Product Description

Donald was severely burned by his sadistic/overbearing mother as a means of punishment. After years of estrangement pass donald comes home to find his mother has died in her sleep. Now he is seeking out women like his mother bringing them home & burning them alive with a flame thrower. Studio: Media Blasters Inc. Release Date: 11/29/2005 Run time: 82 minutes Rating: R

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54654 in DVD
• Brand: Media Blasters
• Released on: 2005-11-29
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 82 minutes

Customer Reviews

Disco Inferno
Forgotten bit of early 80s horror nastiness overcomes its more graphic and mysogynistic elements thanks to a loopy performance by Dan Grimaldi (The Sopranos) and a wonderfully cheesy disco soundtrack. Watch as Grimaldi celebrates his evil mother's passing by playing his disco records REALLY loud. Truly a product of its time, Don't Go In the House ranks alongside William Lustig's Maniac in the sleazy slasher department. A guilty pleasure to be sure.

This is lower end stuff
"Don't Go In The House" is one of the cheaper than average offerings from that golden 1980's splatter movie era when every other horror film released was either about a notable diary date (Halloween, Friday the 13th , Mother's Day, April Fools Day etc), a summer camp or similar remote location full of teenagers (The Burning, Sleepaway Camp, Terror Train), or a warning (Don't Look In the Basement, Don't Answer The Phone, etc).

We're in the third category with this 1980 effort and its pretty low down in both quality and integrity. Dan Grimaldi plays Donny, a troubled loner whose outward social clumsiness masks a far more serious mental instability. After a painful childhood, spent being cruelly tortured by his mother, Donny suddenly finds himself rid of her when she expires due to old age and/or sickness in their lonely and remote home. His happiness at the new found freedom is shortlived however, because something is whispering in his head, and its telling him to kill...

Grimaldi handles the role of Donny fairly well, although there doesn't really seem to be a lot of depth to his performance, so you might be forgiven for expecting a pretty mundane movie as a result of watching his behaviour in the first 20 minutes of the film. Except for the first time that Donny manages to lure a young woman back to the isolated house, because what follows on from this initial set up one of the most repulsive murders I have ever seen in an 80's slasher movie. It involves a clearly terrified naked woman being hung from chains in a vertical position and then set alight with an industrial flame thrower...the effect is callous, shocking and hard to shake off for the rest of the film. Which is probably just as well because there isn't really a lot going on for the remaining hour. Donny remains among mainstream society and we have to follow him as he buys new outfits and goes to a happenin' disco with some work colleagues, which drags on a bit before Donny finally has another fire-related flip-out. After a bit more not very gripping amateur investigation, the climax of the film sees how Donny meets his final fate, and things end on a suitably grim note.

But as I said nothing really matches the deeply unpleasant first murder scene, so file this along with "The Toolbox Murders" as another low budget shocker that somehow managed to strike a nerve with one graphic murder but still remains forgettable for most of the rest of the time. It does however leave room for a (thankfully never-realised) sequel, plus it closes with a great disco number playing over the credits ("Boogie Lightning"!), and that's something you can't say about many 80's slashers!

It Has a FEW Moments, but....
"Don't Go In The House" is one of those classic drive-in clunkers from the 1970s and early 1980s fondly remembered by fans of low budget horror/exploitation films. Why anyone would hide in the trunk of car in order to spend nearly two hours watching this cinematic drudge is beyond me. At the same time, watching in the privacy of my own home on DVD was a good experience, so maybe there is a reason or two for risking the inhalation of exhaust fumes in order to watch this horror movie. Apparently, filmmaker Quentin Tarentino had plenty of good things to say about this film, so that may provide another reason for movie buffs to rent or buy this 1980 Psycho rip off. "Don't Go In The House" continued the tradition established by other "Don't..." films, such as "Don't Look In The Basement" and the like. This movie stars people you have never heard of, and its directed, produced, and written by a few other people you've never heard of or from again. Sure, star Dan Grimaldi turned up on "The Sopranos" and in a bit part in the film "Crooklyn," but the people who associated themselves with this film are not pulling down big buck salaries in Hollywood these days.

Dan Grimaldi stars as Donald "Donny" Kohler, a momma's boy who works at some sort of a heavy industrial plant when he isn't home tending to his mother's needs. We learn immediately that something isn't quite right with Donny when a guy at the plant catches on fire and Don does nothing to help him. Understandably, this odd behavior aggravates most of the other workers at the plant with the exception of Bobby, a rather friendly bloke who cheats on his wife and who calls Donny on the phone at weird times. These tentative maneuvers to establish camaraderie between the two never find an explanation in the film. In fact, the script gives us little clue as to what is going on in Donny's mind (at least initially). We do know that Mom was some sort of religious despot who burned Donny's arms when he was a child for some supposed transgression. But now Mom is dead, found moldering in a chair up in her room when Donny comes home from work. Whatever will Donald do now that his freedom from domineering old Mum is over? The first thing he does is smoke in the house and crank up the old stereo! Donald knows how to live, but very quickly after discovering Mom upstairs Donald starts to hear voices in his head instructing him to commit grisly crimes.

Kohler runs with these suggestions by turning one room of the sprawling house into a metallic death chamber complete with chains and hooks. Throw in a fire retardant suit and a flamethrower and you get the strong impression that Donald's interests run to indoor barbecues of a most peculiar character. It isn't long after completing this project that Kohler brings his first victim to the house, a foxy '70's gal who promptly finds herself tied up in the room. The following scene, when Donald douses this woman in gasoline and then lights her up, does possess a certain gruesome fascination and probably constitutes the bulk of this movie's notoriety. Our hero rapidly follows up with two further victims, then dresses up the three corpses in old clothes and sits them in chairs in another room of the house. During the rest of the film, Kohler occasionally revisits this room to learn that the corpses torment him with voices only he can hear. All the while, Mom remains upstairs in her chair and Bobby continues to place odd phone calls to his friend in an attempt to get Donny to go out for a night on the town. Throw in a priest, a tepid dream sequence, and some cheesy disco scenery, and a "shock" ending and you have the makings of a low budget classic destined to win over new legions of fans (!).

"Don't Go In The House" would be a complete rip off of Hitchcock's "Psycho" if it possessed any of the wonderful attributes that made that Anthony Perkins/Janet Leigh vehicle such an enduring institution. Instead, we get bad acting, terrible dialogue, bad cinematography, cheesy special effects, and poky pacing. I think I counted at least five separate times where the director used the same footage of Donny driving his vehicle around town. About the only thing that truly works for this film is the gritty, grim atmosphere of Donny's house. The place is spacious on the inside, but at the same time the Kohler abode looks so incredibly seedy that I felt like taking a shower after watching the movie.

The DVD version of "Don't Go In The House" is atrocious; it looks as though they restored the film, if any restoration took place at all, with a piece of sandpaper. Again, this lousy transfer does lend the picture a certain grimly alluring atmosphere, but for a DVD release I would like to see a better quality film. Amazingly, there are no extras on the disc to speak of: no trailer, no commentary, and no production notes. This DVD doesn't even contain a menu screen. When you put the disc in your player, it immediately goes right into the movie. I'm reminded of a VCD when I think about seeing this movie on DVD, although even VCDs have menu screens on occasion. Overall, this film does have a few things going for it, but only hardcore horror fans should apply here. If you must see "Don't Go In The House," consider renting it instead of buying.