The next tape off the pile was my recently acquired copy of Dick Maas' 1983 flick
The Lift. It's been over thirty years
since Chucky told me about it during the 1990 broadcast of the
Horror Hall of Fame, and I'm ashamed to say it has taken me this long to get around to it. But here we are.
An elevator repairman (Huub Stapel) finds himself mixed up in an investigation of several deaths involving a new office building lift.
The Lift is a delight. I mean I was expecting something amusing just based on the premise, but boy does this film overcrank on the quirk with just the list of character names alone making me smile - Speckingood, Vink, Speakerman, Ravenstein et al. At the opening credits, the cast list went on and on, most ending up just being meat to feed the elevator. Stapel is your average working class dude with a wife and kids. I don't think I've ever seen an elevator repairman as the lead in a movie. I wonder if he got his diploma from one of those ads you used to
see on late night TV in the eighties...
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| Hugh Stapel as Felix in The Lift. |
This movie has a lot of prophetic things to say about microchips, but we haven't “quite” gotten to synthetic organs yet (we're too busy building AI robots). I found how this all plays out decidedly more interesting than the demonic shinanegans of Poltergeist III. The Lift is also shot really well. For instance take this fucking banger of a transition!
It's been a while since I've watched an old-fashioned dubbed film and it was half the fun. This movie has the best random background conversations this side of Pieces -
Things like Felix's wife collecting bottle caps to win a trip being rooted in her desire to leave her inattentive husband was pretty wild. Anyway, it all concludes with an extended Man vs Lift sequence that really goes for it. I don't know if 250,000 people actually get stuck in Dutch elevators every year (that's like a lot, like fix your fucking shit - a lot) but it certainly does nothing to alleviate anyone's fear of elevators.
So, The Lift doesn't really have the big city set pieces that Maas' other exports Amsterdamned and Prey feature, but it is still a fun yarn to be sure.
