“These damn machines will be the death of us all some day!”

Anthony’s rating: Embodies the reasons for this site to exist.

Anthony’s review: Fellow Mutant Zombie Dog nailed my own feelings about reviewing movies during John Carpenter week, explaining that it’s not so much a criticism as I simply lay down how each flick I review made me feel.

In this specific case, being critical about The Lift would be more like hypocritical, knowing the film was made for about as much money as I spend on hair care products for my bald noggin. The budget was so small that the director composed and recorded the score himself Carpenter-style in only two days, and the crew were given bit parts to fill the cast (even the damn caterer played a secretary!). Criticizing that would be like complaining that a Big Mac isn’t gluten free — if you wanna eat healthy, you made a wrong turn right there.

So “how it made me feel” it is, and this one gave me some potent feelings, starting with a written mention on the big screen just before the film started when I saw it in theatre. But I’m jumping the open shaft, allow me to provide some context. The Lift was produced in 1983, slowly making its way to the festivals circuit afterward. Eventually it hit Cannes where Warner Bros picked it up for global distribution based only on the audience reaction of a single screening, and by the late ’80s it was found in a bunch of North American independent theatres and most video stores.

What got it to Cannes, though, is the French resort town of Avoriaz, and simply writing that name gives me the heebie-jeebies. The Avoriaz International Fantastic Film Festival was held from ’73 to ’93, and was mainly synonymous with films that give you the creeps. The inaugural edition dropped its grand prize on Spielberg’s Duel, and over the years rewarded Carrie, Phantom of the Paradise, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Patrick, The Hidden, Dead Ringers, and many more of the same ilk. So when The Lift started with the written mention “Grand Prize Winner — Avoriaz,” I instantly got cold sweat running down my spine.

I saw this in the Summer of 1988 when I was 14 on my own in a decrepit movie theatre. There were two other people in the room, who, like me, had come to watch the latest Arnie offering, Red Heat, but found to a certain dismay that it was a double-header opening with a badly dubbed low-budget Dutch horror film. Further bit of context: It was the second greatest movie-going experience of my life (#1 happened a year later, in the same ancient dilapidated theatre, when Burton’s Batman came out). Stéphane and Isabelle, the young couple a few rows in front of me, quickly motioned for me to join them and we turned the whole experience into equal parts MST3K and sleepover in a theatre, one that made it all so much better for having not been renovated since the launch of the Ford Edsel. It had the adequate vibe for such a movie.

Yes, I am coming to the movie itself. The Lift concerns a string of gruesome incidents happening in and around an elevator in a hip building of Amsterdam. The device’s manufacturer sends a tech who, helped by an intrepid lady reporter, finds that the problem might require more than turning it on and off again. Yes, boys and girls, this is a movie where — SPOILERS, BE WARNED — the main antagonist is a sentient elevator with homicidal urges.

The thing is… it’s not bad. The fact I knew exactly nought of the cast, the dubbing was synced by Helen Keller’s pet spaniel, and the lack of budget was quite apparent all came together to make me look past all the short-comings and just enjoy watching super-tech guy deliberately enter the killing shaft knowing full well that the infernal machine wants him dead. I mean, I would have cut the power then drop a few molotovs in there, but the dude just wants to go wrench vs microchip with the murder machine. And I say let him because I was having a great time.

Since The Lift is a small film produced with little money and no name to put on the marquee, writer-director Dick Maas didn’t hold back and avoids at every turn cheating the viewer out of a thrill. If you think a kill is gonna happen and in a certain way, it will. He’s not playing around, and that’s what makes it fun. And makes it the exact kinda of movie this site was created for: a little gem of a cult classic that any film buff worthy of that moniker needs to watch if only once. And I mean THIS one, not the American remake with name actors (Naomi Watts, Ron Perlman, Micheal Ironside) that Maas himself produced and directed in 2001. That version tried to be good, and it’s just bleh. Also, the distributor felt that the remake’s title, Down, might generate juvenile innuendos, and thus released it on home video under a more mature title: The Shaft.

Truth be told, I was quite hesitant to watch The Lift again, even if it’s now copyright-free and thus easy to find on YouTube, for fear of ruining that special evening I spent in a screening room with two awesome humans whom I never saw again. But for the sake of writing this review, I did, and aside from the fact that the film literally SMELLS like the early 1980s, I’m happy to say I quite enjoyed revisiting and not only for the nostalgia factor.

As for Red Heat, the much bigger-budgeted movie of that double-bill, I honestly remember little if anything about. One thing for sure, it didn’t have a killer elevator, and that’s just a shame.

Intermission!

• I don’t care if it’s just a set (it wasn’t…) and how much the acting gig pays, I would NOT, EVER stick my in an open elevator shaft.
• Toupees do make for great toys. No wonder Burt Reynolds hated kids!
• Elevator peek-a-boo, hours of fun for the unattended young child whose mom is banging her husband’s partner in his office.
• Look (no pun intended), blind people use their cane on the floor to make sure there is one, not to check for air speed.
• Seriously, there’s already a bunch of built-in innuendos with an elevator movie, was it necessary to have the reporter lady make sexual references every time she speaks? “This elevator does things it shouldn’t…” “I’ve done things I shouldn’t!” We GET IT already!
• Goo makes computers sentient. And dislikes wrenches.
• Seriously, I thought tech guy was James Darren circa TJ Hooker.
• Very disappointed that no one makes the “shhh” sound to have the elevator doors open Star Trek-style.