Can slasher films be regarded as works of art? Can there be artistic merit in a genre specifically designed to fill the screen with exploitative content like sex and gore? Personally, I think that they can. Films like Bob Clark's Black Christmas (1974), Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and William Lustig's Maniac (1980) are fascinating cinematic texts worthy of study and admiration. I would like to offer up another little-known slasher for consideration: Joseph Ellison's Don't Go in the House. Heavily borrowing from Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), the film tells the story of a deeply disturbed young man named Donald Kohler who has lived his life under the control of his cruel, abusive mother. When he finds her dead one evening, he goes on a killing spree directed against women who resemble her, luring them into his house and brutally murdering them with a flamethrower. The film certainly contains a fair amount of stomach-churning violence, but it is far more interested in Donald's tortured, rapidly-deteriorating mind. With the exception of the scene where Donald kills his first victim (which when compared with the heavily psychological tone of the rest of the film seems out of place with its overt objectification of the female body and its destruction), the violence seems like an after-thought. This is Donald's story. We, as the audience, are here merely to bare witness to his self-destruction.
7/10
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