Review #342: 'Don't Go in the House' (1979)

Another film in the horror genre that takes part of it's influence from both Ed Gein and Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), Don't Go in the House, originally titled - more appropriately - The Burning (this was altered due to the release of a slasher-camp film), it focuses on a troubled man who has been perpetually abused by his dominating mother. After a burning incident in an incinerator that Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi) witnesses at work, he returns home to find that his mother has passed away. Immediately, Donny hears disembodied voices telling him that he is now free to do whatever he likes. Donny shows a fear of fire, even when using matches. His memories flash back to his mother holding his arms over a burning hob, "punishing" the young boy, presumably due to the fact that he reminds her of his father.

After finding pleasure in burning his mothers body (he keeps his mother in the chair that she died in), he constructs a steel-lined room, purpose built to burn any woman he can get back to the house. He seems throughout to be tortured by these women, even seeming to believe that they have all done wrong with him. We only really see the first victim, Kathy Jordan (Johanna Brushay), being torched in the room, as she stands tied and naked, Donny enters the room with an all over fire resistant suit, before "opening fire" with the blow torch.

It's not a bad film, considering it is essentially a slasher film (without the slashing of course), which were so prevalent at the time. It is quite different also to this sub-genre, and it often feels more grimy, even dirty than the average fare (The Prowler or Final Exam (both 1981), for example). Of course some of the acting is appalling, but strangely, Donny's descent into madness seems quite palpable. Donny is that disenfranchised man, completely cut off from the world, and only due to his mother. As with many (even real) males who have had an abusive matriarch, this can often translate into an overbearing, all-encompassing misogyny. This madness crescendos in a now cliched, but still quite chilling, disturbing end.


Directed by: Joseph Ellison
Starring: Dan Grimaldi, Charles Bonet, Bill Ricci
Country: USA

Rating: ***

Marc Ivamy