Home Sweet Home (1981)

"Home Sweet Home" follows an escaped mental patient high on PCP who cruises out of Los Angeles on Thanksgiving Day after killing a stranger and stealing his car. He ends up somewhere on the outskirts of the city, and stumbles upon a rural ranch home where a group of people have assembled for Thanksgiving. Chaos inevitably ensues.

This film has eluded me over the years, and given the vast amount of criticism it's received, I didn't expect a whole lot. Based on the first scene, things already seem inconceivably bad—the opening has the bulked up Jake Steinfeld approaching some guy who is pulled over under a freeway. The driver insouciantly offers him a beer, and he grabs him by the neck and strangles him to death. That's the kind of film this is. There are one-liners that you have to hear to believe: "I'm gonna kill myself," and "Maybe I can slip some arsenic in his soup... Hi, I'm Gail!" One of the main characters, a teenage boy named Mistake, spends the entirety of the film doing KISS makeup and playing metal riffs on an electric guitar with his portable amplifier.

For all of its "bad movie" pitfalls though, there is something strangely amusing about "Home Sweet Home." While it's by and large absurd, it does manage to sneak in some atmosphere, and there is a desolate, ominous feel to the setting that is unexpectedly eerie. What the film lacks in traditional fall atmosphere, it makes up for in its dark and dreary Topanga Canyon setting. It also, for unknown reasons, shifts from borderline black comedy to serious horror about midway through as the body count starts to kick in, a transition that is as unexpected as it is inexplicable. The last forty minutes of the film are actually respectably suspenseful, and there are some gruesome murder scenes in true eighties fashion.

The acting here is a mixed bag; a lot of the performances are hammy and expose some rather trite dialogue, but there are some decent performances, specifically from Colette Trygg, who plays the unexpected heroine. Jake Steinfeld's performance is over the top and ridiculous, but I suppose fitting for a crazed drug addict. The film also marks Vinessa Shaw's first screen role, playing the lone child at the Thanksgiving-turned-splatterfest (which is actually rather unusual for the period, given the taboo of children being exposed to violence in film).

Overall, "Home Sweet Home" is utterly strange, somewhat terrible, but also substantially enjoyable all in one. The tone of the film is at times tongue-in-cheek, especially in regard to the maniacal yet borderline comic villain, while at other moments it is dark and unforgiving. The film is at odds with itself in a lot of ways, and is surely one of the weirdest early eighties slashers, but I appreciated it for its atmosphere and the unexpectedly engaging final act. "Blood Rage," another rare Thanksgiving-set slasher, was released several years later, and though a more polished film, I slightly prefer the hard-edged grit of "Home Sweet Home." 6/10.

Fmovies: A musclebound, PCP injecting, laughing maniac escapes from a mental institution in Southern California and targets a ranch where a group of family and friends have gathered for Thanksgiving. This is a bad movie but two characters ensure that it remains in the memory as opposed to being instantly forgotten. Firstly the killer. Jay Jones (Jake Steinfeld), no back story is given but how many other psychos laugh out loudly when committing cold, senseless murder? The film has an adequate kill count, some are reasonable bloody, others - such as death by car engine bonnet - are laughable. The second character is one of the Thanksgiving group, a kid (who looks like he was well in his 20's or older) called Mistake (Peter De Paula), he wears mime artist facial make-up and holds an electric guitar throughout his screen time. He is very annoying but also amusing in equal amounts, trust me if you enjoy bad movies then Home is worth watching just to see these two. Overall the acting and script is bad, the lighting is poor, not helped by my low quality DVD. In Britain the VHS found itself as a Section 3 Video Nasty back in the 1980's, meaning the police could confiscate it, however it was never prosecuted for obscenity. Reality is it is fairly tame when compared to many other slasher movies. My review is based on a two viewings and I actually enjoyed more the second time. If you enjoy movies that are fun because they are so bad then I would recommend this one. Ha, ha, ha, ha!

Surely telling you the annoying guy got killed isn't a spoiler! I mean, the film itself sets up all these potential sex scenes, and then this guy dressed like a KISS member, playing a guitar, shows up and ruins everything. I was more worried that he wouldn't survive until the killer turned up!

The killer is a buffed up muscle man who shoots PCP under his tongue and laughs all the time. In the first few minutes he kills a drunkard and runs over an old woman. If you like watching serious slasher flicks then you might as well give up on this one because the tongue is rigid within the cheek. With the guitar playing moron (named Mistake), the fat business partner and the wailing Latin lady, this film is played for fun and not much else.

Truly, it ain't a classic by all means, but when one of the potential 'heros' syphoned gasoline from another car, then gets crushed when the killer jumps on him, you're not talking about high class cinema, but I couldn't help but like this (really) stupid film. At least you can watch it in the knowledge that the really annoying characters (namely Mistake) are going to be killed. I was surprised the killer just didn't shove that guitar right up his arse, because that's what I wanted to do!

An average slasher film, but it's aware of the cheese level, and wallows in it, and it's worth a watch at least.

Home Sweet Home fmovies. What did I just watch?! Another holiday day themed slasher, but this one you gotta see, to believe. It's bad, beyond bad. But it's how ridiculously stupid and inept, you're just so bemused to what you're seeing on screen. Some of the early death scenes are just laughable. That's even before the stalk and slash enters the picture. And Jake Seinfield's over-the-top killer's performance goes a long way to cementing that. Watch this buffed lunatic shooting up on PCP, while crazily laughing at every bruising encounter. However he's not the most irritating character. Yes, there's someone worse. A weird teenager decked out in what looks like mime makeup, while running around playing his electric guitar. And what type of name is Mistake? Oddly creepy character with an identity crisis. With these type of inclusions you just wonder if its definitely intentional in its attempts to raise your eye-brows.

The Bradley family and some of their friends are celebrating Thanksgiving in a remote country home. However this is disturbed when an escaped mental patient decides to crash the celebrations.

As for it being a slasher, it's fairly tame (after such a promising start) and predictably mundane. Some blood here and there. While the kills were rather daft, then actually brutal. Creativity was indeed lacking. But with such poor lighting and shooting it mostly in the dark, just made it hard to make out at times what was happening. The overwrought music on the other-hand wanted to telegraph everything. Just making sure that you knew there was evil around. Director Nettie Peña's handling is rough around the edges, as it's stingy budget shows and no tension whatsoever despite its rural forlorn location. It was dull, when it wasn't centering and using close-ups shots on the jacked-up, bodybuilding killer giggling away and carving up the guests. The rest of the cast give nothing more than disposable performances working with an inane script. There are some names like a very young Vinessa Shaw, Sallee Young (known for 1980 "Demented") and then you got all-rounder Don Edmonds (who's acting/producing on this one).

Aside for a few amusingly dumb moments, "Home Sweet Home" is a lousily plain 80s slasher turkey.

A muscled mental patient escapes from an asylum and promptly starts murdering people.The killer is played by Jake Seinfeld and wears no mask or costume of any kind.He laughs almost non-stop and becomes truly insane.A Thanksgiving meal of a 'normal' American family is going to be ruined by a slasher."Home Sweet Home" is one hell of a bad film.It's very cheaply made with atrocious acting and improvised dialogue.But the killings are plentiful including running over with a car or electrocution by electric guitar.The character of mime has to be seen to be believed.He carries the guitar around with him at all times,playing it loud as he annoys everyone around him at all times.I had some fun with this inept and plot less slasher,so let's bite this turkey on Thanksgiving Day.

Traveling together for Thanksgiving dinner, a large family prepares for being around each other when they start to realize that a bunch of weird incidents has left them stranded in the house and it soon dawns on them that a mental-asylum escapee is stalking and killing them all at the house.

This one here wasn't so bad and had a few things going for it. One of the main things positive here is that the film is simply weird, with the killer being one of the more memorable ones around. He's so muscular and wide that he looks just plain freakish, and add the shrill giggle and the perm then you have a one of a kind villain that remains memorable because of this. It also plays into a fun slasher trope as he is so pumped full of PCP that he takes the old cliché of the indestructible bogeyman to new levels. It's far more believable under that condition that when he gets stabbed in the back with the knife handle protruding from his bloodsoaked t-shirt, he continues stalking his victims and throwing them around giggling with reckless abandon. The weirdness also extends into the interaction with the characters, especially at the beginning where everyone is attempting to chase around the one incredibly irritating character around the house or even their relationship with the families, all make this one feel weirder than usual. There's also a couple of fine stalking scenes here when the killer goes around the grounds of the house knocking off the isolated members of the family or a fun encounter out in the woods. The best encounters are at the end, where the killer goes after the family in the house and chases them around, making for a couple of tense moments. All together with some great kills, these are the film's best moments as this one here did have a couple things wrong with it. The main thing here is that nothing much in the way of actual horror scenes happens. This one just doesn't really do a whole lot to keep the excitement up during the main part of the film, mainly focusing on everybody wandering around looking for everyone else that's gone missing so that nothing happens in here. The film does take a long time with its set-up to get to the good parts of the film so that there are too many periods of inactivity to really make it feel like anything interesting or exciting is happening and it just comes off as really dull. This is due to the film's habit of throwing the weirdness into it rather than doing anything else, leaving so many scenes to try to feel weird and come off as dull instead. The other flaw here is that the film is often-times so dark that it's impossible to see what's going on. The film darkens whenever it gets to the good parts when there's a kill going on or preparing for one, and to have them be flawed is a major mistake. It's impossible to be able to tell what happened during these scenes, where the strike happened and where it's taking place, and that is not a good sign in a slasher. These elements here are the film's problems.

Rated R: Violence, Language, Nudity and drug use.