Let's just get this out of the way first, okay?... Any film with killer elevators is worth at least one viewing. Secondly, any film about killer elevators with the tagline "Take the stairs, take the stairs. For God's sake, take the Stairs!!!" undoubtedly has to be seen, whether it's trash or not. Bypassing the film's quality for the time being, Dick Maas' classic 1983 thriller The Lift certainly delivers the goods when it comes to the aforementioned bloodthirsty homicidal machines. And while the idea is genius enough, it's the technique these suckers use that makes this flick stand out... Beheadings, blatant taking advantage of blind people, and a great cat and mouse game played with a cute little girl are definitely the highlights of Maas' epic. The "Lift" in question is a bloodthirsty, nasty possessed elevator that seems to take homicidal glee in messing with folks and then killing them. If there's a downfall, unfortunately it's that they had to base a story around those mechanical Freddy Kruegers. Yep, the slow drag of "plot" just had to rear its ugly head in and all the audience can do is to wait and hope for the mechanical lifts to go haywire again. That said, the bootleg Crichton-esque idea behind all the gory hijinks is reasonable enough, but some truly dreadful pacing and an equally bad dub job to boot sadly slows down the fun of the flick. It's okay to throw character development in, but when you're dealing with a movie about killer elevators, the last thing you want is to have to sit through obnoxious scenes of marital problems for our lead hunk! To be frank, no one cares. They came for one reason -- and thankfully, The Lift has enough of that to float its bloody boat. Unbelievably, Maas wasn't through with this tale, as he remade it in 2001 as The Shaft, starring pre-Ring and Mulholland Drive's Naomi Watts.