Ah, Thanksgiving. Hosts of families gathered together, often in isolated locales, tempers flaring because of varied differences (especially these days), a fair amount of drinking in some cases and lots of cutlery on hand. What could go wrong?
Oddly, despite all these elements, there haven't been much in the way of Thanksgiving-themed horror movies. Over the next week or so, we'll get to the few of them I could rustle up, but fair warning: if you're expecting anything of quality, you might want to bow out now. Much like Thanksgiving leftovers, this is one holiday that doesn't re-heat well. Once may be enough for these selections!
First up, we have Home Sweet Home. Although I remember seeing the cover many times on my regular sojourns to the video store as a kid, I never quite got around to watching it, for some reason. Probably for the best, as my love of so-bad-they're-good films hadn't quite come into its own yet. Perhaps if I had known about the Thanksgiving connection, I might have, but oddly, the box art didn't highlight it at all, at least on the cover.
Instead, there was just nondescript art of a random guy with a big knife. It didn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that it was likely just a run-of-the-mill slasher movie, and though I certainly loved me some slashers back then, I just never indulged in this particular one. However, after doing a search of Thanksgiving-related horror films, it came up time and again, so I finally decided to give it a whirl.
On paper, Home Sweet Home seemingly has a few things going for it. There's the Thanksgiving thing, of course. It's also one of the rare golden age slashers directed by a woman, and even rarer, a Latina woman, Nettie Peña. Alas, this was her only feature, aside from a straight-to-video documentary, so about the only thing it proves is that women are just as capable of making a crappy slasher movie as men, lol.
Finally, it does have a few notable cast members in Vinessa Shaw, here making her ignoble film debut as Angel, the lone child of the piece; and none other than Jake Steinfeld as the killer. Yep, the bodybuilder of "Body by Jake" fame. Reportedly, Steinfeld has disowned the film and refuses to talk about it.
I can't imagine why, given his over-the-top performance, which might give semi-legendary Eric Freeman (of Silent Night, Deadly Night 2 infamy) a run for its money if he had some choice dialogue to go along with all that robust laughter.
Either way, he's hilariously bad, as the PCP-fueled nut-bar who shoots up under his tongue and proceeds to go on a drug-fueled rampage. Indeed, he kills two people on two separate occasions- one for his car, one with the car- before the credits even finish rolling, as if he couldn't wait to get started!
Meanwhile, Shaw doesn't get much to do here, save a scene in which, tired of waiting for Thanksgiving dinner, she takes matters into her own hands and goes to town on the feast before anyone else does, leaving the table looking like a crime scene in her wake and passing out on the floor, as if a victim of Jake's murderous psychopath, Jay Jones.
Shaw would, of course, go on to decidedly better films, with her break-out role, the Halloween horror-comedy Hocus Pocus, a favorite of many to this day, so at least she went on to nail a popular horror-adjacent holiday film eventually. You might also know her from the soccer comedy Ladybugs (with Rodney Dangerfield), Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut, the Hills Have Eyes and 3:10 to Yuma remakes and Soderbergh's Side Effects.
The rest of the cast is basically unknowns, though character actor Don Edmonds, who plays the Bradley family patriarch, Harold, was all over TV in the late 50's through the 60's, before finally nabbing a recurring role on the show Hunter in the 80's. He semi-retired from acting after that, fittingly with a film called Last Gasp, though he would crop up in the mid-2000's in a movie called Killer Drag Queens on Dope, which sound amazing.
However, what he's really known for is the films he produced and/or directed, which include the cult faves Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS and Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheikhs; another hilariously bad slasher, Terror on Tour; and, most notably, Tony Scott's classic action flick, True Romance, which was written by none other than Quentin Tarantino in his early days.
There's also Charles Hoyes, who plays the gambling-obsessed Wayne, another character actor that was all over TV and low-budget film in the 80's and still crops up to this day on the occasional TV show, such as Jane the Virgin. Other notable credits include Angel of H.E.A.T., Viper, Field of Dreams, Space Jam, Molly, the delightfully-named Itty Bitty Titty Committee and the TV shows Twin Peaks, The X-Files, The West Wing, ER and Criminal Minds.
Also worth a mention is Sallee Young, who played Linda, and played another Linda in the slightly-better regarded rape/revenge flick Demented (alongside erstwhile porn star Harry Reems) as well as a bit role in the Canadian horror spoof Pandemonium, which features a host of soon-to-be-famous comedic actors like Phil Hartman, Paul "Pee Wee" Reubens, John Paragon (of "Jambi" and "The Breather" fame) and Judge Reinhold, among others.
Things go swiftly downhill from there, with this film being the only feature credit for most of the actors, though Lisa Rodríguez, who played the only-Spanish-speaking and acoustic guitar-playing Maria, also cropped up again in Edmonds' aforementioned Terror on Tour.
I'm not going to lie- the film is just awful. The acting is mostly terrible, the dialogue is laughably bad, the film has yet to have a proper DVD/Blu-Ray release, so the cinematography looks like crap, with anything set after dark barely visible, making it tough to see what's going on after a point; and the gore, typically the bread-and-butter of a film like this, is non-existent.
About the only thing that saves it is Steinfeld's goofball performance, which has to be seen to be believed, and a full-on insane turn from "Triple Threat" (and I use that term VERY loosely) Peter De Paula, who is a mime, magician and plays electric guitar through an amp throughout the film until the bitter end of his character, who truly lives by the sword and dies by the sword when he is electrocuted to death by way of his own guitar set-up in the film's most notable scene.
So, those of you hoping for a diamond in the rough are out of luck here- it's no Blood Rage, that's for sure. (Not that that film is exactly a classic, either, lol, but more on that in a future review.) But, even so, if you're that desperate to see a Thanksgiving-themed slasher flick, then I suppose it gets the job done to a certain extent, if only in bad movie entertainment value. I mean, it's hard to top a mime/magician/musician combo, right? Mistake, indeed.
I suppose I've seen worse, though. Not by much, admittedly, but still. I had fun with it, and for one of the rare slashers I was aware of but had never seen, it was at least worth watching once, I suppose.
I mean, I laughed a few times and it was neat seeing a young Vinessa Shaw, though she looked like she had no idea what was going on the majority of the time. I'm not sure the filmmakers or her fellow actors did, either.
So, yeah- check it out... I guess? 😏
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