colin Childress *

Pamela Bellwood Pamela Bellwood (born Pamela King, 26 June 1951 in New York City) is an American actress known for her role as Claudia Blaisdel Carrington on the 1980s prime time soap opera, ''Dynasty''. Life and career Bellwood became interested in an acting ...

as Amanda *

Yvonne De Carlo Margaret Yvonne Middleton (September 1, 1922January 8, 2007), known professionally as Yvonne De Carlo, was a Canadian-American actress, dancer and singer. She became a Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film star and sex symbol in the 1940s a ...

as Mrs. Briggs

Release

''Cellar Dweller'' was released directly to VHS videocassette and

LaserDisc LaserDisc (LD) is a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. It was developed by Philips, Pioneer Corporation, Pioneer, and the movie studio MCA Inc., MCA. The format was initially marketed in the United State ...

on September 20, 1988, by New World Video. In 1991, Starmaker Entertainment released a VHS tape in EP mode.

MGM Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. (also known as Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, commonly shortened to MGM or MGM Studios) is an American Film production, film and television production and film distribution, distribution company headquartered ...

released an

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Exclusive VHS on September 29, 2006. On October 29, 2013, the movie was released on DVD by

Scream Factory Shout! Factory, LLC, doing business as Shout! Studios (formerly doing business as Shout! Factory, its current legal name), is an American home video and music distributor founded in 2002 as Retropolis Entertainment. Its video releases, issued i ...

as part of the second volume of its All-Night Horror Marathon series, along with '' Contamination .7'', ''

Catacombs Catacombs are man-made underground passages primarily used for religious purposes, particularly for burial. Any chamber used as a burial place is considered a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman Empire. Etym ...

'', and ''

The Dungeonmaster ''The Dungeonmaster'' (originally ''Ragewar: The Challenges of Excalibrate'' and ''Digital Knights'') is a 1984 American anthology fantasy horror film produced by Charles Band, and is split up into seven distinct story segments, each written an ...

''. Scream Factory released ''Cellar Dweller'' as a Blu-ray

double feature The double feature is a Film, motion picture industry phenomenon in which theaters would exhibit two films for the price of one, supplanting an earlier format in which the presentation of one feature film would be followed by various short subjec ...

with ''Catacombs'' on July 14, 2015.

Reception

Anthony Arrigo from ''

Dread Central Dread Central is an American website founded in 2006 that is dedicated to horror news, interviews, and reviews. It covers horror films, comics, novels, and toys. Dread Central has won the Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Best Website f ...

'' gave the film 3 stars out of 5, writing, "''Cellar Dweller'' might not be quite up to the level some of

Empire An empire is a political unit made up of several territories, military outpost (military), outposts, and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a hegemony, dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the ...

's celebrated cult classics have attained, but with equivocal production design and a few familiar faces – not to mention great FX work – it’s another unique picture worth watching."

TV Guide TV Guide is an American digital media In mass communication, digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operates in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital content can be created, vi ...

was more negative, giving the film 1 of 5 stars, and opining, "An enjoyable although not particularly distinguished effort, ''Cellar Dweller'' has a number of small worthwhile moments. Director Buechler gets the most out of a somewhat limited script, pacing the action nicely, and the special effects are adequate – but, like everything else in this film, small and limited in scale."

References

External links

* * {{John Carl Buechler 1988 films 1988 horror films 1980s monster movies American monster movies Empire International Pictures films Films about comics Films about fictional painters Films directed by John Carl Buechler Films with screenplays by Don Mancini 1980s English-language films 1980s American films Demons in film 1988 science fiction films English-language science fiction horror films