Home for the Holidays

Precursor to the looming onslaught of slashers

Four daughters visit their ailing father (Walter Brennan) at his rural estate in SoCal for the holidays. He insists that his current wife is poisoning him (Julie Harris) and people start dying during a rainstorm. The daughters are: The wise older sibling, Alex (Eleanor Parker); the neurotic alcoholic Freddie (Jessica Walter); the promiscuous Jo (Jill Haworth); and the winsome youth Christie (Sally Field).

"Home for the Holidays" (1972) is a drama/mystery with some horror elements that was originally released as a TV movie on ABC. As my title blurb states, this was the forerunner to the forthcoming rush of slashers by the early 80s. Sure, it’s understandably tamer and more dramatic, but it has a killer in a hooded raincoat with a pitchfork, as shown on the poster, which is reminiscent of the slicker-wearing killer with a hook in “I know What You Did Last Summer” (1997).

The flick works up some nice creepy ambiance with the storm, the mystery slayer and the macabre deaths. While Sally Field is fetching, Jill Haworth wins out on the beauty front IMHO.

Forty minutes into the story I had a theory about the identity of the murderer, but changed my mind five minutes later and was right. See if you can figure it out.

The film runs 1 hour, 14 minutes, and was shot at 20th Century Fox Studios, including 20th Century Fox Ranch, Malibu Creek State Park, California.

GRADE: B-