Don't Go in the House (1979)
"You have been warned!"
Plot
Donald is a disturbed man who has suffered from years of abuse at the hands of his mother. Lacking social skills and stuck in a job stoking coals in an incinerator, Donald’s fragile state of mind is shattered when his mother dies. Unable to cope with the trauma, Donald begins hearing voices which tell him to lure young women to his house where he burns them alive in a purpose-built fireproof room.
Long banned in the UK and labelled as one of the 80s video nasties, notorious exploitation horror Don’t Go in the House has finally been released uncut in all of its controversial glory. It had a short-lived status as a ‘video nasty’ due to it being tagged along with a number of more sinister films which started with ‘Don’t …..’ and had been available with a few minutes cut from the running time. Now that we live in a more tolerant society subjected to nastier and more malicious horrors like Saw and Hostel, these three minutes were restored and it has been released uncut for the first time. Don’t Go In The House can best be summed up as ‘killer burns naked women alive with a flamethrower’ and it is another of those ‘misogynistic male killer with mommy problems’ horrors which started off with Norman Bates in Psycho and was brilliantly realised in the 80s with Maniac.
Often labelled as a slasher film, Don’t Go In The House is more of a psychological thriller but it’s content and approach means it can be placed alongside the likes of Friday the 13th and Halloween, just don’t expect anything nearly as impressive. You see there are two kinds of this type of horror: those that follow the victims and those that follow the killers. Those that follow the killers tend to be raw, seedy and generally tougher to watch than those which follow the fun and frolics of the unsuspecting victims. Those that follow the killers do so in the name of Norman Bates and take cues from how Hitchcock presented the character as a likeable, well-meaning young man who just so happened to have some major psychological issues. Don’t Go In The House stays with this tried-and-tested approach but it isn’t Psycho.
Let’s cut straight to the chase. Don’t Go In The House isn’t a great film; in fact its pretty horrible. Its threadbare story hardly gives us any characterisation, from Donald to his priest and his best friend, and little happens except Donald snaps and starts killing women. Like the rest of these psychological horrors which deal with male killers with mother issues, Donald’s character is depicted as the victim. It’s not his fault that he’s like he is and he’s dealing with his new-found situation in the only way he knows best: violence. What was done unto him is now being done unto others. However Donald’s characters is so one-dimensional that you’ll be hard-pressed to feel real empathy for the character. This isn’t really the fault of Dan Grimaldi who plays Donald with a wide-eyed cluelessness as if he is totally detached from society and real life. It’s down to the script which gives us literally no reasons to care about anyone in the film.
Don't Go in the House drifts aimlessly once he starts killing women and falls into a repetitive cycle where he picks up a woman and then the film cuts to the aftermath. We don’t get to know too much more about Donald. His best friend is even more anonymous as the only other character with any sort of development but he’s virtually useless to the plot. Donald has hallucinations of his victims coming back to life and haunting him as charred corpses. He scowls at the camera. He walks around his house. He sits in a chair and contemplates what crazy stuff he can do next. It’s monotonous material and the audience is sat waiting for something, anything, to get worked up over. The problem is that the film peaks too early and then never manages to get back to that level of intensity and shock.
Don’t Go In The House is infamous because of its scenes of pyrotechnic terror – well actually its one scene of pyrotechnic terror. The film only shows us one of his female victims being burned alive and it’s that striking an image that the film doesn’t need to show us any more victims being incinerated. That image is sketched upon our minds throughout the film and so we don’t need a repeat viewing. The scene in question was way harsher than I was expecting: a young female florist accepts a ride home from Donald before he convinces her to come and meet his mother. Whilst in the house, she is knocked unconscious. The next time we see her, she’s chained up from the ceiling, completely naked and then dowsed in gasoline by Donald, now wearing a flame-retardant costume. As the poor woman begs for her life, Donald unleashed the flamethrower and, with the use of some reasonably satisfying special effects, the woman writhes screaming and howling as she is overcome by the flames. The next shot we see of her is a charred corpse hanging in the same position. It’s a grim scene, one of the most depraved I’ve seen due to its graphic detail and sheer nastiness and unpleasantness. It’s basically the scene that led the film to being banned – the rest of the film never comes close to being as nasty or as graphic.
Final Verdict
Don’t Go In The House isn’t as sleazy or disturbing as similar grindhouse exploitation thrillers but it will leave a sour taste in your mouth with that one scene of fiery cruelty and there is enough of an unsettling atmosphere to keep promising that it will get better even if it doesn’t. Its underserved reputation as a video nasty is certainly just that and the fact that it is now uncut will hardly set feminists rushing out with their banners of protest.
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Don't Go in the House Director(s): Joseph Ellison Writer(s): Joe Masefield (story & screenplay), Joseph Ellison (screenplay), Ellen Hammill (screenplay) Actor(s): Dan Grimaldi, Robert Carnegie, Ruth Dardick, Charles Bonet, Bill Ricci, Johanna Brushay, Ralph D. Bowman, Mary Ann Chinn Duration: 82 mins |  |
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