Disclaimer: I do not own Wes Craven's 'The People Under the Stairs'. I own a copy of the DVD though. Cost me ten dollars plus sales tax but you guys don't want to hear about that. Do you? Of course not.
There were seven deadly sins and Eldon Robeson was guilty of each and every one of them.
Greed.
Eldon had the biggest mansion in the state, possibly the country. He has homemade suits of the finest fabrics and a beautiful wife by his side. His children are all more or less perfect. He is an extravagant man. He still needs more though. He needs more so he takes and takes from those he controls. He needs more and more children because the ones he has aren't perfect enough. He doesn't even know why he does it anymore, he just knows that he needs more. No matter what he had he was still unsatisfied.
"Lots of nice wood for my fireplace and lots of nice-"
"Money."
"Mm-hmm. For me."
Pride.
He wears his black suit and runs through his house. He is proud of the life he has made for himself and his family and no bastard between the walls is going to change that. He is a great man, a perfect man. He is the perfect man and the perfect husband. He is proud of the family he has but it's the children that try and take it away from him so they have to be punished.
Envy.
He watches the other children play outside but he is never allowed. Now he watches the other adults having fun and living lives that he can never live. They never have to worry about the state of perfection that their family is in. They never have to worry about their daughter's virtue being taken away by a boy who was to be her brother. They have a freedom he can never have. He envies them.
Lust.
He's watched her all her life and he can see the woman that she is becoming. She teases him when she wears those pretty, virgin white dresses that Mommy so diligently sews for her. He wants to tear the dress to shreds and feel her under him. He wants to make her cry out in ecstasy as he turns her white dress red but he has to settle for watching her. Waiting.
Gluttony.
He catches them when they enter his house. He kills them and guts them in the cellar by his reject children. He feeds them very little. He keeps them real hungry and he keeps himself fat. He could give them more food but it's his. All the food must be his.
Sloth.
He could try harder he supposed. He could try harder to make his children good but he doesn't. Instead he beats and cuts and burns them. When they fail to respond to that he cuts out the bad parts and puts them in the cellar where they can rot. It's just too much work to kill them and even more work to make them good. That's why he loves Alice very much, she's a very good little girl. She just needs correcting sometimes. Mommy always does that.
Wrath.
He hates the thing between the walls with a vengeance. The thing between the walls made a mockery of him in front of his family. A son could not disrespect his father like that. Roach had to pay. He was going to feel his wrath even if it killed him. His kids would be the death of him.