Classic Horrors Club

If you’re going to be trapped on an elevator, this would be a good one. Just look at your co-passengers: Craig Stevens (The Deadly Mantis), Teresa Wright (Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt), Myrna Loy (The Thin Man), and Jean Allison (Devil’s Partner.) And that’s just the old Hollywood royalty. There’s also Roddy McDowell and Carol Lynley from new (or 1970s-new) Hollywood. The conversations you could have!

Unfortunately, there’s not much time for discussing their acting careers, since the elevator’s stuck and Eddie Holcomb (James Farentino), who’s carrying a briefcase full of money and a gun, is growing increasingly volatile. Yeah, he’s claustrophobic and/or acrophobic. When he’s separated from his partner in crime, Pete Howarth (Don Stroud), there’s no one to keep him in check and he uses the briefcase both as a tool for escape and as a weapon.

The Elevator (1974) is more a thriller than a disaster film, but it borrows from the formula by introducing us to a variety people, each with problems of their own, that all hop on the elevator with a 700-pound safe that throws it off kilter, causing it to periodically plummet and then get stuck between floors. Poor Marvin Ellis (McDowell), the building manager or leasing agent, I’m not sure which, isn’t going to earn any new business after this.

He’s just been up in the penthouse with Mrs. Kenyon (Loy), who I was sure was a decoy for the armed robbers. She wasn’t. But she was acting suspicious. You see, to give more meaning to her life, she makes up stories about successful children and grandchildren that don’t really exist. She was supposedly looking at the penthouse for her son. She’s hungry for attention, choosing a tense moment on the elevator to announce her charade.

Irene Turner (Lynley) is the getaway driver, waiting in the parking garage for her two men to return with the briefcase full of money. Because he was one person too many for the elevator, Pete takes the stairs (or another elevator) and joins Irene right away. The two wait impatiently and are the first ones to realize the elevator is stuck. Since it’s a new building, the emergency button doesn’t work and there’s no phone inside.

They try to retrieve their friend and the money, not necessarily in that order. Eddie has managed to climb out the top of the elevator, which is all well and good until it takes another lunge and he’s left hanging onto the cable for dear life. This is the same cable that Pete will later try to sever to kill the witnesses who saw all the money when the briefcase inevitable broke open. It’s fast-paced and exciting, but doesn’t feel particularly unique.

One reason I may not have liked it more is that none of the characters are likable. Besides the liar, we have a cheating doctor (on the elevator with both his wife and mistress, yet hardly addressed) and an impulsive lad that’s been fighting with his mother over funds from his trust. He learns a lesson, though, when he sees that a briefcase full of money doesn’t always bring happiness. And we learn a lesson, too. Don’t get on an elevator with a 700-pound safe.