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5
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8 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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Guest
Review by Troy
Howarth |
A
traumatized mamma's boy (Dan Grimaldi) goes on
a killing spree after his mother dies...
A bold-faced
imitation of Psycho,
complete with menacing shots of the old house
on the hill and plenty of interplay between the
babbling maniac and his departed mother, Don't
Go In The House is perhaps most interesting
for its relative lack of bloodshed. Filmed at
the beginning of the slasher boom in the late
1970s and early '80s, it seems to borrow its approach
more from John Carpenter's Halloween
(1978) than from most of the far bloodier films
that followed it. The story doesn't contain any
real surprises, but director Joseph Ellison makes
a competent job of it.
At
the center of the film is Dan Grimaldi as Donald
Kohler. Grimaldi, now known for his role as Patsy
on the wildly popular show The Sopranos,
plays Kohler in a deliberately stiff, affectless
manner. He heightens the character's childhood
trauma by playing him as a child stuck in a man's
body. He's awkward, sometimes painfully so, and
never comes across as somebody who really wants
to hurt other people. As such, Kohler becomes
a relatively sympathetic protagonist, driven by
forces outside of his control to kill. The film
plays very much like a treatise on the effects
of childhood abuse, recalling Mario Bava's more
blackly comic 1968 giallo A
Hatchet for the Honeymoon. The real villain
of the piece, as such, is the character of the
mother, who used to abuse Kohler by holding his
arms over open flames whenever he misbehaved.
This novel form of abuse gives way to one of the
more unusual methods of killing in late '70s-to-early-'80s
slasher lore: Kohler has a special fireproof room
in his basement where he lures his victims, and
once he dresses up in a fireproof suit, he douses
them in gasoline and uses a flame-thrower on them!
One has to admit, after so many knife, hatchet
and chainsaw wielding weirdos in other films of
this type, it's kind of refreshing to see Kohler
doing something a little bit different.
Apart from Grimaldi, the rest
of the cast is unremarkable. While the likes of
Robert Osth as Kohler's only "friend," who turns
out to be rather unsympathetic in his own way,
are merely adequate, Ralph Bowman as the priest
Kohler goes to for comfort is simply laughable
— Bowman looks like he'd be far more comfortable
playing a mob enforcer than a man of God, and
his gruff presence doesn't mesh with the character
he is playing one bit.
Ellison's
direction is competent, and he keeps a reasonably
good grip on the pacing. Technical credits are
never spectacular, but the film has a slickness
to it that stands in contrast to some of the more
rough and ready slasher pictures of the period.
Richard Einhorn's music score is fairly conventional,
but it doesn't hurt the film.
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Media Blasters' release
of Don't Go in the House,
as part of the Shriek Show line of horror titles,
is satisfactory. The 1.85 matting is bound to
cause some controversy, but MB makes it clear
in the supplements that it was transferred at
this ratio at the request of cinematographer Oliver
Wood, who insists the compositions were meant
for this ratio. The anamorphically enhanced picture
looks very good — colors are a bit muted, but
this seems to be the way the film was shot. Detail
is a little soft in some shots, but this, too,
could be a byproduct of the cinematography. The
mono audio track is clean and clear — dialogue,
music and sound effects come through strong, without
distortion.
Extras
include an on-camera interview with Grimaldi,
a commentary track with Grimaldi, trailers for
the film and other Shriek Show titles, and a segment
which compares the unmatted version of the film
with the matted edition. The interview and commentary
show Grimaldi to be a nice, down-to-earth actor
who looks back on the film with a lot of fondness;
while his track has some dead air and he tends
to repeat himself from time to time, it's interesting
to see how sincere he appears to be with regards
to the film and the impact it had on his career
(it was his film debut, and a starring role at
that). The matting segment reveals that some nudity
is affected, thus sure to upset the skin connoisseurs,
but it seems likely that Wood's assertion that
this was meant to be projected at 1.85 is accurate;
the compositions certainly look adequately rendered
in their matted form. 1/30/06
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