In 1972, Poor Albert and Little Annie was advertised by Europix distributors in the US with the huge tagline: “Don’t Open That Door!”. This low-rent film became better known by its 1974 re-release come-on title, I Dismember Mama, but the “Don’t” warning was already unleashed…
Meanwhile, (perhaps alluding to the scene where Nurse Beale finds the bloody corpse of Dr. Stephens?), S.F. Brownrigg’s 1972 Texan-shot sanatorium insanity The Forgotten, was retitled Don’t Look in the Basement by Hallmark Releasing Corp and released via American International Pictures, the granddaddies of exploitation.
Hallmark were, of course, the unsubtle and gloriously gore-fiend purveyors of movie mayhem who had promoted Tombs of the Blind Dead and Mark of the Devil with vomit bags! The infamous “To avoid fainting, keep repeating, it’s only a movie…” tag line used for The Last House on the Left and deliberately generic artwork was already being exploited by this point.
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark is a 1973 TV movie that built up such a cult following it was eventually remade by Guillermo Del Toro in 2011. The film focuses on a young housewife, played by Kim Darby, who unleashes a horde of goblin creatures from within a sealed fireplace in the Victorian mansion that she and her husband are restoring.
Don’t Look Now is Nicolas Roeg’s 1973 beautiful yet tragic story of guilt and the psychic fear of a murderous dwarf. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie are superb as the grieving parents and the alleyways and canals of Venice have never seemed so daunting.
Don’t Open the Window was an opportunistic, yet pointless, US re-titling of Spanish director Jorge Grau’s 1974 Let Sleeping Corpses Lie aka The Living Dead at Manchester Morgue. The film’s intended American audience would perhaps have been more ‘open’ to a title that suggested a sequel to Night of the Living Dead, from which it was clearly and – agreeably – inspired?
Don’t Ride on (Late Night Trains) was a VHS sleeve retitle for a 1974 Italian locomotive-driven rehash of Wes Craven’s The Last House on the Left. Aldo Lado’s Night Train Murders is slicker and in some ways even bleaker and nastier than its inspiration, yet it lacks the intensity the former’s low budget brought to the proceedings. And let’s face it, there was only one David Hess!
Don’t Go Near the Park (also known as Curse of the Living Dead, Nightstalker and Sanctuary for Evil) is a 1979 American horror film (released September 1981) directed by Lawrence D. Foldes. The film gained notoriety when it was successfully prosecuted in the UK and placed on the video nasty list. It was the fourth “Don’t” film on the list. It does feature some rubbery cannibalism scenes and has the no-no of scenes showing children in peril but its general air of goofiness perplexed hardcore nasty fans looking for full blooded horror shocks. Apparently it was also trimmed to avoid an ‘X’ rating for its US theatrical release.
Don’t Open the Door was a 1979 re-title of S.F. Brownrigg’s third film – “a murder-mystery that’s a little less stifling than his prior work” – which had also been know as Seasons for Murder, The House of the Seasons, and somewhat ironically, as Don’t Hang Up.
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 on publicity material - Don’t Go in the Woods… Alone!) is a 1980 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, whilst the supposed terrors of hyped horrors such as The Blair Witch Project have faded into history.
Carlo Ausino’s 1982 Italian supernatural shocker La villa delle anime maledette 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, segments include ‘terror torture’ and naked fear. Naturally, this schlocky effort includes clips from many Randall productions: Crocodile, Pieces, Queen of Black Magic and, of course, Don’t Open Till Christmas.
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.
Of course, the ultimate acknowledgement of this genre fixture title was Edgar (Shaun of the Dead) Wright’s comic trailer for a non-existent movie titled Don’t, as seen in Quentin Tarantino’s Grindhouse:(2007):
Winning first place at the 2010 Splatterfest Weekend of Mayhem short film competition, Joe Grisaffi’s Don’t Look in the Attic was created in a mere 54 hours. Very much like the 48 Hour Film Project, teams were given a character, a line of dialogue and a murder weapon. Grisaffi commented: “Ours were: A taxi cab driver, “This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship” and a saw”.
In 2010, Vincent D’Onofrio’s Don’t Go in the Woods depicted an American rock band being offed in various ways. In an interview with Edward Douglas of Shocktillyoudrop.net, D’Onofrio spoke of how he had wanted to “make an absurd slasher musical”. Anyone watching this $100,000 oddity will wonder why the director and cast bothered to make anything…
Aforementioned 1973 TV movie Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark was remade in 2011 with a budget of $25 million by Guillermo De Toro and a cast of famous names such as Katie Holmes and Guy Pearce but this special effects laden effort failed to capture the charm of its cheap inspiration and so garnered mixed reviews and audience indifference.
Don’t Move is an intense Evil Dead-influenced 2013 British short directed by Anthony Melton and written by David Scullion. Don’t Move is the 8th slice in Bloody Cuts’ anthology of short horror films, made by a young team of UK film-makers on low budgets.
Adrian J Smith, Horrorpedia
[N.B. Please let us know of any other uses of Don't, so we can expand this brief overview…]
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