Home for the Holidays (1974)

Yours truly is a man of many silly traditions, and one of them is that I insist on watching one Christmas-themed horror movie per year during the Holiday period! Since I've been doing this for many years already, it's getting more difficult each year to select a worthwhile holiday-horror title each year. At first I was thrilled to have stumbled upon this "Home for the Holidays", but in all honesty it's only a very standard and numeric whodunit TV-thriller and there just happens to stand a Christmas tree in the entrance hall of the house where most of the film is set. Apart from the tree and the holiday reference in the title, "Home for the Holidays" isn't at all what you expect from a Christmas horror flick. There aren't any maniacal killers dressed up as Santa or demonic elves, and even the typical Christmassy circumstances got overlooked. For example, there's a thunderstorm raging outside instead of snowflakes tumbling down. Joseph Stefano, who also wrote the screenplay of the legendary "Psycho", delivered the script to TV-producer Aaron Spelling and multi-talented director John Llewellyn Moxey. Impressive names, to say the least, and the cast list is also stupendous, but the movie itself is less than memorable. Benjamin Morgan begs for his four adult daughters to return home because he's convinced that his second wife Elizabeth is slowly poisoning him to death. The daughters believe him, because Elizabeth's first husband also died under mysterious circumstances, but still they're reluctant to help their father. For you see, Benjamin always was a tyrant and the daughters feel that he drove their beloved mother to commit suicide. Shortly after, a murderous psychopath dressed in a raincoat and waving around a pitchfork makes it clear that nobody of the Morgan family is supposed to survive this Christmas. The mystery/whodunit factor of this film is probably one of the weakest and most predictable ones I've ever seen. One good glimpse at all the faces of the lead players is enough to guess who the killer is, and when and his/her motivations get revealed at the end, it makes little to no sense. The main reason to track down and watch "Home for the Holidays" is undoubtedly the female top-cast! Jessica Walter, Jill Hayworth, Eleanor Parker and Julie Harris all give away superb performances. But the girl standing in the spotlights the most here is Sally Field as the youngest and most innocent daughter Christine. Sally was 26 years old around the time of release, but here she looks like an adorable angel not a day over 15.

Enjoyably outlandish made for TV movie. The plot is nothing new, just another rehash of the danger in the old creaky house thriller. What really is of interest in this is the cast. The great thing about these television films from the 60's and 70's is the ability they had to pull together high quality performers that you normally wouldn't see cast together. While this one manages to gather an awesome group of actresses the absurdity of casting them as sisters and Julie Harris as their stepmother, since none of them favor each other in the least nor Walter Brennan who is supposed to be their father, is a head scratcher. To add fuel to this particular fire is the fact that Sally Field and Eleanor Parker had just played mother and daughter the previous year in Maybe I'll Come Home in the Spring. Fun in an absurd way but not believable for a minute.

This is made just before the slashers came out and it is a perfect example towards the slashers. Don't get me wrong, it's more an whodunit than a slasher but the first points to make it a slasher are visible. There are a few first person shots involved and we have a hero. They even try to mislead you by showing the killer's clothes a view times. On the point of gore or even blood well, there isn't any. It's somewhere between the Italian Giallo's and the, here we go again, slashers. But the acting is sublime and that's the reason why you keep watching. Up to this review it's only available on rental VHS in the US. And it doesn't go that cheap on the internet. Still for myself being a horror geek I enjoyed it. Even that it's low on the red stuff, but admit it, Texas Chainsaw and Halloween didn't had any blood too. If you are collection horror than this surely must be added in your collection.

This sports a nice, deep cast but for a thriller you better deliver more than name actors and talk. The first third of this movie was nothing but talk, and more talk. Most of that was a bunch of women bitching about everything to each other. The first five listed actors in here are women so that verifies that it's really a "chick flick" and little else. This probably plays on the Lifetime network.There was a quick murder scene and then more talk. By halfway through, they had lost me. By the way, Sally Field looked about 15 years old in here.