Directed by: Joseph Ellison
Written by: Ellen Hammill, Joseph Ellison, Joseph R. Masefield
Produced by: Ellen Hammill, Matthew Mallinson, Edward L. Montoro, Dennis Stephenson
Featuring: Dan Grimaldi, Robert Osth
1980
If you like gritty, downbeat horror films that maintain a take-no-prisoner attitude to the extreme, then 1980 was the year for you. Along with William Lustig’s serial killer masterpiece Maniac, Don’t Go in the House takes viewers on another uncompromising look at a disjointed mind’s trip through murder...
Dan Grimaldi is Donny Kohler, a warped mamma’s boy with a lowly job at a waste incinerator plant. The first thing we see Donny do is observe a co-worker catch fire. He watches the man die with an unnerving fascination. When he goes home that night he finds his overbearing mother dead. Then the voices start. They tell him that he’s free and that he can do whatever he wants. I’m not so sure those voices intended for him to build a fireproof room in the basement and capture women so he could set them on fire, but that’s the cue he takes. The first death is a doozy, but the rest are off camera as we watch Donny stalk several women and make a place for their charred remains in his creepy house. Towards the end he goes to a disco and sets a flirtatious woman on fire in front of the whole club! Now that’s groovy!
I have always wanted to see this movie. The video box art, the synopsis on the back and just the idea of torching unsuspecting women really got to me. I have always held off because I can be a wimp. Sure I love Maniac, but it took me two days to watch it the first time (Tom Savini blowing off his own head? Yikes!). It took me years to get to Last House on Dead End Street and I’ve only watched Last House on the Left twice (I know that’s two times more than most people)… Although I ended up loving those films, I was worried that Don’t Go in the House would cross that line that we all have. Luckily, this movie manages to be sick and twisted while presenting an absorbing look at the mind of a killer. What struck me most was how childlike Donny was. After his mother’s death, the voices tell him that he has all the freedom he wants, and he innocently asks them if that means he can play his music loud. And after he’s collected a few charred corpses he tells them he’ll leave the light on if they behave. Then there’s the infamous disco scene, but it’s the scene before it that really paints Donny as a lost soul. He goes to a clothing store to buy a suit for the club and it’s hard to tell whether or not the salesman is being helpful or making fun of him. It’s the best scene in the movie. Funny how the best scene in a movie about a guy setting innocent women on fire is the shopping scene, but it is! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!
Like Maniac, there’s not a lot of time given to the other characters nor is there a ton of build up for them, although Donny’s friend Bobby (Robert Osth) is a fairly compassionate character. Their phone conversations are well done and bring a little personality out of Donny. The only real backstory we for the pyromaniac himself are during flashbacks where we see his mom burning his arms over the gas stove. Basically, Donny’s just half-baked… pun intended!
The victims are not portrayed as whores either. They are regular woman caught in horrible circumstances. At no point does this movie try to make the women (besides his mother) evil, just unlucky. Even the flirt at the disco was just trying to help Donny join in and open up. Disturbing for sure, Don’t Go in the House never did cross my little line. Instead, I got an underrated gem of a horror movie that reminded me why I love those kinds of films so much – even if it does take me years to see them.
