The Attic (1980)

 

It's nothing personal against them, but I don't usually feel the urge to write about mainstream movies. I figure everybody in the world will be writing about The Dark Knight for eons to come so there's not much I could add. Plus, well... I think most of 'em stink. There’s some credit to be given where it’s due, but you’ll find me in front of the television screen watching fifty-year-old trash more often than you’ll find me in the movie theater.

 

Christ, has it really been 50 years since 1970? Hang on, let me grab my Metamucil.

I like to write about obscure films sane people don't watch, that way nobody ever finds out I have no idea what I'm talking about. I am sneaky. Thing is, sometimes a movie is obscure for a reason. Sometimes I feel I'm contributing to the apocalypse by digging up that which should have remained buried. Anyway, our subject today lurks on the flip side of my beloved Crawlspace DVD. I'd never heard of it, but Crawlspace is a wonderfully mean-spirited and creepy movie (which I'll surely review eventually) and the "Thirteen steps to TERROR!" tagline called to me. I never would have found Fido if I hadn't tormented myself with the criminally execrable Day of the Dead remake, so you never know until you try, right? Let's toss it in the player, how bad could it be?

Time stopped.

THE ATTIC

This festering twenty-ton lump of greasy goat shit clocks in at an hour and forty-one minutes and makes sure you feel every goddamn one of 'em go by. The Attic is a torturous exercise in pure tedium that absolutely refuses to get to the point. Or to the freakin' attic. I waited... oh, how long I waited... to find out what was in the damn attic. I mean the movie's CALLED The Attic, so you'd think there'd be an attic in there somewhere. Right? Or maybe a door to an attic as some grim foreshadowing? The film's tagline is "Thirteen steps to TERROR!" so how about a spooky staircase leading upward to an attic? Or a house that looks large enough from the outside to even have an attic? Hello? Is there an attic in the house?

Sorry, got a little carried away. Truth is, after over an hour and a half of watching uninteresting people stand around and snivel in a most uninteresting manner, all I had to hang onto was the fact that I hadn't seen the attic yet. I told myself there just had to be something wicked cool waiting in that attic that would make this whole babbling boreathon worth enduring. So I sat with grim resolve, minute to excruciating minute. I don't know why I listened to myself, I know what a liar I am. You'd think I'd have learned to tell myself to fuck off by now.

The plot is... well, mostly absent. Uninteresting and unlikable chick hates her uninteresting yet exceedingly more likable wheelchair-bound father. His is the rare case of the Designated Villain™ and we're supposed to get a Nathan Grantham Creepshow vibe going on here, but dad is the most sympathetic character in the whole movie. As for our heroine, I'd have strangled her - for the first five minutes anyway. After that it was impossible to care enough about her to expend the energy required to end her miserable life. Anyway Uninteresting Chick (hereafter dubbed UC) is pining for her dead, or maybe missing, or maybe run off - I seriously have no idea - husband. And she pines. And pines. And pines some more. After about ten minutes of pining, we get to meet Uninteresting Dad (Or UD as he shall henceforth be known). UD's a cripple and needs UC to go grocery shopping, whereupon she fantasizes about poisoning him. Yeah, UD is a right bastard for trying to get some food in the house. It's even shown shortly later that he does the cooking; he just needs the raw materials. Yes, folks, this is the tyrannical grocery-demanding patriarch that is contributing to UC's mental instability. Might be the first time I've seen a negative trait as an Informed Attribute™. Well, just go with it. We have more difficult roads to travel still ahead.

It is now time for the plot's lunch break and it will be back in about an hour or so. UC has some very long, very uninteresting conversations with her Uninteresting Friend (UF). UC pines for Uninteresting Absent Husband (UAH) some more. UC talks with UF about Uninteresting Friend's Uninteresting Mother (UFUM). UC pines for UAH. The attic remains conspicuous by its absence. UD bakes UC a cake to make up for something the movie doesn't bother to address, and UC fantasizes about smooshing it in his face. At the library where UC and UF work, Uninteresting Chick's Uninteresting Elderly Coworker (UCUEC) retires leading into a twelve-minute-long uninteresting snivelfest between UC and UF about UD and UFUM respectively, leading into much pining for UAH. Oh, and there's a monkey.

Now here we set the stage for the film's one and only (and I do mean only) shining moment. UF gives UC a Slightly Less Uninteresting But Far More Irritating Monkey. UD reacts badly to UC bringing home a SLUBFMIM, as one of the first things the creature does is break his only pair of glasses. But UD's the bad guy, so UC calls him some nasty but uninteresting names, and then fantasizes about...

Wait for it...

She fantasizes that her monkey has grown up into a guy wearing a sorry-ass looking gorilla suit, who then beats her father up!

If this movie has a reason for existing, it's to prove my theory that no film can be so soul-crushingly rotten that a bad monkey suit can't perk things up for a few seconds. Out of nowhere (and I do mean nowhere), joy incarnate! Sadly, the scene is a shot glass of water in the desert. Wonderfully refreshing, but all too brief.

Following these few delicious seconds, everything stops again with an audible screech. Hey, we're way past the one-hour mark, wasn't there supposed to be an attic around here somewhere? Hm, guess not. Anyway SLUBFMIM breaks some more shit and "suspiciously" isn't there when UC comes home.

Here the filmmaker realized he'd put something perilously close to entertainment value into his movie, so to make amends UC spends the next fifteen minutes pining for UAH and SLUBFMIM! Nonstop! Everyone else drops completely out of the picture and we're left alone in the company of someone so loathsome that we want to shove her head in wet cement. And she pines and she pines and she pines. Not that 'pines' means doing anything. She just pines. That's it. Did I mention she pines?

At exactly one hour and twenty-seven minutes, the plot puts out its cigarette and comes back inside. In an uninteresting park, we suddenly learn that UD actually can walk (don't ask me), so UC shoves him down a very uninteresting gentle hillside, killing him. UC then goes home, unimpeded by either the uninteresting police or any of the uninteresting people that were swarming the park where she killed UD in broad daylight.

But hey that's okay. Because not only are we that much closer to the end credits, when UC goes home she (for no reason whatsoever) heads straight to the...

Wait for it...

YES! THE ATTIC!! At one hour and thirty-six minutes WE HAVE FINALLY GOTTEN TO THE FUCKING ATTIC! I MADE IT! SCREW YOU, MOVIE!!

Ahem.

So we got five minutes left to find out what's in the attic. UC walks around doing absolutely nothing verrrrrrrrrry sloooooooooowly for four of them. Then, as the last seconds tick down, UC discovers the body of SLUBFMIM in a trunk and the mummified corpse of UAH in a closet. Roll possibly the most longed for credits of all time.

Have you ever wondered what it might be like to have your brain cavity stuffed with Velveeta cheese? An hour and forty-one minutes equals six thousand and sixty seconds. I have exactly twenty-seven teeth. I breathe somewhere around nine hundred and seventy-four breaths per hour. One of my ears sits just a little higher than the other one. Damn there's a lot of cat hair on my pants. Mmmm... Skettios.

*shakes head* Oh, is it over? Thank god. Now I've seen some weary fucking movies, but rarely have I ever seen one capable of evoking a state of genuine ennui. Nothing happens. Nobody's likeable. Nobody's interesting. We can't care enough about these people to fantasize their grisly demises (a favorite sport of mine, works on friends too). We just want them to go away. Our heroine is absolute worst of the lot. The marriage of actress and script gave unholy seed to something so monotonous, hateful, whiny, pathetic, and devastatingly tiresome that spending five minutes in her company is nothing short of torturous, let alone over an hour and a half. Not even the joy that is a shitty gorilla costume can make up for the life we've wasted on this horrid woman.

I know I've been belaboring the running time, but in these situations time becomes a startlingly relevant issue. If you find yourself staring this one down (say because you lost a nasty bet or owe your soul to someone) just keep it together long enough to get through the first ten minutes and then skip ahead to 1:27. It'll still be horrid, but you'll have seen the entire movie and have an extra hour and a half to do something fun with. Like bash your testicles with a claw hammer.

Final Rating: One half star for giving the gorilla his own credit.