From a village in Lancashire, the elderly Ballantyne sisters stick to the traditions they know best: tea time, neighborhood gossip, monster hoarding — you know, that sort of thing. When soldiers at a nearby base begin dying “vicious, brutal” deaths, forthright Joyce (Flora Robson, The Shuttered Room) and batty Ellie (Beryl Reid, Psychomania) start to wonder and worry that perhaps their, um, “housemate” is to blame.
After all, as the title has it, they have The Beast in the Cellar.
There’s not much to this Tigon production from James Kelley, writer and director of the pervo thriller What the Peeper Saw. Much of it takes place in the Ballantyne household, which wouldn’t necessarily be a negative if more happened besides talking. Conversations more mundane than macabre fill the film to its brim, even after a fall confines Joyce to bed — and sedatives — for an extended period.
The scenes of slaughter are brief and bloody, yet shot with whiplash-inducing camera movement to retain a semblance of mystery, although viewers can read Cellar’s cards before it dares show them. When it does, the reveal is even more abrupt than it is underwhelming, especially preceded by a good 10 minutes of Ellie’s exposition dump, which not even Reid’s wonderful performance can save. After that kind of buildup, you deserve better. —Rod Lott