30 years ago, a comicbook artist (Jeffrey Combs) died under mysterious
circumstances while drawing his latest horror comic, and rumour has it he
went crazy, slaughtered a woman then set himself on fire ... the rumours
are wrong, though. Now, young up-and-coming comicbook artist Whitney
(Debrah Farentino) moves into his house to finish what he has started -
but the house has since become an artist colony, and the house's landlady
(Yvonne De Carlo), Whitney's former art teacher of all things, doesn't
really approve of her. On top of that, Whitney's arch enemy Amanda (Pamela
Bellwood) has also taken up residence in the house. But Whitney remains
undeterred and soon picks up where her predecessor left off - and since
she's quite angry at Amanda at the moment, she lets her die a horrible
death at the hands of a monster in her comic panels. What she doesn't know
is that there is some kind of curse on the house, so her comicbook pages
turn real, and even while she draws it, a monster actually kills Amanda
the very same way in the flesh. What's worse though is that the comicbook
soon starts to draw itself, and thus all other inhabitants of the house
get killed as well ... before Amanda learns how to restrain the monster
using white-out, then she brings everybody the monster killed back via her
drawings - but when she tries to destroy the monster for good by setting
her comicbook on fire, she also burns all of the others she just brought
back for real ... Certainly not a film that can be credited
with the reinvention of the monster movie, this is nevertheless a fine
example of low budget 1980's genre cinema: There's an outrageous plot, a
gruesome monster, plenty of gore, and the occasional bare breast to
lighten things up a bit. And even if the film does not look like a million
bucks, at least the special effects and the camerawork are rather top
notch, the sets are decent and it makes sense they are limited, and
there's some nice comicbook art thrown in occasionally. You might have
to be into horror from roughly its period to be into Cellar Dweller,
but if you are, chances are you'll find this one rather enjoyable.
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