VIDEO NASTIES – Don’t Go in the House

Published on: 1st October, 2009

VIDEO NASTIES - Don't Go in the House  | read this item

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Michael Myers had an axe, Leatherface had a chainsaw and Jason Voorhees had whatever was lying around – yet one of the most grizzly murder weapons used in the vintage days of exploitation was the flamethrower, the weapon of choice for Donny Kohler, the disturbed antagonist from Don’t Go in the House. Released amid the onslaught of low budget slashers that populated the drive-ins during the early 1980s, Joseph Ellison’s feature debut was a grim and unpleasant Oedipal thriller that depicted a young man whose abuse mother suddenly passes away, leaving him unable to deal with the grief and so he begins to punish women in the same way he had been -burning them. Don’t Go in the House became infamous in the United Kingdom during the mid-’80s when it was labelled as a ‘Video Nasty’ and faced prosecution, only further fuelling its reputation and arousing the interest of young bloodthirsty audiences.

Joseph Ellison was born in Manhattan to a Texan father and would spend much of his youth relocating, resulting in him spending time in Connecticut, Virginia and Washington. Despite having a rather rebellious streak, Ellison had musical ambition and drew inspiration from the likes of Hank Williams, eventually forming his own group, Wayne and the Exceptions, and touring the south. During the mid 1960s and whilst under the influence, Ellison caught a showing of Federico Fellini’s Giulietta degli spiriti (Juliet of the Spirits) and immediately became hooked. After graduating high school, Ellison enrolled at the George Washington University in Washington DC., where he would compose music and assist with lighting on various stage productions. He was eventually recruited by the National Ballet as an assistant stage manager and set out on tour, working as a roadie and gopher for the cast and crew.

Upon returning to Washington, Ellison was hired as a PA for a production company, but eventually decided to enrol at the New York University (NYU), where he would spend the next eighteen months developing his talents as a filmmaker, whilst simultaneously studying under renowned acting coach Lee Strasberg. After leading NYU, Ellison found work in post-production, assisting with the dubbing on foreign films into English. Around this time he began experimenting with making his own short films using 8mm cameras, although he would briefly flirt with acting after auditioning for a role in a low budget Pittsburgh horror flick called The Crazies. Its director, George A. Romero, had taken a liking to the young enthusiast, but Ellison was forced to pass on the callbacks when he was once again required to tour with a production.

Ellison’s luck would change, however, when he was hired by Simon Nuchtern to work at August Films, where he would once again dub features. Having worked on Nuchtern ’s The Bodyguard and the biopic Bruce Lee: The True Story, Ellison also managed to use to facility to get his hands on 35mm film stock, something that a wannabe filmmaker would usually find impossible to afford. Whilst location scouting in New York for a flick called Pelvis, Ellison met his wife-to-be, Ellen Hammill, who would become a major driving force in his subsequent filmmaking career. The following year, Ellison and Hammill travelled to Los Angeles to the Todd-AO Studios to dub To Fly! (one of the first ever IMAX films) when Ellison decided to shop around an action script he had been asked to write. Unable to find any producers willing to take a risk on a first-time director, Ellison decided to return home and make a low budget movie himself.

The latter half of the 1970s would see a huge rise in the popularity of horror movies and, thanks to the success of Night of the Living Dead and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, independent filmmakers had suddenly been able to infiltrate the mainstream. Both Brian De Palma’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Carrie and Richard Donner’s The Omen had been critically acclaimed, whilst Steven Spielberg’s shark thriller Jaws had become a phenomenal success at the box office. In the fall of 1978, a low budget flick called Halloween would take the country by storm, convincing every wannabe director to grab a camera and shoot their own movie. Thus, Ellison decided to make a horror, something that could be produced relatively cheaply and sold at drive-ins. He began searching for a concept that would be idea for a first-time feature and eventually met Joe Masefield, who had cut his teeth as a production manager on such ’60s trash as Lash of Lust and Sin, You Sinners, before working as a sound editor on Naked Came the Stranger and, much later, The Evil Dead.

Masefield had no prior experience as a writer but he had a treatment, The Burning Man, about a man who had been abused by his mother and punished by being burnt, only to grow up and punish other women by burning them alive with a flamethrower. Whilst Ellison found Masefield’s style a little pedestrian, he knew that the concept would make an effective horror and began reworking it with the help of Hammill. They began researching child abuse in an effort to make their principal character more believable and began location scouting whilst writing the script, often developing scenes with specific rooms in mind. They eventually found the ideal house whilst searching through Atlantic Highlands in New Jersey and decided immediately that this would be the setting for their film. Soon the script was completed and Masefield, along with Dennis Stephenson and Matthew Mallinson (who had been working as Hammill’s assistant) began to raise the necessary budget whilst Ellison focused on pre-production.

Although he had made use out of August Films‘ 16mm Arriflex camera, Ellison knew that for a feature he would need to shoot on 35mm. But with the help of a producer, Dick DiBona, who had helped many young filmmakers along their way, Hammill had succeeded in acquiring a camera. Unfortunately, Nuchtern didn’t approve of Ellison working out of his studio and so he was forced to resign from his job. Further troubles came when Masefield decided to back out of the project, forcing Hammill to take a more hands-on approach as producer. The production was further hampered by the Screen Actors Guild strike that began in December 1978, just as the movie was to enter production, causing the industry to almost grind to a halt. The dispute had been caused by objections over television commercials and whilst their feature was not strictly a union project, the effects would cause a ripple throughout the entertainment business.

For the lead role of Donny, Ellison cast Dan Grimaldi, whom he had met whilst at NYU and had become close friends. Grimaldi had also provided voice work for Ellison’s various dubbing assignments and although the character was not written with someone like Grimaldi, Ellison knew that he could make the part his own. Grimaldi would later become acclaimed for his recurring duo roles as Philly and Patsy Parisi on the hit show The Sopranos. Perhaps the most unpleasant part in the movie was that of Kathy Jordan, Donny’s first victim who is strung up naked and burnt to death with a flamethrower. Hammill had met a young model at Hunter College called Debra Richmond who worked as a Playboy bunny and had appeared nude for various photo shoots. More than happy to strip for the camera, Ellison was impressed by Richmond’s courage, who would be listed on the credits as Johanna Brushay.

Whilst co-star Charles Bonet had previously appeared in Bruce Lee: The True Story, most of the remaining cast would make their screen debut with Don’t Go in the House. Behind the camera, the cinematography was handled by British D.O.P. Oliver Wood, whose work for the BBC was followed by a relocation to the United States, where he would lens such schlock as The Honeymoon Killers. His subsequent career would include a string of blockbusters: Face/Off, The Bourne Identity, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. The special effects were designed by Tom Brumberger (who passed away in 2006), who suggested to Ellison that he hire models or dancers as the victims as they would be skinny enough to apply makeup onto in order to resemble and charred corpse. His assistant on the special effects was Matt Vogel, who would later work on such cult flicks as Alone in the Dark, C.H.U.D. and Street Trash.

Filming concluded in February 1979 and Ellison began cutting the movie in his home. After a disappointing screening for Terry Levene of Aquarius Releasing, the film was cut by approximately twenty minutes, taking the running time down to just over eighty minutes. Don’t Go in the House was released theatrically by Film Ventures International in 1980, at the height of the slasher boom and the moral backlash against misogynistic horror films. In the UK, the film received further cuts on November 13 1980 to gain an X-rating. Its distributor, Arcade, then released the uncut version on home video, which resulted in the movie falling foul of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and the BBFC. The movie was finally re-released on March 30 1987 with a running time of just short of seventy-six minutes (resulting in three minutes and seven seconds worth of cuts) and was granted an 18 certificate.

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