Product Details

• Actors: Brandon Quintin Adams, Everett McGill, Wendy Robie, A.J. Langer, Ving Rhames
• Directors: Wes Craven
• Writers: Wes Craven
• Producers: Wes Craven, Dixie J. Capp, Marianne Maddalena, Peter Foster, Shep Gordon
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, HiFi Sound, NTSC
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Universal Studios
• VHS Release Date: January 23, 1996
• Run Time: 102 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (91 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6302332729
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #150,641 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Trapped inside a fortified home owned by a mysterious couple, a young boy is suddenly thrust into a nightmare. The boy quickly learns the true nature of the house's homicidal inhabitants and the secret creatures hidden deep within the house.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Funny, Over-The-Top Horror, April 19, 2005

By 

C. O. DeRiemer (San Antonio, Texas, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The People Under the Stairs (DVD)

I've always gotten a kick out of this movie. The story line is original (or at least it seems so to me). The gore is startling in a couple of scenes but isn't overpowering. The acting is outrageously over the top but also is endearing.

Thirteen-year-old Fool (Brandon Ames) finds himself in a large suburban house owned by the two slum lords who are about to evict his sick mother and others from a ghetto tenement. He's in the house because he agreed to help two burglars make a score on treasure they heard was hidden there. Unfortunately for Fool (and his two grown-up accomplices), the owners are a brother and sister who call each other Mommy and Daddy. The man (Everett McGill) is a homicidal maniac who goes in for head-to-toe, studded, black leather bondage suits and pump action, single barrel shotguns. His sister (Wendy Robie) is just as looney and just as murderous, a screaming dominatrix. They also have a large vicious dog you wouldn't want to hand feed...that is, unless you had a hand to feed it.

Fool finds hidden in the house a young girl, Alice, who he thinks is the pair's daughter. He also finds a number of boys, stolen when they were children and a few perhaps the product of Mommy and Daddy themselves. They've had their tongues cut off and ears chopped. Seems they were part of Mommy and Daddy's deep need for a perfect child...and when they didn't measure up, off with the tongues so they couldn't shout for help, and down they were put to the basement. They seem to have been fed by Daddy on the butchered parts of unfortunate salesmen and meter readers. It becomes a race for Fool to find a way out, rescue Alice and the people under the stairs, locate the treasure and see that Mommy and Daddy get what's coming to them. And after him is a relentless Daddy, with Mommy urging Daddy on.

What makes this movie work for me are three things. First, the set-up in which the hero is a kid, and the horror is what has happened to other kids. Second, Brandon Adams' performance as Fool. He does an excellent job playing a fast-thinking, brave, resourceful young boy. And last, there is the Grand Guignol performances of Everett McGill and Wendy Robie. They are so over the top, so demented and so murderous that I never know whether to laugh or sit stunned at their doings.

Once the premise is established and the characters are known, the movie does become one long set of narrow escapes through the house, and the house appears to have an infinite number of secret openings, narrow passages, sliding stair cases and slamming doors. Still, the movie works for me.

The DVD's picture is very good; so's the sound.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars This movie is not cliched, June 7, 2006

By 

Bobby Robby "robbybobby" (COLORADO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The People Under the Stairs (DVD)

An earlier review I read of this movie seems to be horribly off. It mentions that it follows a horror-movie cliche where the cops are offered food and then give up the search.

However, this reviewer is dead wrong on several accounts. One, they are not policemen at all, but rather are child services. Two, the horror movie cliche would be having the policemen not believe the little boy crying wolf. Three, instead of following cliches, this movie instead turns around and breaks all of the cliches.

Instead of being afraid, only being able to scream, and seemingly always frozen in place, Fool instead doesn't ever really scream, either runs away or TURNS AROUND, FED UP, AND ATTACKS THE VILLAINS HIMSELF. At one point, he turns around, says "I'm through running" and tackles a man-eating dog that is bigger than him.

Is a character who isn't afraid of the villains, a character who fights back, a cliche? No.

This movie was hilarious, captivating, and one of Wes Craven's hidden gems, in my opinion.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars "Damn Buckshot!", November 9, 2004

By 

Graboidz (Westminster, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The People Under the Stairs (DVD)

I got a real kick out of some of the previous reviews treating "People Under the Stairs" as a serious horror film! The thing with this odd movie is that it should be awful...the premise is just so goofy, but somehow things just click and it's just too damn fun! If you like horror-humor, along the lines of the second two Evil Dead films or Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, then you will enjoy "People Under the Stairs". You can't treat this film seriously, if you go into this movie expecting to be scared or frightened you are going to be sorely disappointed. There really are no tense scenes, and anytime the film approaches anything the may be deemed as frightening, something so absurd will happen that you will be smiling immediately. This movie is quite a bit of fun, just don't take it too seriously.