By Jerry Roberts
October 26, 2002

This is the truth: For years I did not think that The Lift was really a movie. Years before I had heard someone mention a movie about a demonic elevator but thought it was just talk. What a shock when I found it to be a reality.

In the lore of bad horror movies The Lift is a legend and for good reason because any movie about a demonic elevator is hard to forget. Especially with a tagline like: TAKE THE STAIRS!! FOR GOD SAKE TAKE THE STAIRS!!

The Lift takes place in a Dutch skyscraper and opens with four drunk partygoers boarding the elevator and soon beginning to choke from lack of oxygen. They are rescued by the film's dashing hero, Felix who manages to save the obnoxious foursome (who magically manage to sober up before escaping) and brilliantly surmise "There's something wrong with this thing".

Thinking this to have been a freak accident, Felix assumes that the machine is fixed but soon two more people perish at the hands (cables? buttons?) of the wicked Otis. A blind man opens the doors and steps blindly *grin* into the elevator shaft (Man, that shaft's a baaaad mutha!!). The second victim is a security guard who peers down the shaft only to have the doors slam on his neck while the elevator neatly shears his head off. Actually, it's a manniquin, and this provides the movie's silliest moment.

Felix figures out that there may be a problem about an hour after the audience has it all figured out. His revelation is proudly displayed in a series of typical scenes in which he runs around investigating and coming to the slow, very slow conclusion that the elevator has a mind of it's own.

What he turns up is unbelieveably stupid: He figures out that a computer expert named Mr. Chrome has developed a computer chip that can turn anything into an evil entity. Yeah . . . okay. Just in case we missed the point, we get a glimpse of the chip which is dripping with eco-plasm

So, Felix returns to the building, climbs up the elevator shaft and tries beats the chip with a wrench. After a fight with the elevator (yes, there's a battle between man and elevator), he is pulled rescued by a reporter that has been nosing around. BUT! Just as they think that this is a hopeless cause, Mr. Chrome shows up with a machine gun and empties about 40 rounds of ammo into the control panel and proclaims "It was very sick". All three then take the stairs.

In the world of Demonic Everyday Object movies, The Lift is a real curiosity. You sit watching in facination as the movie finds every method possible for the elevator to do away with some unsuspecting passenger. But you can't help concluding that the movie has it's intentions in the right place and it's script up it's . . . shaft.