Written By: Jase Marsiglia
If you lived in the Detroit area of Michigan in the late 80s or early 90s, WXON TV20 and FOX50 were the networks on the dial to switch between if you wanted your horror fix on Saturdays. As a young kid, this was how I consumed a lot of my horror cinema in those days.
But one film always eluded me. I only remember it airing three times, and I only ever caught it in full once. The film, I would later learn, was called "Cellar Dweller", a 1988 creature feature shot in Rome during the final days before the collapse of Charles Band’s Empire Pictures.
Directed by make up FX master John Carl Buechler and written by "Child’s Play" creator and writer Don Mancini (who removed his name from the film for the pseudonym “Kit Dubois”), the film involved a Necronomicon like book that unleashed a “part werewolf, part vampire” creature who makes short work of its unwitting conjurer, played by Empire regular Jeffrey Combs, in a cold open cameo.
(Image courtesy of VHS Collector.com)
Combs played Colin Childress, an EC style comic book artist who, inspired by the ancient tome’s eerie calligraphic warnings, sketches the beast attacking a nightie clad “damsel in distress.” He’s horrified when the hairy brute magically appears behind him, “damsel” in tow, gnashing his hungry jaws.
Zip ahead thirty years, and aspiring comic book artist Whitney Taylor (played by Debrah Farentino of daytime soap Capitol, who appears to be having fun here) arrives at the cabin Childress once owned, now converted into an art colony. It is headed by the shrewd Mrs. Briggs, played by Mrs. Munster herself, Yvonne De Carlo.
Briggs doesn’t appreciate Whitney’s dream of resurrecting the Cellar Dweller comics of her youth, both because she finds it creepy and inappropriate to idolize “a murderer” (the deaths of Childress and the unknown girl thirty years earlier were written off by authorities as a murder suicide), and because she believes “funny books” are for amateurs. This sentiment is shared by one of the other artists, a snide former competitor of Whitney’s named Amanda, played by Pamela Bellwood of Dynasty, where uppity cats sharpened their claws throughout the 80s.
The oddball cast of characters take a liking to Whitney as we’re introduced to Philip, the abstract expressionist painter (Brian Robbins of C.H.U.D. II and Head of the Class), a no nonsense pulp novelist (Vince Edwards of Ben Casey), and the hilariously spacey Lisa (Miranda Wilson of Days of Our Lives), an interpretive dancer whose “death knell” performance (“Death is SAD!”) is one of the film’s funnier moments.
So, we have a motley crew of characters, an isolated location, and a hulking, snarling, wonderfully articulated mechanical rubber suit werewolf creature (played by longtime Buechler FX pal Michael S. Deak) to munch on all of them, gaining strength from their imbibed creativity. It has all the earmarks of the 80s horror cookbook, complete with splashing gore, flesh eating, eyeball slurping, a gratuitous shower scene, a meaty beheading, and some fun, pulpy illustrations by comic artist Frank Brunner, himself a high profile catch who illustrated everything from Warren Publishing’s Creepy, Eerie, and Vampira magazines to a lengthy stint drawing Marvel’s Doctor Strange through the early to mid 70s.
WATCH THE ORIGINAL TRAILER FOR "CELLAR DWELLER" BELOW
I finished the film, was suitably entertained by the carnage, and never saw it again.
No one I knew had ever heard of it either, and it’s no wonder why. When Empire Pictures folded, any films yet to be released were hastily dumped to video, like "Elvira: Mistress of the Dark", "Catacombs", and eventually "Cellar Dweller". To say it was even a cult hit would be a stretch. Not even the early days of IMDb had much information about it, and those early days of the internet weren’t quite the labyrinth of archives they are now, so even images from the film were scarce.
So where did it go? It was never really lauded by horror journalists, and though it was featured on the cover of Fangoria’s 71st issue in February of 1988, reviews were lukewarm at best. Cellar Dweller was never given the fighting chance it deserved and seemed to disappear into VHS obscurity.
…until thirteen years later, when I decided to hunt it down once and for all.
Why so long? Well, when you’re a kid with no car or license, you have to rely on your elders, and spending an afternoon driving from one video store to another to hunt down a flick they weren’t particularly interested in wasn’t exactly how they pictured their Saturday.
It was the summer of 2003, and "Freddy vs. Jason" had roared into theaters. My buddy Brian and I had to huff it nearly out of state to see it, as the Northeast Blackout caused by a software malfunction at FirstEnergy had blanketed seven states and a swath of Ontario in sticky, sweaty, late summer darkness. I remember standing in my driveway late one night and barely being able to see my hand in front of my face. It felt like being at the bottom of a well.
It may have been a week before the lights and A/C kicked back on, and during that time Brian and I recalled a conversation we’d had on the drive home from "Freddy vs. Jason". The rush of nostalgia for the horror icons of our childhood had reignited a need to revisit other films from our youth. I mentioned "Cellar Dweller", and he surprisingly knew exactly what I was talking about, even describing the scene where a character’s head is essentially “bitch slapped” from his shoulders by the hairy creature.
He hadn’t seen it in years either, and it felt like the perfect holy grail to hunt for.
So on August 23rd, 2003, we met up bright and early, jumped into my car, and hauled ass. It had to be out there somewhere, and we were determined to find it. We went everywhere. We scoured the metro Detroit area, squealing into parking lots, charging into stores, beelining straight for the horror sections, wandering aisle after aisle looking for that New World Video cassette featuring a sexy pair of women’s legs in fishnet stockings descending a staircase, only to be grabbed by the ankle by a hairy, clawed hand.
“The shape of nightmares to come,” it warned.
We must have entered and exited over two dozen video stores. Cold caffeine in our blood. The sound of shopkeeper bells ringing in our ears.
But no luck. No one had it.
What we gradually realized was that VHS had been shoved into despondent corners of stores, if not tossed into dumpsters altogether. Worse, these institutions of our childhood were dying. Too often, we were the only customers inside. Clerks either greeted us with happy surprise or glanced up from a paperback or ballgame behind the counter and offered a tired nod. No “welcome,” no “can we help you find anything.”
Everyone seemed to know the writing was on the wall. No one was making these little side quests anymore. Whatever heart once beat inside those stuffy, cigarette smelling stores was dying like embers behind sun bleached posters of new releases.
And "Cellar Dweller" had dissolved with them.
I still remember the place that had it when I was a kid. The Video Zone. Sandwiched between a Little Caesars Pizza and a laundromat in a small plaza in Dearborn Heights. We checked there early on. The horror section was now mostly DVDs of newer titles, cases displayed outward instead of the spine packed shelves of its heyday. When the clerk pointed to a small corner near the ADULTS ONLY room that held the last of their VHS, we practically leapt over the center aisles to get there.
But no "Cellar Dweller".
The day ended in disappointment. Don’t get me wrong, anyone my age who remembers the thrill of the hunt knows that spending an afternoon with someone who shares your obsession is part of the fun. Browsing lurid VHS box art, reliving weekends past when this was everything, that was the adventure. It was just easier back then to come away with what you were looking for.
Now, in 2026, I can happily say "Cellar Dweller" has found its audience again.
In 2013, Scream Factory released it on DVD as part of their All Night Horror Marathon line alongside "The Dungeonmaster", Catacombs, and "Contamination .7". In 2015, it hit Blu ray paired with "Catacombs" as a Scream Factory double feature. Then in 2023, the film received the royal treatment in Arrow Video’s Enter the Video Store: Empire of Screams Collector’s Set, featuring a new widescreen 2K restoration, new grading, an audio commentary by Michael Deak, tributes to John Carl Buechler, career retrospectives, rare VHS trailers, still galleries, art cards, sales sheets, and a double sided fold out poster.
Hell, it even got a segment on "In Search of Darkness Part II", where Don Mancini and Jeffrey Combs express amused disbelief that people not only remember the film, but celebrate it.
No small feat for a forgotten movie.
As for me, I own all these copies, and yes, I eventually tracked down the New World Video VHS purely for nostalgia. "Cellar Dweller" is silly, gory, and charming. The monster looks like a grinning, overgrown mogwai and is oddly endearing as he licks blood from his fingers and smiles after slurping back an eyeball.
But that was always its charm.
It was never just about an elusive childhood scare or even the laughs it gives me now. "Cellar Dweller" represents the last gasp of 80s horror before the party ended. It was the perfect film for my last true video hunt. Something not readily available. Something time forgot. Something worth chasing when the chase mattered as much as the find.
The film is nearly forty years old, and it still inspires new memories. If that’s not a gift, what is?
For John Carl Buechler (1952–2019).
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