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Don't Go in the House
[Blu-ray]
Blu-ray A - America - Severin Films Review written by and copyright: Eric Cotenas (23rd January 2022). |
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The Film
 Ever since his fanatical mother's attempts to burn the evil out of him as a boy, Donny (The Yards' Dan Grimaldi) has been alternately fascinated and frightened of fire. As an adult, Donny is a loner who works at a trash incineration facility while caring for his still very much feared but ailing mother (Ruth Dardick) in a foreboding old mansion. When a co-worker is set ablaze by an exploding spray can, Donny is petrified and fails to act, earning the scorn of his boss (Bill Ricci) and co-workers with the exception of more outgoing Bobby (Cruising's Robert Osth) who tries to bring him out of his shell. When Donny returns home and discovers that his mother has died, the voices in his head tell him that he can now be "master of the flame" leading him to construct a steel-walled chamber where he attempts to burn the evil out of abducted women with a flamethrower. He keeps their charred corpses designed by Christmas Evil's Tom Brumberger and looking unnervingly like Guanajuato mummies dressed in his mother's clothes) as his friends, but his mother's voice and apparition continue to haunt him and even his "friends" start to mock him. He seeks guidance from his mother's priest Father Gerrity (Ralph D. Bowman) and resolves to try to be normal by socializing with Bobby who takes him on a double date, but the voices in his head have other ideas. The best known of the 1980s "don't" horror films, Don't Go in the House does feature a couple naked women chained to be burned alive but it is not as graphic as it has been reputed; particularly in the UK where it was dragged into the Video Nasty hysteria of the eighties. A study of child abuse and sexual repression couched in an exploitation scenario, the film is carried by stage actor Grimaldi's dedicated performance as a simultaneously monstrous and pathetic character both physically and emotionally isolated (Grimaldi became a character actor in episodic television and film with his most recognizable role in The Sopranos). There are some parallels with Bill Lustig's Maniac including Donny's fate which may or may not be a hallucination, and there is a final scene that puts an ambiguously supernatural spin on the cycle of abuse (not unlike Session 9's Simon whose dwelling in the "weak and wounded" could either be an entity or a figurative way of describing a shared psychological reaction to trauma. Richard Einhorn (Shock Waves) provides a creepy score spiked by some catchy disco songs while the photography was the work of future bigtime cinematographerOliver Wood (The Bourne Identity). Sound editor Skip Lievsay won an Academy Award in 2013 for Gravity.
Video
Released theatrically by Film Ventures and on home video by Media Home Entertainment in 1982 followed by an LP-mode Video Treasures edition in 1988 Don't Go in the House was one of the handful of Film Ventures titles to score an early DVD release in 1999 from DVD Inc. in a barebones, murky tape-mastered edition. When Media Blasters' Shriek Show released their DVD in 2005, it was from an interlaced anamorphic master supplied by German company Atlas International (Mark of the Devil, Tombs of the Blind Dead) with an audio commentary and interview with Grimaldi along with two unmatted scenes. Germany was first out the gate with a Blu-ray from Subkultur with an all-region, entirely English-friendly limited edition that is now out of print; however, Scorpion Releasing put out their own limited edition a year later in 2016 just before their licensing period ended. While the Scorpion edition's transfer sourced from the original negative turned out to be the longer 92 minute integral cut of the film featuring a mix of material from the theatrical version and scenes repurposed for the television version under the pre-release title The Burning. The downside of that release was that the lossless mono audio track featured all of the language edits made for the television version. While the edits could have been replaced with audio lifted from the theatrical master, the error was apparently not caught before the pressing. With the Scorpion releasing quickly going out of print, it seemed as though fans of the film would have to track down two editions to be comprehensive. Severin's new 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.78:1 widescreen two-disc Blu-ray edition identical to upcoming Arrow Video U.K. release produced in conjunction with this edition comes from a new scan of the original camera negative by Severin, with the theatrical version (82:33) and television cut (89:37) on the first disc and the integral cut (92:09) on the second disc (note that this is not an "uncut" version but an integral assembly of all of the material like rights owner Atlas International's materials for Tombs of the Blind Dead, Return of the Evil Dead, and Werewolf Shadow often mislabeled as the "uncut Spanish versions" even though they were produced during the censorious Franco regime), with the latter two once again featuring "The Burning" title card. Never a conventionally pretty film, the new master conveys the conceptual color scheme of fire and ice and the oppressively chilly conditions of the shoot with the breaths of actors visible sometimes even during the house interiors. The heightened resolution better conveys the real aura of decay in the unrestored landmark house as well as the grisly corpse make-up, the features of which were too often lost in the murk of standard definition. Do note that the disc one is Region A/B-coded. Region A players will show the Severin Films warning, logo, and menu screens while Region B will show the Arrow Video warning, logo, and menu screens. Disc two is all region.
Audio
All three versions of the film feature LPCM 1.0 mono tracks with clear dialogue and effects, and most effective in their rendering of the voices in Donny's head along with the jittery Einhorn score and the lively disco tracks. The theatrical and integral cuts also feature a new descriptive audio track in Dolby Digital 2.0 created on the other side of the pond, with the British narrator referring to the gas stovetop that figures into Donny's childhood trauma as a "hob". All three cuts are accompanied by English SDH subtitles.
Extras
Spread over the two discs are an array of old and new extras making this package quite comprehensive. The theatrical cut is accompanied a new audio commentary by director Joe Ellison and producer Ellen Hammill, moderated by David Gregory as well as the audio commentary by actor Dan Grimaldi recorded for the Shriek Show edition. Ellison recalls studying acting meeting Grimaldi in a class taught by Method Acting proponet Lee Strasberg and working in New York for post-production supervisor Simon Nuchtern who made his own horror effort a few years later with the 3D slasher Silent Madness working in editing, dubbing, and reshooting on everything from big studio foreign art film releases to martial arts imports, sexploitation, and even mixing adult films. While he was in Los Angeles working on the IMAX short To Fly!, he pitched an action film that was well-received but his inexperience as a director prevented him from making any deals. Returning to the East Coast with his wife Hammill, he decided to make a cheap horror film, and Nuchtern directed him to writer Joe Masefield who had an idea titled "The Burning Man" which evolved into "The Burning". They discuss the freezing shoot, the execution of the burning sequence with Hammill's would-be Playboy bunny friend who had no problems with the nudity with Ellison shooting it when Wood was indisposed the use of ballet dancers for the corpses for their thinness as well as their movement, small touches that went unnoticed like the AdCouncil PSA poster "It shouldn't hurt to be a child", as well as Quentin Tarantino's love of the film and his homage to it in Inglourious Basterds, as well as late Atlas International president Dieter Menz being so enthusiastic about the film that he dragged in buyers to view the film at MIFED and introduced Ellison to Film Ventures' Edward L. Montoro who already had the "Don't Go in the House" campaign in mind before seeing the film. Most interesting is the disagreement that arises Ellison and Hammill about the film's apparent swipes at religion, with the Catholic raised Hammill feeling that they were more deliberate and pointed than Ellison intended. Grimaldi discusses how he was approached while doing a play with the offer to take the lead without an audition, his research into victims of child abuse, and anecdotes about the shoot in the mansion location that only had heat in the attic where the owners lived. His dedication to learning everything he could about acting for film in his first role is such that he is able to provide information about other aspects of the shoot such as the manner in which the burning of the first victim was realized. Grimaldi also appears in an interview "Playing with Fire" (11:30) carried over from the DVD and covering some of the same material. The integral cut is accompanied by an audio commentary by Stephen Thrower, author of "Nightmare USA" who discusses the film in the context of the Video Nasty debacle, the cycle of "Don't" films, and criticisms of misogyny often levelled at films that criticize the "destructive mother" archetype. He also provides more background on the cast including Osth whose slightly sleazy yet sympathetic performance is overshadowed by Grimaldi's "childish provincial naivetι" as well as more on Ellison and his tenure with Nuchtern that included a sojourn to Italy where he screened but did not pick up Ruggero Deodato's highly exploitable Last Cannibal World. "'House' Keeping" (20:55) is a new interview with co-producer Matthew Mallinson and co-writer Masefield recorded separately. Masefield discusses his original concept as well as Ellison's contributions particularly the oppressive home environment of the character and his feelings about the finished film. Mallinson recalls working on the film largely from remotely, being mistaken for a pimp at the bus station where he was seen daily putting actresses on the bus to go out on location, and having to describe the dailies over the phone to cinematographer Wood since there were no facilities to screen them on location and it was not practical for Wood and Ellison to come back to the city every night to see them. The Scorpion disc featured two short location visit pieces that have not been carried over here in favor of "We Went in the House!: The Locations of Don't Go in the House" (19:23) in which Fangoria editor Michael Gingold visits all of the locations from the film the disco is now a school uniforn store including the titular house which has since been restored and (as with the Scorpion visit) is still the subject of ghost hunting visits and supposed paranormal activity. The first disc's extras are rounded out by a substantial image gallery and a trailer gallery that includes the film's U.K. theatrical trailer (1:34), U.K. teaser trailer (0:41), the German theatrical trailer (1:53), the U.S. theatrical trailer (1:56), and four U.S. TV spots (1:46). In addition to the integral cut and its commentary, disc two includes "Minds on Fire: The Dying Embers of 1970s Psychological Horror" (14:56), a visual essay in which "The Reprobate" David Flint cites critical laziness in branding the film a slasher, noting that it has more in common with the psychological horrors of the seventies and the rise of the serial killer in popular culture, contrasting the slasher's fun-loving victims stalked by a faceless killer with the film at hand which remains almost entirely in the head of the killer, placing it alongside The Driller Killer, Maniac, and Christmas Evil. He also notes that the film courted controversy in the UK by promoting itself as "the next big Nasty". Ellison also appears in "Burn Baby Burn" (28:29) seemingly shot in 2020 at the same time as his interview material for Callum Waddell's "Grindhouse All-Stars: Notes from the Sleaze Cinema Underground" (34:24) also included here in which he appeared alongside fellow "grindhouse" filmmakers Jeff Lieberman (Squirm), Matt Cimber (The Witch Who Came from the Sea), and Roy Frumkes (Street Trash). He notes that the film did not turn out as funny as he had intended, with people who read his script and saw the cutting of the film not getting the comic element of Donny talking to the corpses (the kiss which was not included in the theatrical version but present in the integral and TV cuts was meant to be humorous rather than suggest necrophilia), and stating that the nude flamethrower killing sequence was added specifically to draw the audience either through "you've got to see this" raves or "you don't want to see that" warnings. As with the Shriek Show DVD, the disc includes the open matte flamethrower scene (3:50) with frontal nudity meant to be matted off (the justification for including it being that the actress was okay with nudity and dismissive of concerns about covering her up, as well as "Don't: Trailers from the Golden Age of Grindhouse" (13:21) trailer reel which includes all of the familiar titles apart from the trailer for the "other" The Burning, the narration of which directly inspired Edgar Wright's Don't trailer for the film Grindhouse.
Packaging
The cover is reversible with the German poster on the inside (with the German title on the spine as well), while a limited run ordered directly from Severin Films includes an exclusive slipcover.
Overall
The best known of the 1980s "don't" horror films Don't Go in the House burns its way back onto Blu-ray from Severin Films.
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