Don’t Go in the House (1980) FVI/Horror RT: 82 minutes Rated R (language, violence, gruesome images, full frontal nudity, drug use, child abuse) Director: Joseph Ellison Screenplay: Joseph Ellison, Ellen Hammill and Joseph R. Masefield Music: Richard Einhorn Cinematography: Oliver Wood Release date: August 1980 (US) Starring: Dan Grimaldi, Robert Osth, Ruth Dardick, Charles Bonet, Bill Ricci, Johanna Brushay, Darcy Shean, Ralph D. Bowman, Nikki Collins, Louise Grimaldi. Box Office: N/A
Rating: ***
How can you go wrong with a cool title like Don’t Go in the House? Yes, it’s one of the infamous “Don’t” movies- e.g. Don’t Answer the Phone, Don’t Open the Door, Don’t Look in the Basement, etc. Don’t you wish they still made those?
This one is truly sick and depraved. It deals with a disturbed dude named Donny (Grimaldi) with a thing for fire. It stems from his mother (Dardick) abusing him as a child. As punishment, she’d hold his arm over a gas stove in order to “burn the evil out of him”. One night, Donny comes home from work (at an incinerator), finds her dead and has a complete psychotic breakdown.
Donny starts hearing voices including his mother’s. He decides to get his revenge by killing every woman that reminds him of Mom. He lures innocent female victims to his house and chains them up in a room outfitted with sheet metal walls and chains. Then he pulls out a flamethrower and burns them to a crisp. Why any woman in their right mind would willingly enter a big spooky house with a creepy guy like Donny is beyond me. Only in horror movies, right?
Don’t Go in the House is a pretty typical 80s horror movie. It owes a lot to the Hitchcock classic Psycho. It even has the killer’s dead mother sitting in a chair decomposing. The biggest difference is that Psycho didn’t actually show any of the violence that Bates committed against his victims. Here in this house of horrors, you only see one woman get burned alive. The rest of the time, you see just the burned bodies of his victims sitting around dressed in his dead mother’s clothes.
Even though Don’t Go in the House doesn’t feature gallons of fake blood, it’s still pretty gruesome. It’s also more of a psychological thriller than your typical mad slasher flick. It features many scenes depicting Donny’s inner turmoil. One set of voices encourages him to go forth and commit sin while his mother continues to berate him from beyond the grave. Between the inner voices and the bodies dressed in his mother’s clothing, this movie reminded me a great deal of Maniac, another horror flick about a crazed mama’s boy who kills women to get even with his dead mother.
Don’t Go in the House is pretty good even if it is hilariously dated. It was filmed in 1979 so expect to hear a lot of generic disco music and see a lot of hideously dressed people boogying to it. It was filmed in New Jersey during the winter season which adds to its bleakness factor. Grimaldi does a good job as Donny. You can easily believe him as the type of co-worker one is inclined to avoid. Without knowing the abuse he suffered at the hands of a deranged parent, one would think that Donny is a really weird guy and keep his distance. Donny tends to keep to himself. He’s even reluctant to accept an invitation from co-worker Bobby (Osth) to go for a beer after work.
As for the girls he lures to his house, all I can say is it gives credence to what our mothers always said about accepting rides from strangers- DON’T!!! His first victim is Kathy (Brushay), a florist who gets into Donny’s truck because she’s scared of the hoods hanging around the bus stop. A person of average intelligence would realize something was wrong when the guy asked if she wouldn’t mind stopping by his house before he takes her home. You just have to marvel at the lack of common sense on the part of the victims, but you wouldn’t have any victims if they had a shred of intelligence so it’s a paradox. But the gorehounds and horror movie fans that watch these flicks don’t ask these things; they just want to see a lot of killing and blood.
I’m not saying Don’t Go in the House is a quality film. It’s a low budget job with a main character that will make your skin crawl. The acting is strictly amateurish and the effects are definitely bargain-basement material. Still, I find it difficult to dismiss this movie on these terms. If you like gruesome movies featuring disturbed killers and their moronic victims, you can’t go wrong with Don’t Go in the House. Just whatever you do, DON’T go in that house. You might even be safer in Amityville.
