Return of the Family Man

A group of obnoxious teens rents a ruined house,which once belonged to the infamous serial killer called The Family Man.They quickly become victims of this crazed slasher."Return of the Family Man" is extremely cheap and extremely stupid.The acting is diabolical,the gore is absent as is the nudity and the killer is laughable throwing painfully dumb one-liners.I have seen literally tons of 80's slasher flicks and this one is easily among the worst.Even the killings are particularly anemic and bloodless.The film is very obscure and only recommended for fans of cheesy trash cinema.All others should stay away from this steaming pile of junk.2 out of 10.

I remember watching this movie when I was a kid and thought that it was quite fun at the time and recently I viewed it again and I thought it was still fun and a couple of scenes stuck out in my mind, but this isn't as bad as some of the other slashers that came out during this period. The acting is pretty bad, but there are some decent scenes and plenty of kills and some comedy moments.

But unfortunately the final half hour is incredibly stupid, even by 80's slasher movie standards, the remaining characters are well aware that there is a killer on the loose, but they continue to stick around and even wonder off on their own and surprise, surprise they get killed. But I did like the fact that they group together and build weapons to try and get the killer, I thought that this was an interesting plot point, even though it was very cheesy and predictably they mostly fail and get bumped off until the last remaining few get the better off him.

Okay this movie is very cheap looking, but it never drags and it does rather move along very quickly and even though the acting was pretty bad, the characters were pretty likable and even the family man killer was hilariously camp and this movie does keep you interested all the way through.

Bottom of the barrell slasher, with a derivative plot (an insane serial killer evades from a prison bus and return to his house where he started his massacres ten years before, but a few teenagers are there camping. You may imagine the rest of the story), most of the killing happening outside of the camera (so, where is the fun? And there is a total lack of invention even in the various deaths depicted here), without a single nude scene (and what is a teen slasher without at least a couple of tits? Be serious...) and with a debatable acting at best. Even the killer is a delusion. Better to stay away from this one

My review was written in July 1990 after watching the movie on Raedon video cassette.

The stepfather genre goes to South Africa in this slasher video, released direct to video Stateside.

Ron Smerczak plays a mass murderer, called Family Man by the press, who keeps killing off families that remind him of his own family (which he killed in the first place). He escapes from a prison bus at the beginning of the film and gorily kills all his fellow prisoners for good measure.

Picture awkwardly injects a teens-in-jeopardy subplot that dominates the proceedings: answering an ad, youngsters congregate at Family Man's remote mansion and, sure enough, he's headed there too.

Supposedly set in the "Pacific Southwest", South African-lensed opus has plenty of gaffes, notably an all-American character saying "I'll throw the lot of you out". Accents vary as well. Cast includes Shirley Jane Harris, previously seen in another Cape Town horror pic "The Stay Awake".

Witness to a violent shootout between drug-dealers, pizza delivery boy Alden (Liam Cundill) decides to lay low for a while by joining his friends Brian (Terence Reis) and Vickie (Michelle Constant) on a country break at an old mansion. When they arrive there they are disappointed to find that the property is dilapidated, and that it has also been rented out to a group of tourists. Deciding to make the most of a bad situation, the occupants set about trying to have fun in the manky mansion, unaware that the place was once home to serial killer The Family Man, who has just escaped and is heading their way.

Somewhere in Return of the Family Man there's a decent slasher movie trying to get out: the film has a classic set up, a seriously sick killer (who butchered his own family for the insurance money), and a high body count. The problem is that the film doesn't take itself seriously enough to be scary, with comical characters who are always larking about, while most of the deaths occur off-screen, resulting in a frustratingly low gore quotient. Also, despite the potential victims including a tarty blonde, tour-guide Libby (Debra Kaye), and a hot French girl, Sylvie (Dominique Moser), there's no gratuitous sex scene, no skinny dipping scene, and no shower scene!

Writer/director John Murlowski does manage a few effectively unsettling moments that hint at what might've been had he gone down a more serious route: the slaughter of an entire family is amazingly mean-spirited, the discovery of a roomful of corpses is wonderfully macabre, and some of the kills are quite nasty in spirit (face on a food blender blade, lump hammer to the head)- if only Murlowski hadn't shied away from showing us the splatter.

Shot in South Africa, masquerading as the U. S. A., with Adrian Galley doing a really terrible English accent as blonde-haired punk Weasel.