'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.
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.