Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		2.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Don't Look in the Basement Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman August 13, 2018

Note: This film is available as part of S.F. Brownrigg Grindhouse Double Feature.

My hunch is even those who were around and attended drive-in movies during the 1970s may not instantly recognize the name of S.F. Brownrigg, even if one of the two films included on this double feature Blu-ray, Don't Look in the Basement, was evidently regularly paired with Wes Craven’s now legendary The Last House on the Left, and in fact shared (stole?) some of its same advertising techniques, including the “mantra advice” to keep repeating “it’s only a movie. . .it’s only a movie”. Both Don’t Look in the Basement and its sibling Don’t Open the Door have some rather unexpectedly effective moments, but they both suffer from an obvious lack of budget and both fall prey to certain inadequacies in both writing and acting departments. But as commentators David Del Valle and David Decoteau mention in one of the supplements included on this Blu-ray disc, how much teens were actually watching the screens at drive- ins, especially on “event” occasions where theater owners programmed an entire dusk to dawn array of B- (or lesser) films to keep kids there and buying popcorn, may be a debatable point.

Don’t Look in the Basement relies on a pretty hoary conceit involving “the inmates running the asylum”, with a supposed reveal toward the end of the film that anyone worth their prognosticatory salt will have guessed long before it’s trotted out. The film takes place in an isolated sanitarium where a “live and let live” technique is in place, meaning that the rather eclectic group of patients confined there all are allowed to play out their neuroses and/or psychoses unfettered. When new arrival nurse Charlotte Beale (Rosie Holotik, evidently a Playboy centerfold at around the time the film was shot) arrives, she finds herself in an increasingly dangerous situation where a number of staff and/or patients are brutally murdered.

There are some nice unsettling moments scattered throughout the film, but it never really achieves anything truly frightening. Everything tips over into Grand Guignol territory in the final few minutes, with a kind of silly looking revenge scenario that is fairly reminiscent of Tod Browning’s Freaks.

Don't Look in the Basement Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Both films on this release are presented on Blu-ray courtesy of VCI and MVD Visual with AVC encoded 1080p transfers in 1.78:1. The back cover of this release touts a "new 2K restoration" of Don't Open the Door and a "new 1080p restoration" of Don't Look in the Basement. I wish I had better news to report with regard to either of these films, but both seem to have fallen prey to VCI's continuing off kilter looking transfers and/or encodes. The good news here is that there is grain in both of these presentations, and the palette in both of them is relatively nicely suffused, though Don't Open the Door looked slightly pinkish to my eyes. Both films are quite soft looking, and there's some peculiar anamorphic anomalies in Don't Look in the Basement where the middle of the frame looks oddly squeezed, but that may have been a malfunctioning lens during production (I don't have other home media releases of either of these titles, and so can't offer an opinion as to whether this particular peculiarity is "new" to this release, but some of our diehard horror members will probably be able to in our Forum). Considering some of the damage seen in the trailers that VCI provides as supplements, they obviously had their hands full if the elements they utilized had the same age related wear and tear, and fans should appreciate the fact that there are no huge tears, scratches or emulsion issues. But even with the grain in evidence, both of these transfers look rather waxy and smooth and not particularly filmic. Don't Open the Door arguably looks a bit more natural and less "digitized" (for want of a better term), but some may feel it's a pretty incremental difference (I've slightly upped the video score on that film to indicate the difference).

Don't Look in the Basement Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Both films feature decent sounding LPCM 2.0 mono tracks that capably render dialogue, effects and score without the same kind of variabilities in quality that the video presentations display. Both films have somewhat anachronistic scores by Robert Farrar, and both can sound just slightly bright at times. While fidelity is fine, neither of these tracks will probably knock any audiophile socks off, but similarly they shouldn't provide too much to worry about, either.

Don't Look in the Basement Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Both films included with this release share a disc, and so not every extra on the disc pertains specifically to one film.

• Bonus Grindhouse Trailers (1080p; 12:39) comes with a warning that these have not been restored. Some of these are probably NSFW due to nudity if not outright gore.


• D.O.T.D. Deleted Scenes (1080p; 5:58) also come with a warning that they haven't been restored, but some may actually feel these raw scans are preferable to the look of the "restored" film itself.


• D.O.T.D. Production Notes (1080p; 2:46) is a kind of interesting look at a sheaf of papers with guidelines for credits and things like that. This scrolls automatically, so have your Pause button handy if you're busy reading.


• Don't Look in the Basement Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:10) is windowboxed.


• Don't Open the Door Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:03)


• Audio Commentary is available on Don't Look in the Basement and features David Del Valle and David Docoteau.

There is at least one peculiar authoring anomaly on the disc. Pressing Pop Up Menu does bring up three options, but clicking on any of them does nothing (or at least it did nothing for me).

Don't Look in the Basement Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The basic premise of this film has definite promise, and there are selected sequences that are quite well done, but this has a fairly lo-fi ambience throughout that keeps it from every delivering outright shocks. Fans are encouraged to carefully parse the screenshots to see how they feel about the video presentation here, but audio is fine if uninspiring, and the commentary is fun.