De Lift [1983]

Although the malevolent lift makes a gruesome villain which would not be out of place in one of Stephen King's technophobe short stories (The Lawnmower Man, Trucks, The Mangler), it is unfortunately left rather uncharacterised. Its early evil-doings suggest a tricky personality exposing the dark side of all those loveably sentient machines in the Herbie series, and the clues to its true nature are neatly enough planted (the traumatised lift man becomes hysterical when a fellow inmate hurls a plateful of unappetising goo at the wall, outlining the protoplasmic shape ultimately revealed by the creature itself). But the actual living heart of the machine is insufficiently monstrous to drive anyone insane, and its creator's final explanation that "it was very sick" is just plain laughable. Dick Maas, however, shows some promise in his handling of the suspense sequences, particularly the old-fashioned finale in which the intrepid Felix enters the lift shaft to confront the ghastly green mess responsible for the murders. All the old gimmicks from Ascenseur pour l'échafaud are trotted out - along with a few new wrinkles, like the deadly counterweight which whizzes by when the machine senses that the end is nigh.

Despite dreadful dubbing, Huub Stapel makes a refreshing change of pace in horror-movie heroes. The cops, reporters, professors and psychiatrists who might be expected to prove their mettle in a crisis are variously ridiculed, leaving the case to be cracked by an ordinary workman with dirty fingernails who is manifestly unable to understand the biochip expert's explanations. The details of Felix's home life are convincing (when his wife leaves him, she takes the bottle tops she is saving for a win-a-holiday competition) but appear to be included only in order to spin a major release out of a story that might have been better told as a B-movie (it has been a runaway box-office success in Holland). The fact that Felix and Mieke do not have an affair might be a clever reversal of expectations, but Saskia's misconclusion is redundant in plot terms and fails to connect on a thematic level with the rest of the film. Nevertheless, The Lift is, for all its flaws, a pleasing addition to the catalogue of Luddite horror films inaugurated by The Forbin Project, Duel and Demon Seed.
KIM NEWMAN

First Published In: Monthly Film Bulletin vol.51 no.601 [February 1984] pp.47-48 [UK]

Visit Kim's Official Website at www.johnnyalucard.com