FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Sexyloutak Absolutely the worst movie.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Lucia Ayala It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

punishmentpark It turned out I've seen this one before, but I'd completely forgotten the title. I decided to watch it again anyway, since I wanted to see those 'burn'-scenes again to check if they were still as awesome as I remembered them... for a b-movie, they are still pretty darn good!The house to which the title refers is a beauty and is thus almost a character on its own. The story starts out intriguing and has its moments later on, but mostly it falls apart with the awful over-the-top interpretation of mama's boy (man) Donny Kohler by Dan Grimaldi. He should have played it way more understated, but also the director should have understood that as well.Now I'm stuck with a b-slasher with some original and well executed elements, a story that for the greater part only has potential and a lot of poor, poor acting by pretty much the whole cast^. Still, the pros almost outweigh the cons, so a lenient 5 out of 10 is in order.^ To clarify: poor acting can mean added fun, but here it really doesn't; this could / should have been a realistic shocker in the vein of a 'Henry: portrait of a serial killer'.

ctomvelu1 Some fool's idea of a takeoff on "Psycho," here we have a deranged young man living with the corpse of his mom and luring young women to his house of horrors, where he chains them up and sets them on fire. The acting is abysmal, and the plot is threadbare, but the gals are all gorgeous and there is some decent nudity on display. Unfortunately, scares are nonexistent and we can't wait for the climax. Hollywood churned this kind of drivel out in droves back in the 1970s and 1980s, when there were still drive-in theaters. By the late 1980s and to this very day, such movies are still banged out by the dozens for home consumption.

Roman James Hoffman 'Don't go in the house' is a gruesome, low-budget, surprisingly effective, and even oddly moving inclusion on the UK Director of Public Prosecutions list of video nasties. The premise is ghoulish: Donny (Dan Grimaldi) is a misogynistic pyromaniac who builds a special room in his house where he incinerates women before keeping their charred corpses in another room. So far, so…well, exploitation film. However, DGITH raises itself far above this macabre premise in daring to present the killer in a sympathetic light and (at least for me) succeeding. This is done through various expository means which reveal Donny's homicidal urges to be the result of an abusive childhood at the hands of his domineering mother. In particular, the seeds of his obsession with the cleansing effects of fire are delineated to the moments when his mother would burn his forearms on a stove to punish transgressions whether real or imagined. Donny then continues to grow up in the family home under his mother's watchful eye until one day he returns from work to find that she has croaked. Initially jubilant, he quickly begins hearing voices and his fragile psyche soon breaks under its own weight and he descends into a bottomless personal Hell.The film obviously has shades of Hitchcock's 'Psycho' (1960) in its mommy-dearest theme, and also Polanski's 'Repulsion' (1965) as we watch him succumb to his inner demons. However, in contrast to the artistic sense these directors imbued their films with, the wholly unaestheticised exploitation-style presentation of the murders communicates the full brutality of the act which makes the subsequent attempt to portray Donny himself as a victim all the more daring.Depending on one's moral standpoint, it could be equally argued that as a serial murderer Donny deserves the harshest of punishments, and on the other hand he could be seen to deserve pity and sympathy. Beast or bird with a broken wing? What's clear is that the movie is boldly treading on dangerous ground, which is why the film ended up on the list of Video Nasties. The aim of the list was to enable prosecution for the sale of movies which were deemed to have the power to morally corrupt…which is ironic for a film with such a strong moral message that violence begets violence and that even the worst of us are, in fact, victims.

happyendingrocks This depressing little flick may fool slasher fans because of the words "Don't Go" in the title, but ultimately what we get here is a rather subdued, nearly gore-less character study of a very sick individual with serious mommy issues. While this will certainly turn away those looking for a charnal blood-fest, I'd like to point out that there are a multitude of other options from the era which fit that niche, and while Don't Go In The House isn't a classic, the understated approach differentiates this film from the splatter smörgåsbord surrounding it and actually makes it a bit memorable as a result.Of course, there's nothing new on the table here, and the Psycho references are far too numerous to be unintentional. But the moody and morose tone is well-developed and unsettling, which is the least we can expect from a film about a man who burns naked women to death with a flamethrower.Despite its relative simplicity, the plot is a bit too convoluted for its own good, throwing in extraneous characters that distract from the core focus, and at times presenting our insane leading man as too pathetic to be frightening. But there's a lot of rather interesting subtext going on, and the movie is ambiguous enough in its motives to make the viewer do some thinking of their own. We have to decide if the voices telling our central character to kill are in his own mind, or the manifestation of some malevolent spirit latching onto a weak individual driven to madness by the death of his mother.This relationship, too, offers many facets in the brief flashback glimpses we get, and those who relish in deep character development will have an entertaining time psychoanalyzing the motivations of a man who was cruelly abused by his mother, yet so devoted to her in her declining health that her demise sets him off on a murderous mini-rampage.Scenes that would have been deemed meaningless in most horror films are fleshed out here in vivid detail, and even simple errands like buying a suit to impress some ladies out on the town become excellent scenarios in which to develop the loneliness and despair within our homicidal host. It's a testament to the quality of the performance that we almost feel sorry for the hapless lad, despite the fact that we watched him talk to the charred corpses of his victims moments before.The film also has its fair share of silliness, which does derail the morbid momentum at times, and the untested supporting actors provide a bit of unintentional laughter with their ineptitude. Dan Grimaldi seems to handle the material with grace, and his performance is much more nuanced than we normally get from B-movie psychos. Still, it's hard not to laugh when his initial excitement about his mother's passing drives him to blast an awful disco record at maximum volume and jump up and down on chair cushions like a disturbed chimpanzee (yes, I'm totally serious).To the film-makers' credit, the gruesome nature of Grimaldi's torturous implement of execution isn't used in an exploitative way. We only get one horrific glimpse at the fate that awaits the women who ignore the titular warning, but it's enough. The film's lone sadistic murder scene is uncomfortable to watch and rendered with an unflinching eye, and because the later killings are not shown in graphic detail, this sequence is given additional impact. The film-makers' not opting for a reoccurring series of grisly burnings is a wise choice, and our focus remains on the struggle for sanity and companionship that drives Grimaldi's heinous deeds. As a result, the film doesn't dehumanize its victims, or desensitize the viewer, and this scene is destined to haunt you long after you've forgotten about the rest of the film.While the idea for the climax would be more vividly essayed in Maniac this same year, there is something rather chilling about the simplicity with which it is tackled here, and the excellent and very realistic burn make-up adds immeasurably to this sensation. I won't spoil the creepy and ambiguous fade-to-black scene for you, but after the hopelessly bleak aura of the preceding 80 minutes, the film strikes a grim final chord that carries the tone of dread into the final credits, further cementing the impression that the people responsible for this movie had a different mindset than most of the low-budget film-makers who launched the splatter genre into its golden age.The entire film doesn't sustain the intensity of its best parts, and this is certainly not mandatory viewing by any means. But Don't Go In The House doesn't reach too far outside of its limitations, and the film's vision is presented in an effective and satisfying way. This is a sick one, to be sure, but impressive nonetheless.