Don’t Go in the House (originally titled The Burning, apparently) is a grim yet intense Psycho-inspired piece that also seems to vaguely question the validity of the 9 to 5 week-in, week-out existence amidst “mother”-influenced pyromania. It’s a thoroughly grubby yet rewarding slow-burner…
Don’t Go in the Woods – or as its publicity material warned ‘Don’t Go in the Woods… Alone!‘ – is a 1980 American backwoods Bigfoot-style low-budgeter that revelled in cheap gore, leading it to appear on the British moral panic video nasties list. Cheap but thoroughly entertaining, this is the kind of over-the-top movie that trash fans still watch over and over.
Simon Wincer’s Aussie horror thriller Snapshot (1979) was released Stateside by Group 1 distributors with the cynical re-titling The Day After Halloween but also as One More Minute. The Group 1 ads went full-pelt with ‘Don’t’ warnings: ‘Don’t open the door… Don’t answer the phone… Don’t look in the attic… It’s there and it wants you!’
In the sleazy Don’t Answer the Phone! Vietnam vet and photographer Kirk Smith (played with relish by Nicholas Worth) is a crazed killer who stalks the streets of Los Angeles, picking up young women and strangling them in lurid fashion whilst taunting Doctor Lindsay Gale (Flo Lawrence), a psychologist on a radio show. He targets Doctor Gale’s patients, commits murder while on the phone to her show (forcing her to listen to the victim’s cries), and eventually goes after the doc herself.
The film was shot under the title The Hollywood Strangler but Crown International Pictures obviously wanted to jump on the ‘Don’t’ bandwagon…
Meanwhile, nudity-filled Australian slasher Nightmares (1980) was promoted with the tag line: ‘Don’t dare look behind you! Just feel the skin crawl on the back of your neck’.
Roger Corman-produced The Slumber Party Massacre (1982) was originally titled Don’t Open the Window but this was presumably thought to be too derivative and already in use, thus the Slumber Party franchise was born instead!
Carlo Ausino’s 1982 Italian supernatural shocker La villa delle anime maledette “The Villa of Damned Souls” was retitled Don’t Look in the Attic for it’s Stateside VHS release by Mogul.
Don’t Go to Sleep (1982) is another surprisingly memorable TV movie. A young girl begins seeing the ghost of her sister who died in an accident a year earlier. A good cast headed by Dennis Weaver, Valerie Harper and Ruth Gordon (Rosemary’s Baby) ensures that this creepy film still elicits unease.
Don’t Open Till Christmas is a sleazy British stalk ‘n’ slash entry that took more than a couple of years to complete before its 1984 release to a largely indifferent world: A murderer is running loose through the streets of London, hunting down men dressed as Santa and killing them all in different, and extremely violent, fashions. Inspector Harris has decided to take on the unenviable task of tracking down the psychopath, but he’s going to have his work cut out for him.
A year later, Dick Randall and Steve Minasian returned with another Ray Selfe concoction. Don’t Scream It’s Only a Movie! is a documentary tracing the history of horror films from the silent period to the splatter films of the 1980s. Introduced by genre icon Vincent Price, this schlocky effort includes clips from many Randall productions: Crocodile, Pieces, Queen of Black Magic and, of course, Don’t Open Till Christmas.
American slasher whodunit Deadly Intruder (1985) was promoted by Thorn EMI Video with the tag line: ‘Someone out there is watching you… Don’t unlock your door’.
The Outing (1987), also released the previous year in a different version as The Lamp, was a 1987 American movie about an evil genie that was promoted with the tagline ‘Don’t say see you later… say goodbye.”
Don’t Panic is the international title for the 1987 Mexican mayhem written and directed by Ruben Galindo Jr. A bizarre supernatural slasher the film throws in elements from ’80s Elm Street hits and the Ouija board trend that proliferated at the time. The shameless kitchen sink approach ensures that whilst viewers may be occasionally baffled, they are never bored.
Don’t Go Out at Night was a 1987 British VHS release of Armando de Ossorio’s Night of the Seagulls (1987) by fly-by-night company Kontini Video. Not only was the video sleeve design horrendous to look at and misleading but the film was also censored by the BBFC (they removed 1 minute and 6 seconds), adding insult to injury.
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