Twelve-year-old Fool and his family are about to be evicted from the apartment building in the ghetto. His mother has cancer and can't pay the rent. The owners of the building want to tear the place down to build condos, and they are the last family there. He is resigned to the fact until his sisters baby-daddy, Leroy, comes up with a plan. He robbed a liquor store the night before and found out where the owners live because they own the store as well. He found a letter stating that they have a huge stash of gold coins in their house. Fool lets himself be talked into going in to help Leroy steal the coins and save his home.

Written and directed by Wes Craven, this is one of my favorites of his. I saw it years ago on VHS, and just recently found it again on DVD. This movie features the house from hell. No monsters, or poltergeists. Just two homicidal people ready to kill anyone who disrupts their "happy" home.

Happy is a relative term considering there are plenty of other people in the house, but they are all miserable. Almost immediatly after they break in, things go wrong. They become trapped inside with no place to go when "Mommy & Daddy" come back home. With Leroy quickly out of the way, Fool finds himself alone, until he meets some unusual allies.

Wes Craven went all out on this movie. The fortified house is full of booby traps, and surprises. The "Mommy & Daddy" are hilariously amusing, but never over the top. They are completely believeable in their insanity. Someone or something is always after Fool, whether it's Daddy, in a full leather bondage suit, or Prince, the huge, flesh-loving rottweiler. This movie does not slow down.

The makeup effects for the boys looked fantastic. Even the boys that were not featured prominently were done just as well as those that were. Craven did not skimp on anything for this movie. No nudity at all, but a good amount of gore, as can be expected.

While there was an outcry at the time of it's release, I do not see this movie as exploitative, which I think is the reason it took so long for Universal to put it out on DVD. I see it for what it is, a movie about a kid trying to help his family by any means necessary. This movie was released at a time when there was nothing but a cesspool of bad horror movies. I think that thats part of the reason I'm so fond of it. But mostly, it's because I cannot think of any other movie quite like it. It stands on it's own very well, even today.

8 out of 10 teenage cannibals