RETRO REVIEW: HOME SWEET HOME (1981)
I’ll be honest. I hate Thanksgiving. If I had my druthers, I’d eighty-six the whole celebration and implement my long-awaited plans for Halloween 2 (the holiday, not the film sequel). I won’t get into all the reasons I don’t like this particular holiday, but high on my list is the forced obligation of interacting with my extended family over awkward inquiries of my political leanings and why I don’t have any kids yet. Eventually, I find myself locked in the upstairs bathroom, because it’s the only sanctuary I have from the cacophonic assault of inane confabs on everything from the weather, to my aunt, who still thinks that POST MALONE is MACHINE GUN KELLY and vice versa. I’m not saying I’d like an escaped killer turnt out on hallucinogens to come to our home and proceed to murder everyone, but it would be a nice change of pace.
PLOT:
Also known as SLASHER IN THE HOUSE, the Thanksgiving-centered slasher film, HOME SWEET HOME centers around a turkey-day gathering of friends and family at a secluded ranch house in California. What they don’t know is that insane and drug-addicted Jay Jones (a very maniacal JAKE STEINFELD) has broken out of his Los Angeles mental asylum and is now on a PCP-fueled murder spree, one that will bring him right to their very front door.
JAKE STEINFELD is a killer on a Thanksgiving rampage in HOME SWEET HOME.
KILLS:
The film opens up with our killer, Jay Jones (JAKE STEINFELD), escaping from his mental asylum, where he has been for the last eight years, after he beat both his parents to death when he was eighteen. This, of course, begs the question, what the hell happened to Jay inside that asylum, because he’s supposed to be 26, but looks like he’s 42 and works out with the garage door to his house open so the whole neighborhood can drink in his lats (he’s worked hard on them, guys).
Once he’s escaped, he promptly strangles a guy chilling in a station wagon who offers him a beer. We quickly find out that Jay doesn’t want a beer, he wants that sweet, sweet Phencyclidine, otherwise known as PCP or Angel Dust. In a film filled with kills, it’s this scene that is perhaps the most disturbing as Jay quickly gets those Special K sweats, moaning in pleasure as he proceeds to inject the drug right into the underside of his tongue. At that point, we are off to the races as Jay promptly runs over an old lady on his way outta Dodge, brandishing a tattoo on the back of his hand that looks like a crappy nightclub stamp reading, “home sweet home”, and a maniacal laugh that sounds like the Joker by way of Brooklyn.
Once he gets to Harold Bradley’s (DON EDMONDS) ranch, it’s a turkey-shoot for Jay, as the rest of the gang have gathered to celebrate Thanksgiving, including Harold’s tenant Scott (DAVID MIELKE), Scott’s girlfriend Jennifer (COLETTE TRYGG), Harold’s girlfriend Linda (SALLEE YOUNG), her friend Gail (LEIA NARON), and Harold’s adorable daughter Angel, (VINESSA SHAW). We also meet Mistake (PETER DE PAULA), who is Harold’s son, but more on that guy later.
Once Jay cuts the power to the house, all hell breaks loose. There are skull crushes, stabbings, head-slammings, and garrotings galore as he proceeds to gleefully lay waste to our characters one by one.
A California family comes under siege by a drug-fueled killer in HOME SWEET HOME.
VISUALS/SFX:
I’m not going to sugarcoat it. This film looks shitty. Listen, I’m a person that tries to find the positive in just about everything, but HOME SWEET HOME looks like someone strapped a Vaseline-covered Zenith VM6200 camcorder to a housecat with a neurological disorder. It’s not good. Half the film is so dark, I spent most of the time trying to figure out what the hell I was looking at. A severed leg? A drumstick? The cinematography is as murky as the plot, which is razor thin to say the least.
Sadly, even though the body count is a very respectable nine kills for this film, there is very little gore to be had. Maybe they couldn’t afford the SFX work aside from one particular scene, as 40% of the budget had to go for renting that huge ranch and the other 60% was reserved for Steinfeld’s free-weight rental fees on set.
My rule for bad 80’s slasher films is go whole hog with either the story or the gore - bonus if it’s both! If you have a horror film with terrible dialogue and plot, up the ante on the gore, and vice versa. The filmmakers on HOME SWEET HOME seemed to think that they had an ace in the hole with the casting of a very bulked-up and intimidating-looking Steinfeld, but all those muscles are for naught if we don’t even get up close and personal on the visera he wrought upon that house.
PETER DE PAULA as the aptly named, Mistake, in HOME SWEET HOME.
PERFORMANCES:
For the most part, our actors make passable performances out of some truly craptastic dialogue. Case in point: when everyone starts arriving for Thanksgiving, Harold and Linda decide that’s the best time to get their horny on in one of the bedrooms, with Harold purring to Linda, “Mmmm….you’re a pretty girl,” to which Linda replies, “God made me that way.” Yeah, even typing that I threw up in my mouth a little.
VINESSA SHAW as Angel is undeniably adorable and charming with what few lines she has, and even though none of her lines are in English, LISA RODRIGUEZ as Maria has a wonderfully comedic and chaotic energy about her.
As our killer, JAKE STEINFELD grunts, groans, cackles, growls and breathes heavily throughout most of the film (he has maybe two spoken lines, tops). It’s as though director NETTIE PEÑA only had one direction for him: act like an absolute lunatic. Which, to be fair, he does. But, for the most part, all his crazy posturing comes off more comical than menacing, sort of like the Hulk in AVENGERS: ENDGAME, when he’s the merged Banner/Hulk and is trying to play like he’s 2012 “smash” Hulk. I guess in the scope of this film that’s a pretty relevant analogy, as Steinfeld actually played The Hulk on an episode of Amazing Stories back in 1985. In any case, Steinfeld apparently refuses to discuss this role to this day, to which film historian ADAM ROCKOFF wrote, “I’ve heard that star Steinfeld has no sense of humor about involvement with the film, which makes watching this travesty almost worthwhile.” That’s a mighty big almost, Adam.
But perhaps the most notable performance of the film comes from PETER DE PAULA as Harold’s son, Mistake. First of all, how horrible of a parent do you have to be to name your child Mistake? But, to be fair, Mistake is basically the worst, annoying everyone in the household like a low-rent cross between MARCEL MARCEAU and ACE FREHLEY as he runs around playing his guitar, hooked up to an amp on his back, and throwing slight-of hand-magic up like gang signs. Did I mention he’s basically the worst? Though, to be fair, there is a sweet little scene when he sits down with Angel to take her mind off all the crazy stuff going on by doing some magic for her. It’s a rare bit of charm in an otherwise ridiculous film.
That ain’t cranberry sauce: JAKE STEINFELD as Jay Jones in HOME SWEET HOME.
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:
Ultimately, the biggest problem with HOME SWEET HOME is that you keep wondering why the hell you are even watching this film. We have little insight into our killer’s motives for killing these people other than he killed his parents and his one spoken line of: “Women are no good man, they’ll only cause you problems - my mother was no good like them!” There’s no explanation for why he drives all the way from L.A. to this bumfuck California ranch. Are the Bradleys members of his extended family? Are they connected to his dead mom and dad in some way? We have no reason as to why he starts targeting these people other than they were just there.
“But, Dana!”, you may cry, “Michael Myers didn’t have a reason to target Laurie Strode, and HALLOWEEN was a good movie!” First of all, I’m not going to get into that exceptionally loaded statement, and second, the difference is that HALLOWEEN is a good movie. HOME SWEET HOME ain’t. Which really is too bad, because a few of the elements are there. A holiday gathering, a remote location, a drug-fueled mentally unstable killer? I mean, better films have been made with less. The problem seems to lie with the fact that the filmmakers don’t give us enough plot or characterization for us to hang our hats on. We don’t necessarily need a motive, I mean, Randy Meeks even said it himself: “motives are incidental.” But, we don’t even have a connection, either familial or location-wise as to why our killer targets this house. Even if there’s no motive, the killer’s actions have to make at least some kind of logical sense, if only he was craving some homemade stuffing and cranberry sauce. If it’s a choice between watching this film again, and trying to explain who PETE DAVIDSON is to my Aunt Janet over her weird marshmallow Jell-O “salad”, let’s just say, I’ll take the latter every time.
THE GORY DETAILS:
Film debut of VINESSA SHAW.
Taglines for the film included, “This year, it's not the turkey being carved for Thanksgiving” and “Be it ever so humble, there's no place to HIDE.”
While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the “video nasty” panic.
MY RATING: 3/10
WHERE TO WATCH:
YouTube
