Day 15: Home For The Holidays

 

In the 70's, before the advent of VHS, there was a lot of talk about TV taking over. There was no home video format to watch major films yet. You either saw a movie in theaters or you hoped it would eventually air on television. During this time Made For TV Movies became huge. Several great titles such as Dark Night of The Scarecrow, Don't Be Afraid Of The Dark, and The Town That Dreaded Sundown were all produced specifically for the small screen. Home For The Holidays is one of the more popular made for television horror films of it's time.

An old man has fallen ill. Believing his second wife is poisoning him, he invites his four daughters to his home and requests that they kill her. The mystery gets deeper when the daughters begin dying off one by one. It becomes a full blown whodunit slasher film as Christine (Sally Field) tries to find the culprit.

Due to the restrictions of television at the time, there is pretty much no gore. The highlight here is the acting and storytelling. Everyone here does a good job in keeping a realistic tone. Everyone except for the overly grouchy father, but his performance is so humorous and over the top that it's hard to mark it as a downfall.

Home For The Holidays is a fine little slasher film for it's time. The biggest downfall is now in a day and age where slasher films everywhere it becomes easy to spot the killer pretty early on. After you've seen so many of these plot twist endings, the reverse psychology storytelling doesn't work too well anymore. In the early 70's I'm sure this film surprised most of it's viewers, nowadays it's still good but doesn't pack as much of punch.

Body Count:2

Side Note: The grouchy old man must have wanted boys since all of his daughters have male nicknames: Chris, Fred, Alex, and Jo. Also, the director seems to have a humorous obsession with zoom in shots.