Review of Don't Go in the House (1979) by Dougal S — 03 May 2012

What do you do if your abusive mother (who you still live with in a big old house) suddenly dies when you're at work? Well Donny takes the opportunity to jump on the furniture, play disco records really loud... and kidnap women, chain them up and burn them alive with a flame-thrower!

This is another of the DPP's list of video nasties ticked off my watch pile and was pulled from the video shop shelves due to it's grim portrayal of a demented sociopath and it's unflinching portrayal of his descent into madness. Although not particularly violent (there's only really one murder shown on screen) it's general air of vicious nihilism no doubt perturbed the censors in the same vein as 'House by the Edge of the Park' and 'Last House on the Left'. But while those films are grim 'rape-revenge' flicks that seek to question morality, Joseph Ellison's film owes more to the likes of 'Psycho' and 'Driller Killer' with the main protagonist driven to a killing spree to escape the voices in his head.

Rest assured there is no respite from the disturbing sequence of events aside from maybe the unintentionally dreadful disco scene which owes more to a change in fashion than to any failings on the film maker's part. For once in a film of this type there is a proper sense of cinematography with some quite inventive shots, setting it apart from the point and talk type direction that marks some of it's peers. It does seek to focus more on the psychological drama rather than lingering salaciously over the carnage that it dolls out. Where it falls down are in the dream and hallucination sequences when the burned women return to life to haunt their killer only to look like a half hearted bunch of zombies that have escaped from a pretty poor Fulci film on the next lot.

This is not a film that is going to get much approval from mainstream audiences with it's brutal sadism and disturbing psyche but it does hold up a grim mirror to the time and paints a difficult picture of what can happen behind closed doors in any neighbourhood. So not much of a 'date night' film but one for aficionados of the genre.