Don't Go in the House

Don't Go in the House follows Donald "Donny" Kohler, a man whose childhood was defined by his mother's cruelty: she punished him with fire, holding his arms over a lit gas stove. After her death, Donny's mind unravels. He lures women he meets at clubs back to the family home, where a steel-lined room he built himself becomes the site of his killings, carried out with a flamethrower. He dresses the remains in his mother's clothes and talks to them, replaying the relationship that shaped him.

Joseph Ellison directed and co-wrote the 1979 American horror film with Ellen Hammill and Joe Masefield; Hammill produced it, and Film Ventures International and Turbine Films Inc. released it. Dan Grimaldi plays Donny, with Robert Carnegie, Ruth Dardick, Charles Bonet, Bill Ricci and Johanna Brushay in supporting roles. Running 82 minutes, the film arrived as Ellison's first feature as director, and it remains his best-known credit.

Audience response on TMDB, where the film holds 5.7 out of 10 from 133 votes, is moderate and spread across a small viewership. A critics' rating of 4.1 out of 10 from seven reviews places it lower, suggesting reviewers were harder on the film than the general audience was. The divide between the two scores is wider than the scores themselves, and the limited number of votes on both sides reflects a title with a narrow following rather than broad popularity.