The Lift (1983)

Keep in mind that this low budget film was made for a dutch audience, and was only released internationally because of it's tremendous success in the Netherlands.

The english voices are horrible! I was able to see this version when I visited the US and found it in a small-town video store. The english voices pretty much ruined the movie.

This is no reason to give the movie a low rating however, since the movie in it's original form was an amazing breakthrough in Dutch film making. This movie's rating would be much higher if it was only rated by it's intended, dutch audience.

Fmovies: Foreign horror movies are something to take notice of. In "De Lift", it's worth the watch. Dick Mass has put up a masterpiece that is reassuring and intriguing at the same time. Here you have a elevator in a very big building with one sinister secret. During a dinner party, four guests are very drunk and they go in the elevator to their rooms. However, it stops midway, and the guests begin to overheat.Fortunately, they do get rescued and sent to the hospital. The mechanic Felix(Huub Stapel), takes a look at the building and check it out from top to bottom for flaws. He finds none. But he's still curious about it. After checking it out, another tragedy strikes. Then there's the guard who lost his head. Felix's obsession with the lift gains the attention of a reporter(Willeke von Ammelrooy) who followed up on him. His obsession with the lift has put a strain on the marriage. Which would lead to the company he works for. A super chip has given the computer to give life which proves to be fatal. A very intriguing film. Fun to watch. Recommended for the rainy day times. 3 out of 5 stars

So i was in a second hand movie store looking for a good silly, foreign overdubbed film.

The Lift caught my eye. The cover of the movie exclaims "Take the stairs, take the stairs, for god's sake please take the stairs"

How can you lose?

Seeing this movie for the first time was kind of strange. The lighting is really dark, but the overdubs are good.

The film holds ground nicely, save one part where our hero is talking to a scientist about chips that reproduce themselves, where the word "chip" was used around 30 times in a 2 minute scene.

The hero of the story is rather well scripted, kind of cold, and cool.

The music is kind of strange also, not really complimenting anything, but making the scenes stranger.

I did end up buying the hour and a half movie, as it is a must see for any fan of silly horrors such as Evil Dead, or Dawn of the dead.

The Lift fmovies. A superb Dutch film, with truly suspenseful moments! Nothing is quite so sinister as stretches of silence in movies, especially when they accompany Hitchcockian (which is to say here, predictable) suspense sequences. From the moment you read the synopsis, and figure that a film about bewitched microchips cannot expect to be taken seriously, you'd be forgiven for laughing at yourself for even contemplating seeing the film. However, If you're like me, and you consider that music, background noise, post-production, lipsynching, subliminal messaging goes too far in films, rendering terrible scenes risibly hyperactive, then you'll get off on the real-time sparsity of effects used here. Each delay to the denouement, agonisingly adds to the deathtoll. Is this going to change the world? Would a suspiciously murderous lift, in the real world? Tell the director, I'd like to see more.

"De Lift" is, as horror/thriller goes, a movie that is more than decent. Huub Stapel is convincing as the mechanic, who is desperate to solve the puzzle. His determination to make an end to the terror is apparent.

The special effects could have been better, if it had been made in 2002. But remember you are watching a movie from 1983! The shock effects, however, are up to Dick Maas' usual superb standard. There is not much gore, but to me that is an asset, not a defect. The less they show you, the more your imagination will kick in, and that usually makes uglier scenes than any director could believably depict. Do try to find the original with UK subtitles though, if you watch any synchronized movie, a lot of the quality gets lost, things like sarcasm, irony, annoyance, and amazement won't come through. Neither will the play on words, for that usually isn't understood by the translators, or they cannot find the right substitute. If, like me, you like this movie, you will like Dick Maas' absolute master piece: Amsterdamned. Although some of the jokes, are for Dutch-aholics only.

De Lift was for me, as a 14 year old boy, very scary. The music, the cast, and the special effects, it was terrifieng, but I loved it. But the first scene, when Liz Snooyink is having sex, is typical Dutch. Not nice. I mean, is the sex-scene needful for the story? No. Another thing that was not really good, was that Huub Stapel's character is getting in a divorce, because his wife thinks that he's sleeping with another women. Dick Maas (the director) doesn't show how it ends with his wife. But Holland can be proud of such a scary movie, that's for sure!!