Legendary horror filmmaker Wes Craven (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream) wrote and directed 1991's The People under the Stairs. The unlikely hero, a 13-year-old black kid called Fool (Brandon Quintin Adams), travels from his ghetto world of junkies to the nearby neighborhood where he encounters a horrific couple that make his neighborhood's worst thugs pale in comparison. This very strange movie resembles an updated Grimm’s fairy tale, dark, comically exaggerated, grotesque, including a quest to find gold in order to save the hero’s dying mother.
When Leroy (Ving Rhames) learns that Fool needs money to pay for his mother's needed surgery, he suggests Fool accompany him to steal the gold rumored to exist in the home of Fool's landlords, who are in the process of evicting his family from their tenement apartment. When they arrive at the home, Fool thinks he's in a fairy tale. He's never seen anything like this house! But once he manages to gain entrance, the fairy tale ends as he encounters the over-the-top vile and loathsome landlords (Everett McGill and Wendy Robie from Twin Peaks), human caricatures much like the adults in Kirsty's world in Hellraiser. In fact, although lacking the other-worldly aspect, The People under the Stairs, in its look and tone, is reminiscent of this predecessor.
Fool is aided by the sweet "daughter" Alice (A.J. Langer), who hates and fears her parents, and a rejected "son," the brave and wily Roach (Sean Whalen), who both know the ins and outs of the booby-trapped house, replete with secret passages and hidden rooms. The nightmarish house becomes a character in and of itself, and its complex innards result in the viewer's quest to decipher the geography of this beast.
The film pokes fun at the police, who are so easily appeased by coffee and donuts, and one officer who is more interested in the quality furniture than in finding out what actually might be going on inside the house. The "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" principle originally developed in Japanese folk religion is well used in this updated bastardization of a folk tale. The film requires viewers to suspend reality and stretch the imagination, and, as a modern horror fable, tremendously succeeds, due much to Adams' natural performance, which makes Fool a very likeable hero and The People under the Stairs a top horror choice for black history month.
Blackhorrormovies.com, in its review, hails the film as "one of the most unique, unpredictable, energetic horror experiences you'll find in mainstream cinema." Click here to read the website's discussion of what it calls the "Black Death," the perpetuation in the majority of horror films that, if black, the chances of surviving the first half of the movie are slim to none. The People under the Stairs stands in contrast to that majority.
Writer Thomas Pluck chose the film as #27 in his Schlocktoberfest of favorite horror films. In his October 31, 2008, blog, he says, " 'Fool' is no fool, and even the thieving Leroy isn't that bad a role model - he wants to fight back against evil. Grandpa Booker (played by the excellent Bill Cobbs, of The Brother from Another Planet and Night at the Museum) shows up later, but keeps the movie from being a 'hood parody, giving us real and likeable characters in a ridiculous but fitting allegory for the slumlord atrocities of the '80s. Give your inner child a treat and watch this sometime."
Other films recommended for black history month include: Night of the Living Dead (1968), one of the first films to feature a black hero in a film with a primarily white cast; Tales from the Hood (1995), an anthology film produced by Spike Lee; Candyman (1992), about the son of a slave who comes back from the grave for vengeance after he is horrifically killed for loving a white woman; and Blacula (1972), which spawned a wave of blaxploitation horror flicks in the '70s.
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