In a high rise office building in the Netherlands, an elevator repairman named Felix Adelaar (Huub Stapel) is busy trying to solve a mystery. The elevators in this place are now functioning improperly, incapacitating passengers if not killing them outright. Could the cause be some sort of human error, or is something supernatural going on? Felix works the clues in the company of an aggressive, sassy reporter, Mieke de Beer (Willeke van Ammelrooy).

Writer & director Dick Maas ("Amsterdamned") deserves some credit for treating his premise with some measure of restraint. Therefore, it won't be to all tastes. It admittedly comes up a little short in the thrills department, with a slow pace and a talky script. Yet, there are fun moments, such as when an unfortunate security guard is decapitated by an elevator. Also, Stapel is an appealing working-class, Everyman sort of hero, and he has some chemistry with the striking van Ammelrooy. They receive able support from players such as Josine van Dalsum (as Felix's wife),Siem Vroom (as a police inspector),and Hans Veerman (as the boss at "Rising Sun", the electronics company working in tandem with Felix's employers).

The script does possess some passing interest for the way that it touches upon the subject of technological evolution (with computers that used to fill up entire rooms now becoming much more compact, and the advent of computer chips).

"The Lift" is a little light on gore and other exploitable elements, but overall it's fairly entertaining to watch. Maas does pretty well working with the limited budget, and IS expert at crafting suspense, especially the eerie and atmospheric finale with Felix in an elevator shaft. The electronic score (composed by Maas) is likewise a highlight.

One of the set decorators is Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., who 28 years later, directed the prequel to John Carpenters' "The Thing".

Seven out of 10.

The lifts in an office building begin to kill off the occupants. Lift technician Felix Adelaar (Huub Stapel) tries to find out what is causing the trouble and discovers that an experimental bio-tech micro-processor is the problem.

The Lift, by Dutch director Dick Maas, was snapped up by a major studio when it was shown at Cannes in 1984, which is great because it helped give Maas the clout to make more movies, his next horror film being the excellent Amsterdamned (1988). But as important as the film was to Maas' career, The Lift isn't without its faults...

It starts off in fine exploitative style with four people trapped in the titular elevator, one couple making the most if the situation by getting frisky (resulting in some early nudity) before almost being killed by the defective air conditioning. For most of the remaining movie, however, nothing much of interest happens: people run up and down the stairs of the office building, Felix flirts with reporter Mieke (Willeke van Ammelrooy),there's lots of dull talk about micro-processors and relays, Felix and Mieke go bowling with friends, Mieke accuses her husband of adultery, and Felix visits an old work colleague at a sanitarium. None of this is very interesting. The climactic scene in which Felix climbs inside the lift shaft to get to the bottom of the mystery is also frustratingly lacklustre - poorly shot and edited, badly lit, and bereft of excitement.

Even the film's much touted elevator decapitation is weak, a neat idea let down by an unconvincing rubber head (and no blood!).

That said, even with all of its shortcomings, I'm glad the film exists: it served as a practice run for Maas' 2001 movie Down (a remake of The Lift),which is a whole load of fun - if you haven't seen it, and enjoy gloriously daft horror movies, deffo check it out.

This little Dutch chiller is a cut above the rest due to the director's fine ability to maintain suspense throughout what is in reality, a slow-moving and relatively action-less film. The idea of a killer lift is at once laughable, but the makers of this film get over that hurdle by slowly and surely building up tension as the lift takes every opportunity to destroy anything that comes near it. The basic yet powerful music score (composed by the director, Dick Maas) helps to add to the feel of the film, a feeling of unknown terror and evil.

The acting is fine; the dubbing is obvious but doesn't detract in this case. The male lead is more than capable of carrying the role of a lift repair man and is actually quite charismatic; we actually care for him when he's put into danger. The female journalist is surprisingly non-annoying, considering the stereotyped role she fits, and the pair spark together well as an early variation of Mulder and Scully. As for the others, they're more amusing than anything, especially the ill-conceived asylum scene.

The deaths here are mainly off-screen, with one notable exception. A guy gets his head jammed in lift doors, and is then decapitated by the descending lift in one of the evillest, most imaginative death scenes I've ever witnessed on film. It's a masterful moment. As for the other deaths, they're kept to a minimum, apart from at the over-the-top finale. It seems that once the nudity and violence has been dispensed with at the opening of this film, it settles back into investigation mode, with plenty of dialogue to keep things moving along. The foreign setting makes a nice change too.

The aforementioned finale is actually very good, with Stapel getting involved in some DIE HARD-style heroics while swinging about in the lift shaft. It turns out that all the trouble is the cause of some artificially intelligent computer chips, you could have fooled me! The final twist, where a cable twists out of the lift to wrap around another victim's next, is sped up and actually shocking. Don't be put off by the low budget or the obscure nature of this film, it's not a bad little piece and achieves what it sets out to do.