The F*cking Black Sheep: Cellar Dweller (1988)

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

THE BLACK SHEEP is an ongoing column featuring different takes on films that either the writer HATED, but that the majority of film fans LOVED, or that the writer LOVED, but that most others LOATH. We’re hoping this column will promote constructive and geek fueled discussion. Dig in!

CELLAR DWELLER

DIRECTED BY JOHN CARL BUECHLER

Just as we did with the late great Larry Cohen a couple of weeks ago, it only seems right we pour one out for another recently fallen horror hero. John Carl Buechler, this one’s for you good sir!

Backing up a bit, if you were to tout Buechler’s work to a horror novice, what would be the first title you chose as an introduction to the man’s work? Chances are you’d mention either TROLL or FRIDAY THE 13TH VII: THE NEW BLOOD, right? Makes sense too, since TROLL put Buechler on the horror filmmaking map, while THE NEW BLOOD helped to heighten is profile and raise his stock even further. This, in addition to a number of other factors, is one of the main reasons why the film he made in between those two titles (and released the same year as the latter) – CELLAR DWELLER – is a wildly overlooked F*cking Black Sheep of cheesy 80s horror B-movie. Honestly, I never hear anyone talk about this flick, and only discovered it myself by accident years ago when looking up a Cella Dwellas rap album. But then, when I did finally sit down and clock the flick in earnest, I realized what a fun little piece of monster-movie trash it is. Short, sweet, highly entertaining and fraught with gaudy and gory slayings, CELLAR DWELLER ought to be required viewing for every John Carl Buechler fan, as well as for those into obscure 80s horror!

Written by Don Mancini under the pseudonym Kit Dubois (in the same year he unleashed Chucky on the world, thereby dwarfing the deadly demon in CELLAR DWELLER), the premise of CELLAR DWELLER is actually good enough for a modern update given how pervasive comics have currently become. The flick opens with a flashback to 30 year prior, when a comic-book artist named Colin Childress (the great Jeffrey Combs) draws a horror comic called Cellar Dweller, about a slavering demon (played by Michael Deak) that looks like a slobbering cross between Bigfoot, Zuul and the Golgothan Shit Demon, that instantly becomes realized in the three-dimensional plane before gorily shredding Childress to pieces. 30 years later, a budding comic-book artist named Whitney Taylor (Debrah Farentino) attends a creepily adorned artist institute. Obsessed with the Cellar Dweller comics, Whitney can’t wait to work in the same space as her inspiration, Childress, despite the fact the school happens to be the place where Childress was savagely ripped apart.

Whitney is given hell by head of the school, Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne De Carlo), who thinks of comic-book work as nothing more than “populist tripe.” If that wasn’t discouraging enough, Whitney’s old artistic rival Amanda (Pamela Belwood) attends the school as well, peeling off old scabs and pouring salt on the wounds. One of the really fun aspects of CELLAR DWELLER is the false-alarms that frighten Whitney early in the film. Since the house is full of artists, Whitney is tricked by a homicidal kidnap acting rehearsal, as well as loud screams heard outside from another actress, Lisa (Miranda Wilson), practicing before a performance. These innocuous happenings unnerve Whitney for no good reason, which is funny when considering later, how Whitney is the only one UNAFRAID of descending into the ill-fated cellar. What scares Whitney scares nobody else, and yet later, what doesn’t scare Whitney does scare everyone else, a distinction I think is perfectly in line with both Buechler and Mancini’s morbidly humorous sensibilities. So to do the winking background nods, first a poster for Buechler’s TROLL can be seen in Phillip’s (Brian Robbins) dorm, then a later a REANIMATOR poster in the cellar once belonging to Childress (star Jeffrey Combs).

Anyway, the crux of the plot comes down to a line spoken in the film, which is “To contemplate evil is to ask it home.” Indeed, as Whitney cleans up the cellar and begins writing her exquisite horror panels, she imagines the pentagram-chested demon into existence. Only she doesn’t realize it at first, allowing the demon to maraud through the school – as rain and lightening pound the exterior – brutally butchering anyone who dare get in its way. We’re talking grisly decapitations, swiftly de-limbed torsos, sick eviscerations and the rest. One of the highlights of CELLAR DWELLER is the practical FX work overseen by Buechler himself, who you’ll remember, worked explicitly in the FX realm for years before becoming a director. He did the same with THE NEW BLOOD the same year, working as line producer and FX supervisor (in addition to directing). In 1988, while finishing CELLAR DWELLER, Buechler also worked on the FX of such high-profile horror flicks as A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 4: DREAM MASTER and HALLOWEEN 4: THE RETURN OF MICHAEL MYERS. Point is, Buechler was an authority in this area at the time, and the practical FX work in CELLAR DWELLER certainly demonstrates that. The SFX on the other hand? Whoa now!

At just 77 minutes, there’s such a pell-mell pacing to the film that it’s almost impossible not to find it entertaining. It flies by with brimming brio and bravado, knowing full well it’s an unabashedly cheesy 80s horror B-movie, and embracing such. The film is perfectly at peace with what it is, and revels in it to give us a damn good time watching Whitney come to the realization that she is actually responsible for the demonic manifestation. Whitney’s obsession with Cellar Dweller is early on played as someone dedicated to doing good work. As it goes on however, we realize, as Whitney does, that her maddening obsession is the very force that actualized the demon into existence after lying dormant for three decades. She tries to burn the pages of the comics to rid the beast, but finds that such a process also kills the real-life characters from the school that she includes in the panels, thereby in a weird way committing murder. Twice! In the end, our protagonist is shaded as an unknowing antagonist, and while we’ll leave it to the uninitiated to find out what becomes of her fate, it’s arguable that she gets precisely what she deserved all along.

No mattter how you cut it, CELLAR DWELLER is a long-lost 80s horror movie that warrants far more love than it’s received over the past 30 years. Hell, the flick is currently free o Youtube, and the fact it has only 300 views over the past five months speaks to how highly underrated it still remains to be. It’s underrated as an 80s horror film in general, but it’s also overlooked in both Buechler and Mancini’s filmography, largely due to the overshadowing popularity of Chucky and Jason, of which the reign of 1988 terror from both horror icons surely sapped the love for CELLAR DWELLER. Revisit this one y’all, it’s brutal and bloody blast from the past. John Carl Beuchler, RIP sir, your legacy lives on!

GET CELLAR DWELLER ON BLU-RAY HERE