DON'T OPEN THE DOOR!

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a strong entry, if not the actual winner of, the 2018 sweepstakes for worst film of the year. This new year is still only hours old but it's hard to imagine that I'll see any other film in the coming twelve months  that could possibly approach this film's level of sheer awfulness.

DON'T OPEN THE DOOR! (1975), should instead be entitled DON'T ANSWER THE PHONE as it is by phone call that most of the "horror'" in this turkey takes place. Better yet, let's call it DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE! and you'll have me to thank for taking one for the team.

The film starts with a creepy East Texas judge (Gene Ross), who, inexplicably, lives in a detached railroad car parked in downtown Jefferson, badgering his abused wife into calling young Amanda Post (Susan Bracken) and demanding that she return to town to see about her sick grandmother. Flashback to 1962, 13 years earlier, when Amanda's mother is murdered by a knife wielding intruder while young Amanda appears to be molested by the killer. Now a grown woman, Amanda arrives at her grandmother's massive old mansion to find it populated by her dying grandmother and Judge Semple, the suspect Dr. Crawther (Jim Harrell) and a decidedly weird museum curator, Claude Kearn (Larry O'Dwyer). Judge Semple and Claude both want the house for their own reasons and it quickly becomes obvious that one of these creeps is secretly hiding out somewhere in the house, constantly calling Amanda on the phone and making whispered, sexually suggestive threats and demands to her. Who could this insane pervert be? It's not hard to figure out, given that the caller is shown wearing wire-rimmed glasses and only one of these doofuses wear glasses.

Sure enough, Claude (raise your hand if you had him in the office pool), is revealed to be the killer when he, for no apparent reason, dispatches Dr. Crawther with a hammer to the head in the museum one night. Oh yeah, Claude's dressed like a doll during this scene. The judge is the next to be killed and then Amanda, driven crazy by Claude's taunting, takes a club to the head of good-guy doctor Nick (Hugh Feagin). Having killed the only person who might have saved her, Amanda is left alone in the house with the lunatic Claude. She's shown laughing hysterically while a telephone dominates the foreground before the film mercifully fades to black.

WTF?

The screenplay, by Frank Schaefer and Kerry Newcomb, is about as solid as a loaf of bread and S.F. Brownrigg's direction is made up of far too many tight close ups and inept crane shots. The whole production looks terrible, with a washed out, grainy look and scenes that alternate between over and under exposed. It's no exaggeration to say that I've seen better production values in a porno movie.

Filmed entirely on location in Jefferson, Texas, DON'T OPEN THE DOOR! smacks of a local production backed by business people in the city as an investment opportunity. Cheap to make, it was sure to earn back it's cost and turn a slight profit on the drive-in and grind house circuit where the film was exhibited. The cast appears to have been selected from the local community theater and every one who appears on camera is absolutely terrible. DON'T OPEN THE DOOR! could have provided some cheap, sleazy thrills but the amateur, hey-kids-let's-make-a-movie-in-the-old-house-downtown feel to the film makes it a sad waste of time.