Known as both "DOWN" and "THE SHAFT," this American remake has a far larger budget and a truer commitment to gleeful misanthropy: the elevator's victims include children, the disabled, seeing-eye dogs, and pregnant women. He recreates several scenes from the original, shot-for-shot,
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though this time he manages to fit in an extended sequence of schweet X-treme rollerblading
which ends with one of the rollerbladers sucked up in a parking garage by the killer elevator and launched from the observation deck onto the sidewalk below, so I have to tip my hat to that sort of shit. This one's ending is a little more low-rent DIE HARD than the original and involves a bazooka
and a makeout sesh' set to Aerosmith's "Love in an Elevator" so I guess that probably sets the scene for you.
Like the original, it's still pretty committed to the banality of elevator repair (James Marshall––TWIN PEAKS' James Hurley––plays the intrepid elevator engineer originally played by Huub Stapel).
Naomi Watts takes over Willeke van Ammelrooy's role of the elevator journalist/love interest (her last role before her breakthrough in MULHOLLAND DRIVE).
Edward Herrmann (OVERBOARD, THE LOST BOYS) plays the building manager, who for all intents and purposes is "The Mayor from JAWS" of this picture.
Ron Perlman pops up as a passionate elevator executive who doesn't like elevator journalists poking around his business, so he shouts things like "goddamit!" all the time.
Dan Hedaya sorta phones it in as a hardboiled elevator-hating cop, which reminds me that
Hedaya and Ron Perlman were really on their way to being a real Tracey/Hepburn in the late '90s, appearing together in three movies (this, ALIEN: RESURRECTION, Joe Dante's THE SECOND CIVIL WAR) within a four-year span. Why'd they have to go and break that streak?
Finally, we have Canadian Jack Nicholson and Junta Juleil Hall-O-Famer Michael Ironside
as "that German prick from elevator research" and he has this look on his face throughout like he's a little surprised to even be there
but he's still trying his best, even when explaining that an elevator he's possessed with military-grade microchip goop could somehow usher in a new Age of the Medici. It's not too big of a spoiler to say that he meets his demise via elevator after failing to kill James Hurley in hand-to-hand combat
when CGI elevator cables start whipping about like deranged snakes
and send him to the high-rise gallows. Alongside TOTAL RECALL's "See you at the party, Richter" moment, this marks at least the second time in film history that Ironside has been dispatched by an elevator.
Most of the dialogue is delivered by the cast in a stilted manner, as if English isn't their first language, even though it is in most cases. This lends it a kind of lesser-Bava or Fulci feel that almost evolves into a Lynchian one
given the cast's history––James Marshall (TWIN PEAKS, TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN), Naomi Watts (MULHOLLAND DRIVE, RABBITS, TWIN PEAKS: THE RETURN), and Dan Hedaya (MULHOLLAND DRIVE). There's even a scene at a '50s diner,
though, sadly, it is not a Winkie's.
The final aspect I must mention in relation to THE SHAFT is the "9/11" one. This film debuted at Cannes in May 2001 and was released in the Netherlands on September 6, 2001. Its American release was cancelled (though it eventually made it to straight-to-video in 2003) because of the September 11th attacks.
Many films were delayed by 9/11, including Schwarzenegger's COLLATERAL DAMAGE, the Guy Pearce remake of THE TIME MACHINE, and the Gwyneth Paltrow romcom VIEW FROM THE TOP. These decisions were made for reasons ranging from, respectively, "a building in Los Angeles explodes," "New York is damaged by meteors," and "the majority of scenes involve flight attendants at work." THE SHAFT is a different animal entirely. It doesn't merely have scenes of carnage in a high-rise,
though that certainly would have been enough to delay it, given the climate. It doesn't merely have scenes of a U.S. President somberly addressing the nation about a terrorist attack in New York.
And it doesn't merely show the World Trade Center as a B-roll shot during that speech.
Nor does it merely feature jokes about how terrorism against skyscrapers sells newspapers,
depict squads of nervous NYPD swarming lower Manhattan, or highlight the danger that terrorists with hijacked airplanes could pose.
Nor does it simply point out the attacks against the World Trade Center in 1993...
...no, it actually name-drops Osama Bin Laden:
In retrospect, it's certainly spooky to watch this aspect play out––and if I know American cult film audiences, this will likely be the major reason the film will be remembered in the long run.
