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"Mature Content Warning!" |
The Robesons are the main antagonists of Wes Craven's 1991 comedy horror film The People Under the Stairs.
They are an incestuous brother-and-sister couple of abusive landlords who victimise their poor tenants living in their run-down properties by raising their rents to near-unaffordable prices to evict them. When young boy Fool Williams breaks into their house with two other men to steal their gold coins, he discovers that they are secretly depraved kidnappers who abduct and lock away children in their dungeon-like basement.
"Daddy" was portrayed by Everett McGill, while "Mommy" was portrayed by Wendy Robie.
What Makes Them Pure Evil?[]
- As revealed by Fool's grandfather, they came from a long line of inbred family members who initially ran a funeral home selling cheap coffins at expensive prices and became greedier and crazier once they got into real estate business, to the point where children actively avoided their home out of fear. As landlords, they mercilessly terrorise and exploit their poor black tenants out of their money and subsequently evict them from their ghettos by rising their rent prices to make them beyond unaffordable in order to sell their properties and gentrify their neighbourhood. By the time of the start of the movie, Fool and his family are the only people left living in their apartment and are about to be evicted.
- Even prior to the reveal of what they've been hiding in their home, they are unlikeable from the start with them being very open in their racism towards black people. Once their dark secret is revealed, they are universally despised by practically everyone else in the movie, with their deaths being mourned by nobody.
- For years, they have been abducting several children from their families, imprisoning them in their basement and starving them so much to the point that their skin have turned pale and they've devolved into relying on feral violence and cannibalism to survive, in which they then feed them the flesh of any trespassers they've murdered.
- The couple themselves are implied to be cannibals who feast on anyone they've killed, as Daddy is shown eating from a strange-looking ribcage and has blood smeared across his mouth when he's chopping up human meat.
- They have a strict "see/hear/speak no evil" rule in their house, which resulted in most of the imprisoned children being horrifically mutilated, mostly via their tongues being cut off, as shown with Roach, who had to evade them by hiding within the house's walls.
- Alice, the only child who follows their rules and thus isn't imprisoned in the basement, isn't treated any better or with any genuine care as they are constantly shown abusing her physically, verbally and emotionally to the point where they have no issue with killing her, resulting in her easily turning against them once given the opportunity to escape their cycle of abuse with Fool.
- It's also heavily implied that Daddy sexually lusts after Alice as well as he's shown fondling his groin at her in the attic. He even fixates on the "possibility" that she "did it" with Fool, further highlighting how utterly depraved he is.
- The children themselves aren't even aware that the Robesons aren't their biological parents until Fool reveals this to Alice, indicating that they've been either been abused so long that they've forgotten their past lives, or worse, abducted at such a young age that they do not remember their actual families. Once the truth is revealed, they waste no time in turning against their "foster parents" and killing them.
- Alice, the only child who follows their rules and thus isn't imprisoned in the basement, isn't treated any better or with any genuine care as they are constantly shown abusing her physically, verbally and emotionally to the point where they have no issue with killing her, resulting in her easily turning against them once given the opportunity to escape their cycle of abuse with Fool.
- Kills both Spenser and Leroy when they break into their house and feed their corpses to their "children".
- Upon finding Fool, Daddy captures him and throws him into the basement to die and be devoured at the hands of the children, and shoots Roach with no remorse when he helps him escape.
- Meanwhile, Mommy brutally punishes Alice for talking to Fool by making her clean up Leroy's blood, and then forcing her to take a bath in scolding hot water while viciously scrubbing her clean.
- Sends their dog Prince to kill Fool and Alice when they escape through the walls, with them showing no remorse or even vengeful feelings towards the fact that Fool tricked Daddy into killing their own pet.
- Upon discovering Fool has told Alice the truth, Mommy goes into a crazed state and attempts to kill her with no remorse, even attempting to shoot Fool's grandpa and his sister Ruby (when they come to distract the Robesons into putting on their normal charade to save Fool) on her doorstep in front of a crowd of the people they've evicted, exposing their crimes. This results in a karmic death for her, in which Alice stabs her with Fool's help and is then finished off by the people she's been imprisoning for their whole lives.
- Daddy pursues Fool around the house wielding a shotgun and wearing BDSM gear before he's killed in a explosion Fool sets off amongst his undeserved wealth, karmically blasting the money through the crematorium chimney for the deserving crowd outside to collect.
- Although they work closely together, they show no genuine care towards each other, viciously abusing each other as well, with Mommy being the more dominant of the two and bossing her "husband" around throughout the film, and Daddy being quick to forget about and show no sadness or even a single emotional reaction over Mommy's death.
- They also show no love towards their guard dog Prince either, only seeing him as a replaceable part of their home security, as Daddy shows no emotion over accidentally killing him and with Mommy even having the audacity to state that they should just buy a bigger dog after his death.
- Despite clearly being insane, possibly from being inbred, they have Moral Agency as they're intelligent enough to feign innocence towards the police.
- While the film is a horror comedy, they are played completely seriously, with their childish moments only further highlighting their depravity, and their crimes being outlined by the narrative as beyond irredeemable and monstrous.
- They overall serve as the embodiment of the film's scathing criticism of inequality, predatory landlords, the American upper class' abusive and oppressive nature towards the lower class, and the corrupted American Dream.
Trivia[]
- To highlight their Pure Evil status, the film is based off a real life news story director Wes Craven read in the 1970s in which two burglars broke into a Los Angeles household (where the movie takes place) and in doing so inadvertently revealed two children who had been locked away by their parents to the police.
External Links[]
- The Robesons on the Villains Wiki
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 Pure Evils
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Live-Action Films Scripts See Also Thank you Wes Craven for haunting our dreams since 1984, Rest in Peace. | ||
