Directed by John Newland,host/director of 96 episodes of the classic "One Step Beyond",this atmospheric and unforgettable 70's telefilm was a staple of late night television for ages,rarely seen since the big box video era save for the occasional dvd bootleg.Immensely popular among genre crowds,this visit to the horror heyday of the small screen(Gargoyles,Bad Ronald,Satan's School for Girls)uses disturbing images and ideas to maximum result,and still holds much of the same shocks and scares thirty-plus years later.I still catch myself checking behind curtains around my apartment for tiny gremlinesque volcano-headed demonic imps every now and again.
"Some things are better left as they are,"warns Uncle Charlie from "My Three Sons".
Sally Farnum(70's tv staple Kim Darby) has just moved into her grandmother's large country estate with her workaholic husband.The place needs some work,and since Sally is often left to her own devices due to her husband's strenuous work schedule,she supervises the rennovations herself.In her grandfather's study in the basement,she discovers a fireplace,which has oddly been sealed up with iron bars and bricks that run four deep.Despite a cautionary warning from Mr. Harris,the groundskeeper and repairman,she slips downstairs in the middle of the night and opens the huge metal door on the side against his wishes.With the help of a flashlight,she peers down into the chamber with seems impossibly deep for an ordinary fireplace.Mr. Harris abruptly seals up the door the next day and scolds Mrs. Farnum for disturbing the strange door,but offers no real reason for his fear.
Sally(Kim Darby)notices something in the dark more terrifying than her frumpy 70's housecoat.
Before long,Sally is tormented by a series of unexplained visitations by tiny shadows around the estate which her husband,who has just been made a partner in his law firm,shrugs off as nerves.Something knocks an ashtray off of Sally's nighttable,tugs at her skirt,and turns the lights on in the bathroom while she showers,scaring her with a straight razor.Her husband blames Harris for the recent hysterics his wife has been displaying,causing the old man to up and quit on the spot.Alex uses sleeping pills to sedate his wife while he busies himself at work,unaware of the impending danger he unwittingly has put her in the way of.After the interior decorator is tripped on the steps by the demonic imps Sally mistakenly freed by opening the metal door on the side of the fireplace,and lies dead with a broken neck at the foot of the stairs,she is made aware that these "ferocious little animals" have very definite plans for her.
"Saaaaaaaaallllllllly!" whispers a demonic imp(Felix Silla,Twiki of Buck Rogers fame).
Alex receives a slurred phone call from his wife,who has been drugged by the imps,and drives out to Mr. Harris' place to force the old man to come clean about the mysterious fireplace.It turns out that Sally's grandfather opened up that fireplace once before (for the first time since the house was constructed in the 1880s),paying the ultimate price. One night, his wife heard cries and screams from the downstairs study. And something horrible dragged her husband down into the fireplace shaft, and he was never seen again."To this day, I think he's still down there..." warns Mr. Harris.Alex has heard enough and rushes home to rescue his wife from the malevolent beasties,who have roped her up lil' doggie-style and drag her downstairs towards the fireplace,where she will join them forever in body and soul.She sleepily awakes to see the creatures dragging her limp body down the stairs,and clumsily uses a camera flash to temporarily send the demons scurrying for the darkness,as the light hurts their eyes.Alex bursts in to hear a blood-curdling scream,as the imps have dragged his wife into the pitch blackness of their fireplace shaft.At the close,Sally's voice is heard condoling her new partners,who impatiently wait for the next foolish mortal to open the fireplace door,and seal their fate.
The imps scheme and plot in the darkness of the staircase.
If this dark,disturbing dittie does not currently merit a space on your genre dvd shelves,you ought to beg,borrow,or steal to right that gross wrong.It remains,hands down,my favorite made-for-television horror flick of all time and never disappoints.A remake was allegedly in the works some time ago,but all news of it seems to have gone the way of Sally and her grandpa down the fireplace shaft.Newland was a master of the mysterious dating back to the vastly underrated "One Step Beyond" series(run out and grab this box set immediately,as well!),and with this entry,he forever chiseled his name alongside the masters of tv terror(Dan Curtis et al).Felix Silla,one of the demonic dwarves, went on to robotic history as Twikki,Buck Rogers' series pal,who was voiced by Mel Blanc,of Warner Bros cartoon voiceover fame.For its inventively chilling story,effective music by Billy Goldenberg,and highly original Lilliputian creatures from the bowels of hell(the oversized propwork works well too),I give this classic:
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