- Director
- Joseph Ellison
- Year
- 1979
- Country
- USA
- Runtime
- 82 min
Also released as
- The Burning
- Pyromaniac
- Не заходи в дом
- Das haus der lebenden leichen
- 恐怖の火あぶり
Filed under
Don't Go in the House
A man with a flamethrower and a steel room. The mother is the point and the film knows it.
A man with a flamethrower and a steel-lined room, and a film that is much more interested in his mother than in either.
Donny was held over a stove as a child. He is now an adult with a dead parent upstairs and a compulsion he does not control. The film opens after the mother has died and spends its length on the disintegration that follows.
The first killing is filmed in full, in a bare metal room, with no score, and it is the reason the film was listed. It is difficult and there is nothing else like it in the running time.
Dan Grimaldi is unexpectedly good and later spent years on The Sopranos.
Listed by the DPP and dropped without prosecution. The disco sequence is very much of 1979.
Banned, seized, prosecuted
DPP 72 · listed, then dropped
The numbers
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Trailer
The sleeves
The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.
Where to watch
UK
USA
Legal sources only. Availability data from JustWatch via TMDB.
Checked 9 Aug 2026
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