Der Kühlschrank - eiskalt, böse und gemein

This exercise in cornball depicts a couple who moves into a New York apartment...only to find out that it has a killer refrigerator! "The Refrigerator" seems like the sort of movie that they probably made knowing that they were making a totally silly movie. Personally, I thought that John Schlesinger's movie "The Believers" (starring Martin Sheen as a man who moves to NYC and comes across a demonic offshoot of santeria) was more interesting.

But even so, this movie is a lot of fun. The first time that the refrigerator acted up reminded me a bit of the scene in "Ghostbusters" where Sigourney Weaver finds the monster in her fridge. Not particularly worth seeing, but entertaining.

According to the quoted line on the cover of the VHS-box, The New York Post claimed this film is a nearly perfect and extremely tense amalgamation of "Poltergeist", "The Amityville Horror" and "Rosemary's Baby"…. What the hell? And that's an actual newspaper that said this? "The Refrigerator" isn't the worst 90's horror film out there, but it's VERY silly, totally incompetent and extremely cheap. The premise is retarded and seems to come straight from the over-imaginative mind of a flipping Marihuana-junkie. Dig this: a young couple (he strangely resembles Jerry Seinfeld and she looks a little like Heather Graham) invests their money in the crappiest apartment of the most pauperized New York ghetto area. The building's owner may very well be Satan himself and the fridge in the kitchen is actually a direct doorway to hell! Pretty soon after they moved in, the cooling device from hell causes Steve to hallucinate (he wakes up screaming he's the waffle maker, and similar crazy things) and begins to terrorize Eileen. The fridge then starts to kill random visitors and Eileen teams up with the flamenco-dancing janitor to defeat it. "The Refrigerator" features absolutely no horrific atmosphere of tension, but it's still warmly recommended to fans of cheesy & nonsensical 80-90's horror. Quite logically, if you spot a movie with this title, you know not to anticipate brilliantly written dialogs or intelligent plot twists. You get a couple of ridiculous situations, grotesque make-up effects and demented characters. Especially the climax is a total laugh riot. Preferably a movie to watch when there's beer and friends around.

Geeez! Not nearly a quarter of the fun the title promises this movie to be. A refrigerator is terrorizing a couple who just moved into an apartment. Is the damn thing possessed? Is it just a freezing fridge-monster killing people? I have no idea... No explanation, no story, no gore... Just silly nonsense (and some occasional cheesiness that might have you cracking a smile or sigh deeply) in a flick that takes itself way too serious for whichever reasons I can't imagine. I mean, its title is "The Refrigerator" and it's a horror movie. What went wrong? I secretively was hoping this could just be as much fun as "The Slime" (AKA "Slime City"). Sadly, it's not. As soon as I figured that out, I started wondering if this was going to be a profound piece of art cinema filled with philosophical ponderings about frozen meat & vegetables and uplifted by loving musings at a temperature below zero. I think I just saw the wrong movie. Or something got lost in translation. Whatever.

Low-budget cult films like this keep me alive! The acting is awful and so is the directing, but The Refrigerator is just such a hillarious killing machine. It just moves and grabs someone. This film was so funny and just plain wonderful. Ranks up there with one of the surefire cult classics. If this isn't a cult classic, I don't know what is. Try to find this film on video. If you can ever find it, buy it because it's rare and hard to find and A MUST HAVE for anyone serious interested in the horror genre. I found it for $2.00 in some mom and pop store in New Jersey, and I watch it every now and then. You'll get more then one or two chuckles! ***1/2out of****With writing that's so bad, it's good!

Imagine you rent an apartment and the landlord neglects to tell you that the fridge is possessed and the gateway to hell. Okay, it sounds really bad but make no mistake, this low budget masterpiece is the business. The delivery is sometimes stilted, the characters are a little two dimensional and the script is over the top in places, but gloriously so. Jacob's direction is spot on, great camera work, smart lighting, good atmosphere and more than a few laughs to be had. plus: not since Brazil and House 2 have the plumbers/handymen of the world had such a hero to call their own, even if you hate schlocky horror films, watch this one for Angel Caban's impossibly smooth Juan, a hispanic Chow Yun Fat.