I Watch 'Em So You Don't Have To

Movies So Bad They Make You Say "What In The Blazes Did I Just Watch?"   




Don't Go In The House (1980)


If you're going to outright copy your movie idea from a classic like Psycho, at least be classy and give it the royal treatment, not this piece of garbage. It stunk so bad, there's not much to be said for it, except an abused kid, torched women, plot that goes nowhere at all, and ending that makes absolutely no senses whatsoever.


Donald Kohler is deeply disturbed individual who was emotionally and physically scarred by burns inflicted on him by his mother. As a child, whenever he did something she saw as 'wicked', she would hold his bare arms over a gas stove in an effort to 'burn the evil out of him'. Due to this he developed a secret obsession with fire and human combustion. During his job at an incinerator, he observes a co-worker, Billy, catch on fire. Instead of going for help, he stares, mesmerized. 

When he returns home he finds his mother has died. While he is free from her possessiveness, the only life he has ever known is gone, and with it his chance for revenge against her. Not that he would ever have done anything anyway. I mean he was burned as a small child, now he's gotta be at least in his thirties. Any revenge is simply not going to happen. But this movie would be really short, so he sets out to avenge himself on every woman who bears a resemblance to his mother with the aid of makeshift steel chains, a home-made flamethrower and a steel-paneled bedroom crematorium.

One of his first victims is local florist he takes back to his mother's house, where he knocks her unconscious, ties her up and burns her to death with his flamethrower. Lather, rinse and repeat. Soon he has a sitting room with scorched corpses dressed in his mother's clothes. His mother he leaves in her room, slowly moldering (wow, that house must have smelled good).

This is from 1980 which means you get obvious plot points, dated clothing, disco music and not any imagination at all. The makers of this film didn't even try to make it their own, just an updated version of Norman Bates. Without success. Or interest. Pass pass pass on this one, don't go into this movie!