DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE. 1980. DIRECTED AND CO-WRITTEN BY JOSEPH ELLISON. STARRING DAN GRIMALDI , ROBERT OSTH, RALPH D. BOWMAN, JOHANNA BRUSHAY AND RUTH DARDICK. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©
Now, if there's one thing that really
gives me the heebie-jeebies when it comes to horror films, it's men
who don't have the manners and good taste to bury their mothers when
they die. Norman Bates from Alfred Hitchcock's horror masterpiece
PSYCHO (1960) was
one such head-the-ball, as we say here in Ireland. (Pssst.
It means nut-job.) Donald
'Donny' Kohler from DON'T GO IN THE HOUSE (1980) is
most certainly another.
Donny's story makes for spectacularly
grisly viewing. I wasn't expecting much from the film before I
watched it, to tell you the truth, probably because of the corny
name, but things got real ugly
real quick. By
the time the film was less than halfway through, my mouth was hanging
open with shock. Not a pretty sight, I can tell you.
Donny lives with his old ma in a house
that is pretty much the identical twin of the Bates Motel. I love it,
love it, love it. It's big and creepy and old-fashioned and I
wouldn't set foot in it if my life depended on it because horror
cinema has kept us well-informed about the kind of things that go on
in places like that.
Gruesome murders, obviously, but also domineering mothers who drive their poor downtrodden, emasculated
sons so crazy with their nonsense that one day the sons rise up in protest, kill the
bossy old biddies and then go around killing other people
dressed in their mothers' clobber. You know, stuff like that and
stuff. Weird stuff.
Donny, a man whom it is obvious from the
outset is a socially-inept outsider, comes home from work one day to
find his dear old Mumsie dead in the armchair in her bedroom. At
first, he's inclined to freak out about it. Well, you would, wouldn't
you? Death of a parent is usually a big deal.
But then the voices in his head- I did
mention that he's a big weirdo,
didn't I?- tell Donny that he's free now. Free from his wicked old
meanie of a mother and the appalling psychological and physical abuse
which she inflicted upon him when he was a nipper.
In a series
of disturbing flashbacks, we find out that Donny's mother had a nasty
habit of holding his arms over a gas flame when he was younger in
order to burn the 'evil' out of him. Okaaaay, well, I think we've
discovered the reason why poor old Donny is cuckoo-bananas.
Now, Donny
sees the sense in what the voices in his head are telling him. He
decides there and then to go forth and do all the things he was never
able to do when Mumsie was alive, badgering and bullying the bejeesus
out of him all the livelong day. He leaves Mommie Dearest exactly
where she is, in the armchair in her bedroom.
That's
probably the thing that disturbs me most about the film, just like I
was disturbed by the same kind of scenario in the aforementioned
PSYCHO. As a mother
myself, I have a great horror of being left to sit on the couch for
all eternity after I die, like some kind of macabre Halloween
decoration. With that in mind, I've given strict instructions that
I'm to be cremated the second I snuff it. And speaking of which...
While his
mother sits literally rotting in her armchair, Donny turns his music
up nice and high as a metaphorical f**k-you to the old lady and goes down to the basement to build a nice,
steel-panelled crematorium. Excuse me, a whaaaat...? Baby, you don't
know the half of it. Bear with me a sec and all will be revealed. Well, maybe not entirely all.
Under
the falsest of false pretences, Donny brings a pretty young florist
home to the Bates Motel, I mean, his gaff, one dark night. It
should be noted that she looks exactly like a younger version of his
mother. He knocks her unconscious when her back is turned. When she
regains consciousness...
Well, this is where the nightmare really
starts, and also, incidentally, where my jaw began to hit the
floor. I kid you not, this is probably the most extreme scene
I've come across in a horror film to
date.
It's certainly one of
them, anyway.
Little Miss
Florist- without being too salacious about it- is starkers and
suspended from the ceiling of the flame-proof room by steel chains.
There is no escape. The door to the flame-proof room opens slowly. A
figure enters. A figure garbed from head to foot in a flame-retardant
suit. He has a flame-thrower in his hands. Do I need to spell it out
for you...?
Well, I
will spell it out, but
only because I'm a reviewer and it's my job. I'll do it quickly,
though, to get it over with.
Hesetsheronfireandputshercharredcorpseinanupstairsbedroom.
There, that wasn't so bad, was it...? Well, okay. I know it's gross.
Donny
commits this same atrocity with two more unsuspecting females who
would have been a darn sight better off if they hadn't bloody well
gone in the house. Geddit...? The film's called DON'T GO IN
THE HOUSE and I said that they'd
have been better off if... Oh, forget it.
Anyway, all
three of these girlies bear a distinct resemblance to the late,
not-so-great Ma Kohler, so I think we're safe enough in assuming that
when Donny kills them, he's really killing dear old Mumsie over and
over again and revenging himself upon her for all the years of abuse
she inflicted on him when he was a child.
He even gives
Mumsie her turn on the receiving end of the flame-thrower, which is
just creepy and weird beyond words, and afterwards he makes her bunk in
with the other three ladies for company. Aw, how sweet. They can have
sleepovers and pillow-fights in their underwear and all the other
activities that men fondly imagine women doing whenever they get
together.
It is
the four smokin' corpses who ultimately bring about the downfall of
the 'Master of The Flame.' That's what the voices in his head call
him, by the way. Yep. Cuckoo...! Donny's plan to burn two young women
together falls apart when the women are rescued by the local priest
and Donny's work colleague Bobby, who both have reason to believe that
Donny is in trouble. No s**t, Sherlock.
Donny
tries to hide in his mother's bedroom but the corpses he is storing
there come to life- in his diseased mind only, one imagines- and
berate him for his uselessness. Well, if you will store
corpses in your mother's bedroom, what do you expect?
You'd
be better off going to your nearest IKEA and shelling out for one of
their indispensable 'cadaver secure-storage units.' They're
pricey but so worth it. I'd like to see 'em get out of one of those,
those pesky corpses. I can just imagine the ad, can't you?
'Do you have trouble with your stored corpses
coming to life at inopportune moments? Buy one of our cadaver
secure-storage units, fully refrigerated for maximum freshness, and
you'll never have that problem again...!'
After a
shocking climax, the film ends with a different young boy being
treated harshly by his mother. The whispering voices in the boy's
head tell him that they are here to 'help' him. We can only imagine,
therefore, that the deadly cycle of revenge and punishment, punishment and revenge, will
continue into the next generation at least.
Dan
Grimaldi turns in a terrific performance as the messed-up Mummy's
Boy. You'll never guess, by the way, whom he grew up to be. Remember
Patsy Parisi from hit Mafia HBO serial THE SOPRANOS? He
was one of Tony's men.
I
especially remember the time Patsy had to warn off Gloria Trillo, just
one in a long line of mistresses for mob boss Tony Soprano. If she
didn't stay away from the dangerously sexy and charismatic Tony from
now on, Patsy told her quietly, training a gun on her while they
test-drove the new Mercedes, 'She'd be scraping her nipples
off those nice leather seats.' Charming.
What a nice guy.
This superb cult film, banned in some places on its release for being a 'video nasty,' is as grim and gruesome as all-get-out, but it's a cinematic gem as well. It's the kind of raw, gritty, down 'n' dirty horror film they made in the late 'Seventies and early 'Eighties that make some of the films of today hang their heads in shame by comparison.
The
parallels with PSYCHO had
me hooked- albeit terrified as well- from the start, and in the
scenes in the flame-proof room I was shown something I literally had
never seen before.
Call me
a sheltered little princess if you will, but the whole 'setting
defenseless women on fire' business was a new one on me. The concept,
to me at least, was original and shocking and it made me lose sleep,
and I love my sleep.
It's true. Ask anyone who knows me.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY OF SANDRA
HARRIS.
Sandra Harris is a Dublin-based novelist, film blogger and movie reviewer. She has studied Creative Writing and Film-Making. She has published a number of e-books on the following topics: horror film reviews, multi-genre film reviews, womens' fiction, erotic fiction, erotic horror fiction and erotic poetry. Several new books are currently in the pipeline. You can browse or buy any of Sandra's books by following the link below straight to her Amazon Author Page:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B015GDE5RO
You can contact Sandra at:
http://sandrafirstruleoffilmclubharris.wordpress.com
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