Don't Go in the House (1980)

"In a steel room built for revenge, they die burning... in chains." As taglines go, that's one of the best I've ever heard. Brilliant use of ellipses too. Don't Go in the House is one of the most infamous and vilified of all of the Video Nasties. First released on video in May 1982, the film was added to the list of films that were to be prosecuted by the Director of Public Prosecution on 4 July 1983. Ultimately, the film was not prosecuted and it was removed from the list on 2 March 1984. It was passed with 3 minutes and 7 seconds of cuts in 1987 and was only passed fully uncut in December 2011!

The synopsis is quite simple. Donny Kohler (Dan Grimaldi) lives alone at home with his mother, a spiteful and domineering woman who browbeats and abuses him and used to punish him for being evil and wicked by holding his forearms over a lit stove on the oven. The character of Donny is clearly influenced by Psycho's Norman Bates and the comparisons don't end there: the house they live in is a towering old house, miles away from the neighbours and when his mother dies, Donny, like Norman, starts hearing voices and goes mad. Unlike Norman, he didn't love his mother, he hated and feared her. Neither does he kill her, she dies of apparent natural causes while he is at work. Finally, the voices in his head are his own subconscious telling him to extract his revenge, urging him to vicariously kill his mother through innocent women. His method of killing is not the machete or the axe or the butcher's knife but the very instrument that his mother used to torture him with - fire. Having developed some kind of pyromania, he works at a local incinerator and that is where the movie opens.

Donny is at work when an accident happens and a colleague catches fire. Instead of rushing to the man's aid, he is transfixed and watches him writhe around in agony until he is rescued by other workers who chastise Donny for not acting. Dejected, Donny returns home to find his abusive mother dead. At first he refuses to believe it but when it dawns on him that she has in fact died, he celebrates, dancing around the house, smoking, playing music loudly and teasing his mother's dead body. Then, voices in his head start talking to him, urging him to seek revenge for the despicable way his mother treated him. The next day, Donny does not go in to work. Instead, he starts lining the walls of one of the rooms in the house with steel panels. His colleague Bobby (Robert Osth), concerned about him, calls him up to check on him but Donny insists he is fine. That night, he sets out into town and does some shopping. His eyes casting, uninterested, over a collection of knives and guns, they fall on a fire suit. His next step: find a victim.

The unfortunate woman turns out to be the pretty florist, Kathy (Johanna Brushay). Her shop is closed but he tells her he just wants something for his mother who is sick. She relents and lets him in, selling him a bouquet. It's here that Donny's personality comes to the fore. Any traditional serial killer would have knocked the woman unconscious when she opened the door and dragged her into his truck when no-one was looking. But Donny isn't a real serial killer, he's a pathetic character really and he pays for his flowers before leaving. It's almost by accident that he manages to abduct her. In his truck outside, he has his head in his hands, perhaps lamenting his cowardice or struggling to decide what to do next. The woman emerges from her shop only to miss her bus and be heckled by three men. Donny offers her a ride and she gets in. Managing to bring her back to his house, he invites her in. Once again, it's not his charm or his brute force that brings her inside but his whiny, needling persistence and insistence that his sick mother would love to meet her. Perhaps pitying him, Kathy follows him inside the house. He makes a song and dance about looking for his mother before pretending to telephone the doctor and ask him to come over. Exasperated, she insists that he let her call a taxi and he finally makes his move, knocking her unconscious with a metal ornament.

This brings us to the film's most infamous scene - the burning scene. It is in fact the only scene in the entire film in which we see Donny burning one of his victims and when the film was released theatrically in the UK in 1980, the scene was completely missing. It was present in copies of the film that were distributed to video retailers and was released by them (knowingly or unknowingly) uncut on video in May of 1982. This is what prompted its inclusion on the list of video nasties and it was only by removing the scene almost entirely that the film was passed in 1987. Completely naked, Kathy comes round in Donny's killing room. The room, fully clad from top to bottom in steel is completely empty except for the hook in the ceiling from which Kathy now hangs, steel chains around her wrists and ankles. Donny sits in the next room, gently rocking backwards and forwards as he looks at a large box and thinks of how his mother used to punish him. Getting out of his chair, he opens the box as Kathy continues to struggle. The door bursts open and Donny, wearing the fire suit, steps into the room. Entirely covered by the suit and with only a dark, emotionless panel on the hood through which he can see, he strikes a terrifying figure. Opening a can of petrol, he pours the contents onto her, setting it down and picking up his flamethrower. She begs as he points the nozzle straight down the camera, flicking the pilot light on. She pleads again but he ignores her, spraying her with fire and setting the petrol alight. She burns alive as he stands transfixed, watching her die painfully. The effects themselves are surprisingly good considering the film's age and very limited budget. The image of Kathy on fire was apparently achieved through the use of a camera with a prism. A flame was set up on one side and the actress on another and the camera was aligned so that the two images met through the viewfinder. The special effects were done by noted makeup artist Tom Brumberger, who would go on to become personal makeup artist and hair stylist to Olympia Dukakis, the Academy Award winning actress and cousin of one-time Democratic Party presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. The only close-up of the scene, on Kathy's burning hands and the charred bodies that feature throughout the film are very well done. The scene itself is not only shocking and quite harrowing, it also marks the high-water mark for the film.

Donny's next move it to abduct another hapless woman, although all we see of her after she gets into his car is a smoking corpse hanging in his steel room. The film then emphasises Donny's utter ineptitude as he attempts to abduct a third woman from a shop. You'd have thought he'd get better at it but the best he can do is to hang around the till as she pays and hopefully ask her if she'd like a lift and he is rebuffed by both her and the cashier. Returning home, Donny begins to descend deeper into madness. He has dressed his victims in some of his mother's clothes, propping them up in chairs in one of the upstairs rooms. He is plagued by them, hearing them laugh at him when his back is turned. His mother, who he imagines shouting at him from her room remains in the chair where she died. Plagued by dreams of fire and corpses on a beach dragging him into a grave and by hallucinations of his mother's corpse, he visits Father Gerritty (Ralph D. Bowman), to whom he confesses about his mother's torture of him. He apologises to his mother's decaying corpse before calling Bobby to see if he wants to hang out. Bobby proposes they go out to a club with a couple of girls he met and the film now takes a strange turn.

Self-conscious about his clothes, Donny goes shopping. The scene where he buys a new ensemble from a slightly camp salesman is both baffling and hilarious. Dressed up, Donny goes to the club where Bobby introduces him to Farrah (Nikki Collins). Farrah tries to get him to dance with her but her refuses. When she grabs him, pulling his arms across a candle on the table like his mother used to do over the stove, he snaps and smashes the candle over her head before fleeing the scene, getting into a fight with Farrah's brother and managing to pick up two drunk girls. They go back to his house while Bobby, concerned for his friend, visits Father Gerritty for help, setting up the film's climax.

Despite its (undeserved) reputation as a sleazy, misogynistic little film, Don't Go in the House actually has quite a bit going for it. Despite its budget, the film looks pretty good. The cinematographer, Oliver Wood, would go on to become one of the top directors of photography in Hollywood. Making his name on the TV series Miami Vice, he would serve as DP on films including Die Hard 2, Face/Off, Mighty Joe Young, the remake of Freaky Friday and all three of the Matt Damon Bourne films. His most recent film, Safe House, opened in cinemas only a couple of months ago. The editor, Jane Kurson, would go on to edit films like Beetlejuice, Hot Shots! and Monster. Finally, composer Richard Einhorn, who worked on other horror films such as The Prowler and Dead of Winter, would go on to become an influential modern composer. As for the husband and wife team of writer/director Joseph Ellison and writer Ellen Hammill, they would go on to make one more film six years later - a drama called Joey. The collective talents of the crew clearly rub off on the film. Unexpectedly for a film where fire is the main theme, the film is often bathed in cool blues and greens and the director manages to tease some quite effective jumps out of the audience. As for the allegations that the film is misogynistic, those claims are simply groundless. Donny kills women not because he hates them but because he is trying to kill his mother, to take revenge for the horrible things she did to him. In a way, the film is a warning about child abuse, as the final scene illustrates.

All in all, Don't Go in the House is an interesting little horror film. Frequently overlooked and not without its flaws - the shopping scene and Donny's trip to the disco are quite strange inclusions, as is his friendship with Bobby, which seems very out of place. Nonetheless, the film is certainly worth watching. It's intriguing, influential and recommended viewing for fans of slasher and exploitation films, if only for the burning scene.

6 out of 10.