Empire Pictures made several low-budget flicks and this 1988 monstrosity known as "Cellar Dweller" might qualify as their worst. Perhaps the ambitious ideas needed more tinkering and maybe creature/make-up effects creator John Carl Buechler, who also directed this, could have shaped scenes more smoothly with the help of a good editor. Either way, this "Cellar Dweller" is a laugh riot for 2/3 of its running time, and 1/3 a bore to sit through.
A comic-book artist, Whitney Taylor (Debrah Farentino), is admitted as a new student at an arts colony which is essentially just a log cabin in the middle of the woods with no TV or phone. There are three other residents of this colony, and one of them is older and has a fascination with author Raymond Chandler and detective mysteries (played by a vastly underused Vince Edwards). The other two are the least interesting of the bunch, including a faux performance artist whose balloons, dolls and knives bit would not pass muster inside any arts club. Yvonne De Carlo is on hand as the teacher, though she never has a scene where she teaches, and admonishes Whitney's comic-book art as phony. It turns out that Whitney's drawings summon a demonic beast. So we get quite a few recurring scenes of the monster who decapitates and eats people and has a bloody pentagram on its chest. There is also a required nude scene in a shower, the performance artist herself, who can't find her towel because the beast took it?
The most enjoyable bit has Jeffrey Combs ("Reanimator") as a 1950's cartoonist who first summoned the creature thanks to a Book of the Ancient Dead. "Cellar Dweller" is junk food moviemaking where a creative idea is not exploited to its fullest and the characters exist in a void. It is sort of enjoyable in a good-bad movie way ("Child's Play's" Don Mancini wrote it and probably should have directed it) but you will forget it as soon as it's over. The creature claims he exists as long as there is imagination - thankfully no imagination allowed a sequel.
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