The Lift (1983)

Hey, guys, are you ready... (pff.) Are, are you ready to, uh... (PFFF. Heh, heh.) Are you... Are you ready to go on a ride? (PFFFFT. Heh. Heh. Heheheh. Hehhh... …) … Heh.

BAAHAHA!!!!!!!HAHAHAHAHAHHHHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!1111

“The Lift” is the first foreign film we're gonna be covering. Now that I look at the state of things as they are, I honestly wish I had researched foreign B-movies a little more before opening up shop here at Cinemartyr. American flicks make up the majority of what we're going to be looking at through 2013, so the rare foreign films that slip through the cracks are pretty fun for me to pick apart. A source of pride for the Netherlands, “The Lift” is frequently mentioned as one of the best Dutch horror films of all time. It definitely doesn't stack up to modern horror films in some ways, but it does in several others.

The film opens with some pretty cool interior shots of the titular elevator set to lo-fi synthesizer music. This opening garners a very dark, soulless feel and it's quite effective. However, as a result of one of the strangest cuts in cinematic history, we're suddenly introduced to a quartet of feisty middle-aged people celebrating their recent marriages. As a result of the magic of bad dubbing, it seems as though they had all taken a ton of nitrous oxide: the four of them unable to keep from laughing uncontrollably at any given offhanded “joke” that comes from their mouths as they get into the elevator to humbly offer themselves up as the first victims of the movie. The ominous music from the introduction makes a return for quite a dark yet cheesy effect.

Directly after, we're introduced to our stubborn protagonist, Felix Adelaar (Huub Stapel), enjoying the next morning with his family. Remember how I alluded to the bad dubbing in the film's introduction? This scene is where it really kicks into high gear. There are endless moments of fun to be had with the dubbing; however, I can say as I'm typing this without a shadow of a doubt that the most hilarious failures occur as we observe the Adelaars. Shortly after Felix is called into work, his son asks him to fix his toy truck; the little boy receives a cold, flat and obviously-scripted “Daddy has no time for your ambulance” in response.

Calling the police would seem to be an
appropriate response to a vehicular
break-in, but finding the intruder
delightfully quirky is another option
you could go for, I suppose.

After we're introduced to a few minor characters, Felix begins working on the elevator. Shortly thereafter, he is rudely interrupted by Mieke (Willeke van Ammelrooy), an over-eager journalist who insists that he tell her everything he knows about what's going on. Felix initially finds the woman irritating and intrusive. After his shift, he walks out to his car, only to find Mieke sitting patiently in the passenger's seat. Instead of assertively demanding her to “get the fuck out of my car” like most human beings would do, Felix suddenly seems to appreciate her obnoxious, straightforward attitude and the two team up in order to discover more about the elevator of doom. This doesn't prove to be the easiest task in the world – faced with a corrupt boss who wants Felix to stay out of the company affairs and a suspicious wife (Josine van Dalsum) who assumes that Felix is having an affair with Mieke, the man is given quite a plate of challenges to work with. Once the second act is over, you really feel as if there's no hope for this poor guy. I really like that.

"He went to town on her with a chainsaw;
Black and Decker, I think it was. Split her
right down the middle. I skipped lunch
that day. You could understand why."

As I said, the dubbing plays an essential part in what makes “The Lift” what it is. I don't know what company dubbed the English adaptation of the flick, but it is extraordinarily evident that they FAILED. However, this isn't a bad thing, because the dubbing team failed on such an astronomical level that it's impossible not to laugh out loud at both the obviously-scripted dialogue and the characters' largely indifferent emotional responses to it. When I got into B-movies, I never thought that I would be swept into a world where a detective can describe a woman's gruesome chainsaw murder with a bemusing air of happiness, only to have the people he's speaking to indifferently nod their heads. I never thought that I would see a woman tempting a man sexually during a shift at work, his only response being a flat, “We must use discretion.” This is the pinnacle of awe-inducing wonderment, people. Seriously.

The directing, and especially the cutting, is really crazy. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that director Dick Maas is stricken with a combination of extreme clinical depression and Tourette's Syndrome. There's one scene where Felix visits one of his ex-coworkers. The man has been thrown into a mental hospital due to the stresses of working on the demonic elevator. As Felix speaks to him, we hear the incoherent ramblings of mental patients in the background, which adds a bit of unintentional humor to the scene. The walls are painted white, the lighting isn't the greatest, and the quality of the video itself is rather low. It really feels as though Maas is on the set going through a bout of depression. Very suddenly (and this is where the Tourette's kicks in), one of the mental patients begins playing a saxophone loudly and terribly. Felix's co-worker then freaks out like there's no tomorrow, and the entire scene crescendos to a level of sheer insanity that I can't even begin to describe on paper. After that, the scene abruptly cuts back to the silence that permeates the majority of the movie. That sounds ridiculously disorienting, right? Well, there are a lot of cuts like that in this film. “The Lift” features an almost infinite catalog of scenes that combine the best facets of the two contrasting worlds of insanity and aptitude in order to create really startling, bizarre shit, and it is absolutely wonderful.

Finally, what would an evil elevator movie be without an evil elevator? “The Lift” certainly doesn't hold back with its brutal elevator-related horror imagery. When the second victim is taken, the man falls down the elevator shaft, but the movie doesn't go over the top and give you a visual of his demise. Instead, it simply allows you to lay back and enjoy the man's horrible screaming, along with a beautiful symphony of grating, bone-crushing noises from hell. Later, at the cinematic climax, we get a great action-driven sequence complete with awesome interior shots. It's also worth mentioning that the soundtrack I've been alluding to here and there was composed using only two keyboards: a Roland Juno-6 and a Roland Jupiter-8. As a musician and artist, I can't stress enough what an amazing feat that is. Go watch any given movie in your local theater right now: I guarantee you that the soundtrack will consist of licensed tracks, orchestras and an endless array of sound effects; and theater movies tend to cost upwards of ten million dollars to produce. This man created a proper soundtrack using two household devices. Bra-vo.

I wish I had a Verboden Toegang
where I live. All we get in America is
CVS and Walgreens.

Given that it's a movie about a killer elevator, “The Lift” is way better than it deserves to be. Complete with a compelling protagonist, settings that make excellent use of every last cent of the low budget, a proper soundtrack composed using only 2 keyboards, and dubbing that is so horrendously awful it can be considered a small miracle, the movie carries a broodingly dark atmosphere that would easily weigh down a directing team with less talent. On top of that, “The Lift” is not afraid to reach out and slap you in the face with provocative, intentional humor once in a while. Truly impressive stuff.