De Lift( The Lift) 1983

'The Lift' is a Dutch mystery/thriller by director Dick Maas( who also directed the 1988 serial killer flick Amsterdamned) which has a simple story and is made with small budget, yet it manages to effectively convey some original and thought provoking ideas. The movie concerns the erratic and 'murderous' behaviour of a lift in a building in Amsterdam. At the prologue to the main story, a group of four late night diners are entrapped and almost suffocated by the lift after an inexplicable power cut. Later, the central character Felix Adeelar, a lift mechanic, arrives to examine the lift but finds nothing wrong with the wiring or electric circuits. Mieke, a journalist for a local tabloid known as "Nieuwe Revu" is interested in finding out about the lift's conduct and teams up with Felix. It is also shown that the previous mechanic lost his sanity and was institutionalised after working on the lift, but the actual cause of his mental state is never revealed. The only allegory that is drawn to the previous mechanic's illness and the cause of the malfunctioning lift is through a splash of chocolate syrup thrown on the walls of the institutions( which is gooey in composition and irregularly shaped like the organic matter responsible for the villainous lift). This vaguely establishes the knowledge of the mechanic and his consequent state.

Then two more gruesome deaths follow, one of a blind old man who walks into empty space and falls into the basement of the lift shaft, and another of a night watchman whose head is decapitated as he looks into a lift door which opens on an empty floor before the carriage comes crashing down on him. Convinced now that something is terribly wrong with the lift's functioning, Felix asks his superior permission to examine the inner mechanisms but is brusquely refused. Then one morning, he sees the van of the microprocessor company "Rising Sun" parked outside the building. Feeling that it is his duty to investigate, Felix and Mieke reach the office of Rising Sun electronics and question their chief engineer on the possibility of them having supplied experimental microchips to Felix's elevator company "Deta Liften" but the engineer nervously declines to divulge any information and instead states that his company's products are thoroughly tested before being fitted into elevators and thus there is no question of any furtive experiment involving the microprocessors. But the un-official meeting with the company representative reaches the ears of Felix's boss and he is enraged and puts Felix on indefinite leave, hiring another mechanic as a substitute.

Meanwhile, Felix's collaboration with the journalist Mieke reaches the ears of his jealous wife through a common friend and she accuses him of cheating on her, later leaving their home with their two kids. Left desolate but with plenty of time on his hands, Felix begins to obsessively study the diagrams of the lift mechanism with its wirings and curcuits and then sneaks up to the building at night by breaking into a side door. After his first plan of traversing up and down the lift to study its behaviour fails when the elevator tries to snap at him suddenly, Felix goes up to the lift room and finds the metal encasing which houses the microprocessors controlling the lift operation empty. Then he clambers up the lift carriage and begins scrutinising the entire inner shaft with an electric light. When his emergency controls fail, he is forced to manually climb up the lift cable till he reaches a small box at the walls of an upper floor shaft. He opens the box to find a pulsating gooey substance enveloped on a silicone conductor which is the actual "brain" of the lift. Recognising the evil role of this organic matter, Felix begins to stab the matter furiously in an attempt to destroy it. This however causes the lift to go out of control and zap up and down from uppermost floor to basement several tiimes. Felix is left with no other option but to climb down using the cable and exit to a floor in which the doors are open. However, the continuous movement of the lift has caused the ropes to weaken under the pressure, and thus the carriage comes crashing down on Felix as he struggles to push himself to the building floor. He is saved in the nick of time by Mieke, who sarcastically remarks that she can never leave Felix alone. At that point of time, the head of the electronic company arrives to review the lift and begins shooting at it through the open doors after he is convinced that his experiments have failed. However, a loose cable joint of the lift grabs him from his legs and strangulates him. At the end, Mieke and Felix are seen walking down the stairs, totally shaken from their experiences.

The reason attributed to the lift's default is thus simple- it was being "controlled" by an organic microprocessor which was the experimental supply of Rising Sun Company. The organic matter was unstable at its molecular level and was easily influenced by external conditions such as light, electricity, magnetic fields etc. Further, the cells were propagating/reproducing uncontrollably, which was why the lift began to have a 'mind of its own' and go out of control. This rationale is supplied midway through the movie when Mieke and Felix attend a private midnight lecture by one of Mieke's professor friends. Although Felix scoffs at the organic micro-chip explanation at that time, the later events of the film lead him to firmly believe the same.

The Lift is being released as a Blu Ray/DVD combo by Blue Underground in October 2017 with both Dutch and English audio options and English subtitles for the Dutch soundtrack. The extras include an audio commentary with director Dick Maas and interview with main actor Hubb Stapel, a explanatory booklet on the film and reversible sleeve with alternate artwork,  along with the usual trailers and still gallery images

    Ratman(1988): Original Italian title"Quella villa in fondo al parco"


Originally released in the Italian language, its title translates as "That Villa at the Bottom of the Park". It is released in the US by Apprehensive Films with a run-time of 82 minutes, although most versions on the web run at just 78. The horror genre( along with generous dollops of sleaze and exploitation) had its heyday in Italy in the 70's and 80's, where along with the gialli, movies with micro-budgets were produced at a mass scale. Another common aspect of these horror films was their shoddy and incoherent plotting which clearly established their utter trashiness. But of the trash offerings, there a few obscure gems worth hunting out. Ratman is definitely one of the vastly entertaining trash picks to be enjoyed and cherished(i.e., for those with acquired taste).


As far as story goes, it concerns a model who goes missing while shooting outdoors in a forest in the vicinity of a village in which the murderous little"ratman" has got on the loose. This creature is a result of a scientific experiment gone wrong, literally speaking he is the offspring of a monkey impregnated by a rat ! Well, the creature gets loose and goes on a murderous rampage, particularly picking on blondes in the vicinity of the house where his scientist/creator lives(which is close to the village) and of course, his captors. The model and her photographer are in a group of four, out of which two are ravaged by the ratman. So seeking help, they land up in the house of the scientist. Two more murders follow- one of the photographer and another of the scientist's assistant. Then the scientist reveals his troubled conscience, what he wanted to create was a miracle capable of capturing the Nobel Prize(!) but instead the experiment led to a creature whose teeth contain venom powerful enough to kill man within a few seconds. Anyway, as the scientist and the model prepare to leave the house where the little villain is still lurking, he stays behind to pack some necessary papers. As he opens a cabinet, his tiny creation attacks and kills him. Then comes the model, and and she too is bitten to pieces as she opens a refrigerator to drink water( which happens after she spends an uneasy night in the villa).


By now, the model's sister and the journalist friend arrive at the house. Finding blood and dead bodies everywhere, they retire to the police headquarters where the cop informs them that they are doing everything possible to capture the maniac(they think it's a human being after all). As it turns out, the ratman is quite persistent because he has placed himself in the travel bag of the dead model, and hence comes a truly laughable ending- as the sister of the model and her friend board a flight back to New York, a flying plane is shown(where the frame freezes over) and in the background come screeches and screams. The meaning is obvious, the travel bag has not only been successfully been screened in the airport, the ratman has made his way out to the passengers and begun his butchering aboard.


Nelson de la rosa at just 2'4'' depicted the eponymous "ratman" which probably till date must have remained his most humiliating role. And last, its tagline-"He's the critter from the shitter" !

The Skull (1965)

This is an atmospheric gothic chiller based on a short story by American author Robert Bloch known as "The Skull of Marquis De Sade".  It stars Peter Cushing as Christopher Maitland, a demonologist researching on the occult who acquires the skull of the cruel general Marquis De Sade through an unscrupulous dealer and becomes possessed by the spirit of the Marquis residing within the skull. We learn that the skull  had been exhumed from the grave of the marquis by one person who later dies while trying to clean the skull.
Years later, the skull has found its way into the hands of the dealer who proceeds to dispose off the same by demanding a large sum from Maitland. We learn that the skull has been stolen from the possession of another collector Sir Mathew Phillips who is less than desirous of reclaiming it since he has experienced its evil influence. He also warns Maitland of its corrupting power, however Maitland has already become attached to the skull and will not think of losing it. Then as the film progresses, we witness Maitland slowly losing his grip on reality and sanity. This is portrayed through images of Maitland staring at the skull at all times when he is working in his central study room in one of whose cabinets he has placed the skull. Maitland even takes to murder of the dealer when the skull is stolen from him. His thoughts and actions become primarily negative and murderous, and by the end of the movie it is clear that the skull's evil power has all but consumed him as he attempts to murder his wife whom he otherwise loves dearly.  In the process he loses his own life while his god believing wife is left untouched.
The story is an illustrative demonstration of the common theme of good versus evil where those dabbling in dark arts and the occult are most prone to be influenced by the evil that is present all around us. Yet even then there appears to be a distinction among those with unbroken faith in god and those who have no such belief or faith and tend to veer into wrong ways, the implication being that strength of mind and belief in the presence of god can prevent the corruption by any evil force to seep into man's consciousness and actions.
Another remarkable point is that the movie uses bare minimum special effects such as gore to highlight its point, instead its efficacy lies in its ability to impress certain images in the mind of tge viewer such as repeated close ups of Maitland 's eyes and then the skull to indicate the beginning of his obsession and ultimate destination, and broken wall mirrors to showcase impending terror.