The Lift/Frankenweenie

Thanks to the ingenuity of horror-film makers, the face of evil has inhabited nearly every form known to man. We’ve had all kinds of killer animals—from sharks to spiders to giant rabbits (really—doesn’t anyone remember The Night of the Lepus?).

We’ve also seen machines go mad—haunted houses are full of them, and there’s Christine, the killer car, and, since 2001, a slew of demonic computers. Even the lowest forms of existence have found themselves endowed with diabolical intent. Think of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and you see this thing has gone about as far as it can go.

But not quite. Along comes a Dutch film called The Lift and you realize there are a few curves left in the format. The terrorizer in question is an elevator in a high-rise office building.

Apparently the elevator’s control system, ruled by microchips, has taken on a life and consciousness of its own. It starts playing mean tricks on some of its bewildered occupants—luring a blind man to step into an open shaft, asphyxiating a group of late-night carousers. One poor soul, innocently sticking his head into the shaft one day, is surprised by the elevator, which comes streaking down from above, murder on its mind—or at least on its microchips.

The hero of this tale is the elevator engineer (Huub Stapel), who tries to find out the source of the foul-up—but encounters mysterious opposition from his bosses.

It’s a rather silly story, redeemed by writer-director Dick Maas’s sense of humor about the whole thing. He makes sure the film has an absurd tone, even when the elevator is up to its mayhem.

Playing with The Lift—and overshadowing it for originality—is a 25-minute short called Frankenweenie, a lovely version of Frankenstein set in modern suburbia. It’s about a little boy (Barrett Oliver) whose dog, Sparky, is run over by a car. The kid’s determined not to lose Sparky, however, and improvises an electrical system in the attic of his house (the parents are played by Shelley Duvall and Daniel Stern). He harnesses lightning with the TV antenna in an attempt to revive Sparky—a hilarious updating of the similar scene in Frankenstein.

It’s a funny little vignette, affectionately directed by Tim Burton. The black-and-white photography harks back to the original Universal horror classics of the 1930s, but the tone is hip.

Burton made the film for Walt Disney studios, which also produced his animated short Vincent, about a little boy who wants to be Vincent Price, a couple of years ago. In producing such odd shorts, Disney is to be commended. Once upon a time, they were at the vanguard of innovative short-subject production.

First published in the Herald, June 17, 1985

Supposedly Disney fired Burton because his movie was so macabre, so maybe they weren’t to be that commended. The Lift opened at the Egyptian theater and became a local hit. As a reviewer, I hadn’t hit my stride yet, if stride there be.