Don't Go In the House is a pretty generic horror movie title, coming out right around the same time as Don't Go In the Woods, Don't Look In the Basement, and Don't Go In the Attic. You have every reason not to remember if you've seen this movie when you hear the title, but I can clear it up for you real quick: it's the slasher movie where the killer (Dan Grimaldi of The Sopranos)'s weapon of choice is a flamethrower. There ain't a lot of those! So I trust that's cleared that up.
So how about those new scenes? Yeah, they're substantial. Almost ten minutes worth in big chunks. There's a big scene with Dan Grimaldi laying a major monologue down the burnt corpses of his victims he keeps in his room, even giving one a big, wet kiss. There's a big scene with that dubbed priest, and more of the first killing. In a way, you can see the reason for cutting a lot of it: are audiences going to sit for long, dramatic speeches while waiting for their exploitation? And yeah, the cuts probably do help the pace for people who aren't enjoying this film much anyway. But if you appreciate this film, you'll appreciate it even more with the scenes restored. They really flesh it out, and I don't even think they should've been stuck on the disc as "deleted scenes," because once you've seen the movie with them, they really feel absent from the shorter, theatrical cut. It's just a better film with them in.
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This man's been struck by Boogie Lightning |
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2005 Shriek Show DVD on top; 2016 Scorpion blu-ray bottom. |
The audio is a whole other ball of wax. I guess I'll start by saying that Scorpion's DTS-HD track is both pretty full in general, but also pretty full of pops and hisses. However, the Shriek Show is also like that. The Scorpion does have more pops (that recur regularly, like it's from a damaged reel), but the hiss and general issues seem to be mostly tied to the film itself. The audio commentary mentions this, and the overdubbing knocks some of the sync off. There's one scene in a store, where a clerk calls out to another employee, and you can't hear what he's saying after the first word or two, but the sentence is clear on the old DVD. But that's a rare exception. It's not too distracting, but definitely feels like you're watching an old, worn movie.
So why's this blu controversial? Well, another problem with the audio is that it's a censored TV track. All the curse words have been replaced. Admittedly, this movie isn't as full of curse words as a lot, so most scenes get away unscathed, but a long argument towards the beginning of the film where Grimaldi's character is repeatedly accused of being a faggot has a whole new, altered meaning. Still, if you're not already familiar with the film, you won't notice most of them. Only one really sounds like something's wrong, where a girl in a car calls a guy an ass____, and the sound clearly cuts right out during the second syllable. Still, if you didn't know better, you'd probably think it was a drop out, like the line in the store, rather than a cleansing. So don't get me wrong, the film is visually uncut, with all the violence and nudity intact. It's just the language that's been cleaned up with this alternate audio track. But it's a shame, because otherwise this was easily the definitive version of the film.
Shriek Show came pretty nice with extras. They got star Dan Grimaldi in for an on-camera interview and an audio commentary. And he gives a really good commentary, well informed and with a lot of memories to share. The interview does have some repeated anecdotes, but also enough unique parts to make ti worth watching, too. Besides that, there's the trailer, some bonus trailers, and a featurette that shows a couple scenes in open matte, revealing some extra nudity and bits.
Scorpion carries over all of those Shriek Show extras except the open matte bit. That's fine, though, because Scorpion's framing includes the full frontal nudity that Shriek Show cropped out anyway, so there wouldn't be much point to them including it. By the way, you can hear the original curses in the background of the audio commentary, and yes, the commentary goes silent during the added scenes. They've also got some brand new extras, including an interview with co-star Robert Osth and a cool tour of the titular house, which is now a bit of a historical/ tourist attraction. Those are both quite good. Then there's another featurette on the house, where the guy who runs it explains how he thinks it's haunted and that he's a ghost hunter with an ebook you can buy. That's a bit silly. But over-all, it's a nice, fuller special edition now. Oh, and it has reversible artwork, too.
So, this may not be the perfectly definitive version we anticipated, but it's still the best version available by far. I've seen people saying they'll be getting both blus (this and Subkultur's, which by the way, has a unique interview with the director as an extra, but not the new Scorpion stuff), but unless you're going to edit together a composite cut for yourself, I wouldn't bother. This is the one. At least until 88 Films, Umbrella or somebody release the film in another market with the Scorpion transfer and the unedited sound. I could definitely see that happening, so if you're not a big fan of this film anyway, you may want to wait and see. But for now, Scorpion's blu does so much right that I give it a strong recommendation despite its problems, which is basically just the one issue; and it really shouldn't be enough to spoil the film for you.
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