Don't Go in the House
Traumatised by childhood abuse, Donny Kohler becomes an isolated adult whose fixation with fire leads him into a cycle of abduction and murder. The film is remembered as a grimy, late-1970s response to the psycho-killer trend.
Film details
| Original / alt title | Don't Go in the House |
| Year | 1979 |
| Director | Joseph Ellison |
| Country | USA |
| Runtime | Approx. 82 min |
| Main cast | Dan Grimaldi, Robert Osth, Ruth Dardick |
UK status
Appeared on the DPP list but was later dropped rather than remaining among the final successfully prosecuted 39.
Later UK releases made the film available to collectors after its long period of notoriety.
Why it caused controversy
UK censorship / Video Nasties history
A quick status check first, followed by the film’s censorship timeline. A DPP prosecution was an obscenity case against a particular video publication — it was not automatically the same thing as a permanent nationwide “ban”.
Detailed censorship timeline & facts
FACTS & TRIVIA
- It is often mentioned alongside Maniac in discussions of grim New York-area psycho-horror films.
- Dan Grimaldi later became much more widely known for television work.
- The steel-room concept became the film's defining image.
- It was marketed on video with striking Severin and other sleeve variants.
- Its reputation in Britain was amplified by the sleeve and title alone.
- The film is part slasher and part character-study of a disturbed loner.
- Collectors value it as a core pre-cert nasty title.
Distributor / VHS label
Archive cover shown is the user-supplied scan. UK distributor / VHS-label attribution varies by edition and is not asserted here without a verified sleeve imprint.
Trailer
Open a search for the original theatrical / VHS-era trailer. This keeps the archive linking to publicly available trailer sources rather than hosting copyrighted film footage.
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