The Cellar is a bland little flick from the 80’s directed by Kevin Tenney. I loved his Night of the Demons flicks, but this flick is not in the same ballpark. This movie is about a family that moves into an old house in the desert. There is a long commentary at the beginning that talks about an evil spirit that dwells in a tunnel below this house. Well, this spirit occasionally manifests itself to frighten the little boy staying in the house and to pick off a stray secondary character. Toss in a morality story about the son and father and throw in some Indian clichés and you have The Cellar.

The acting in this movie was good, but I felt the storyline itself was uninteresting and not entirely worthy of a movie. You have the tired “cry wolf” device which also makes a cameo. No nudity and no gore that I can recall rounds this out.

The monster was boring too and I wasn’t real sure what his rules for movement were, and why he couldn’t just go upstairs and nosh on the family. I don’t know, maybe they laid those rules out and I wasn’t paying attention.

There is one development that made me laugh in its cruel unfolding. The guy’s boss was giving the guy’s son a hard time through a lot of the film. The father had enough and decided to get the boss back and also teach his son a lesson about making a stand. The main guy detonates an explosion in a little pond and the water totally soaks the boss as he drives by. The father and son share a moment and laugh as the soaked boss screams and yells. To the surprise of nobody but the father, he is shitcanned on the spot. The father then goes into a deep dark violent spiral of depression through the rest of the movie. Nice lesson.

To summarize, this movie wasn’t very interesting. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t real captivating. I give it 4 out of 10 Tenney movies that could have benefited from Angela.