Cellar Dweller

Watched August 4, 2013

1988
Starring: Debrah Mullowney, Brian Robbins, Yvonne De Carlo

In the 1950s, a cartoonist is working in his basement studio on a comic. He is referencing a satanic book, and is drawing the description of the demon from the book. Quickly he realizes that his drawings are coming to life and the demon is real! A woman appears from the pages of his comic and the cartoonist watches the demon destroy the woman, then the demon comes after the cartoonist.

Jump to modern day 1980s, the cartoonist's house has been turned into an artists retreat. Whitney (Debrah Mullowney) is a cartoonist who has been admitted to the retreat, even though the head of the house looks down on cartooning as not a real art. Whitney runs into Amanda (Pamela Bellwood) who is a rival from college. Amanda does conceptual video art and still has a grudge with Whitney. The cellar is off limits, but one night Whitney is compelled to go down there. She intantly loves it and asks Mrs. Briggs (Yvonne de Carlo) is she can move her studio down there. Mrs. Briggs reluctantly agrees and Whitney gets to cleaning up the very dirty cellar. Quickly she moves some dust around, adds some flowers and her new studio is ready to go.

Whitney is inspired to draw a demon that she has never drawn before. Amanda secretly films her and sets up a video that frames Whitney as plagiarizing her artwork. While Amanda is editing the film together she is eaten by a the demon. Lisa (Miranda Wilson) is a performance artist and she shares a piece with dolls and stabbing balloons. Quickly Whitney is taken over with drawing the demon, and her comics keep happening. She quickly realizes that she is drawing murders and she has to stop the demon. All the artist are either killed by the demon or drawn into his dimension. The demon begins to create his own comics, so Whitney doesn't know what to do. She spills some white out and the demon is stopped. Then she grabs all the comics and burns them. This destroys the demons, but she also had drawings of all the other artists at the colony and she kills them too. 

Whitney freehand inks her comics, which is pretty impressive. She really grinds that ink on the page. I like movies about cartooning because my husband is a cartoonist as well as many of my friend and they always try to make it seem more glamorous than it really is. I really liked Lisa's terrible dance performance art piece. Phillip also does terrible minimalist art. I like it as a simple and fun horror concept with my favorite type of people, weirdo artists.