Something in the Basement (lost short horror film debut of Victor Salva; 1986)

Salva's 2000 Florida RSO mugshot

Status: Lost

This article has been tagged as NSFW and NSFL due to its subject of sexual misconduct and pedophilia.

Something in the Basement is the debut short horror film by American filmmaker and convicted sex offender Victor Salva. It was the short that led to the creation of his debut feature film, Clownhouse (1989).

Little information about the film is available online. The basic plot is that a young boy is waiting home alone for his brother to return from a bloody war, discovering something horrifying in the basement during his wait. The film was apparently an allegory, although what exactly about is unknown. It starred John Downey, Brian McHugh and Nathan Forest Winters, the same young actor who would be victimised by Salva not even three years later.

The short was finished in 1986 and received critical acclaim after being entered into the Sony/AFI Home Video Competition in the fiction category. The film went on to win several national awards (including a Bronze Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival) and brought Salva to the attention of Francis Ford Coppola, who then produced Salva's first theatrical feature, Clownhouse, which Salva again wrote and directed, with Salva becoming Coppola's protégé.

In 1988, during the post-production of Clownhouse, Salva was convicted of sexual misconduct with Winters (who was aged 12 at the time), pleading guilty to lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor, oral sex with a person under fourteen, and procuring a child for pornography. He was also found to be in possession of dozens of magazines and videotapes containing child pornography. He was sentenced to three years in state prison, of which he served 15 months, and lifetime registration as a sex offender. He completed his parole in 1992 and is still registered as a sex offender in California, appearing on the state's Megan's Law page as of 2023. Despite this, Salva retained a fairly successful career after his conviction, including the cult horror trilogy Jeepers Creepers.

Due to the controversy surrounding Salva's conviction at the time and renewed acknowledgement of his crimes in recent years, Something in the Basemenr has not been seen publicly in decades. Although Clownhouse has had DVD and VHS releases pulled from circulation, the film can still easily be found online, and physical copies have occasionally been sold on eBay. It is unknown if Something in the Basement will ever see the light of day again given that Salva's career has effectively ended, evident in the fact he hasn't made a film since the release of Jeepers Creepers 3 in 2017.