Video Nasty #5 : Don't Go in the House

Synopsis : After Donnie Kohler's mother dies, the voices in his head tell him that he is free to do all the things he's always wanted to do. He can turn music up loud, jump on the furniture and lure women back to his house, cover them in petrol and light them up with a flame thrower. Ah, the incandescent joys of being young and single.

In 2010 i'm attempting to watch and review all of the films on the DPP Video Nasty list. Click here for an explanation.

Making a good film about a serial killer is difficult, especially when the murderer is the protagonist. The lead character of a film normally has to be engaging and interesting, something which is easily achieved by making them likeable or somebody the viewer can identify with. Unfortunately it can be difficult to empathise with someone who thinks a normal night in is hosing down his next victim and then slapping on some makeup and tucking his cock'n'balls between his legs.

Such films normally address this problem by making the killer so dislikable and abhorrent that the viewer is determined to see them die in a way far more grissly and torturous than his victims endured (Night of the Hunter, Death Proof, Eaten Alive). Another approach is to make the killer likeable or even justifiable, but the film is then walking a fine line between good gory fun and material that is at best morally questionable and at worse (to use a very loosly defined term) obscene. Basically, the film becomes the sort of thing Mary Whitehouse and her cronies were, in their eyes, trying to protect us from.

Most of the low budget serial killer films exist because it's an easy way to get the blood flowing and to scare the audience silly. To avoid the moral quandary of making a serial killer the leading role the filmmaker normally throws in some half arsed exploration of what drives the person to kill, mother issues being the pedestrian but oft-used explanation. In this case you can almost guarantee that the dead mother is decaying in her Sunday best in her favourite chair in the basement, bedroom or attic.

Given this, I had to groan when five minutes into Don't Go In The House the main character's mother dies and he starts hearing voices. Regardless of how good the film is, in my mind it was never going to recover from this tired cliché.


Donnie is obsessed with fire. But unlike most pyromaniacs he's only happy when using a human being as an organic tinderbox. The idea was kindled by his mother, who burnt the evil out of him as a child. When she passes he's set free to carry on her good work, and converts a room of his house in to a metallic fire proof chamber. His victims are women he lures into his solitary house on the hill, and he keeps their flambéed remains like his decaying mother, in a comfy chair in a pretty dress. His house becomes reminiscent of a life size doll house that's been set on fire by a kid playing with matches.

There is very little violence in Don't Go In The House, but the few moments of violence are particularly shocking. There is one scene that undoubtably got the film listed on the DPP's array of nasties and it has now been burnt into my memory, laying dormant for when horror films finally turn me into a murdering nut job. If videogames don't do it first. Or comics. Or the Internet. Or the next big technological advancement that our moral guardians don't understand and don't want to understand.

Donnie's first victim wakes up stripped naked, her hands chained to a hook in the roof. Wearing a flame retardent suit he covers her in petrol and despite the woman's pleas he sets her alight with a flame thrower. The camera then lingers on the poor women dying with surprisingly effective special effects. This is a horrible act of violence and is filmed effectively well, immediately making me hate the previously mild mannered and quiet Donnie.

How anyone could watch something so totally repellent and be inspired to go out and do the same is unimaginable. The whole point of the DPP list was to stop this 'filth' corrupting children's minds. One has to question why it's deemed unacceptable to show something that is filmed to make the violent act so clearly abhorrant when its ok for people to watch Schwarzanneger heriocally mowing down 100s of people with a machine gun.


Despite this truly effective moment, the rest of the film is relatively dull. The Donnie character is played well, but I found him too weedy and pathetic to be a really interesting character. The highlights of the film has to be the fleeting shots of his decaying mother's corpse watching over him, or a dream sequence where he's dragged into a hole by his crispy victims. In a fun sequence at the end of the film the mother and victim's corpses return to life to ensure Donnie's inevitable fire based demise.

The only other thing of note about the film is the Disco soundtrack. Films that use popular music on the soundtrack date fast, especially when the music is in a relatively new genre (disco, electro, grunge, metal etc.). The film was made in 1980, such that the soundtrack probably made the film look dated the day it was released. Despite the music showing the film's age the disco was a fun backing to the seriously demented main character. In one memorable scene he smashes a glass candle holder in a woman's face at a disco because she was coming too close to seeing his childhood burns. The brutal act becomes slightly surreal because it's soundtracked by the most upbeat music ever written.

Don't Go In The House isn't a bad film, it just isn't particularly good. It's quite dull, which is impressive for a film that's 80 minutes long. Coincidentally, Don't Go In The House is one of many films with instructional titles on the DPP list. We're not just told to avoid the house, but also Don't Go In The Woods, Don't Go Near The Park, Don't Go In The Basement and Don't Stick Lego Up Your Bum (I may of made the last one up).