El invitado del diablo

The only remotely good scene in this film is when the killer mows down an old granny crossing the street. But it's downhill from there. The killer is a beefy muscle-bound type who laughs like a madman each time he kills. Nothing much really happens in the film. The killer makes his way to a house in the countryside where people are having their thanksgiving dinner, and stalks around the house in darkness slowly bumping everyone off. To cover for the lack of budget (meaning lack of gore) almost every death scene was shot in the dark. There's not even a cheesy decapitated head to laugh at. There's nothing. No entertainment value whatsoever. The stalking around in the dark is tediously dull and without suspense.

Slasher fans should avoid this unless you're a completest, in fact any sane person should avoid it. I'm starting to get sick of seeing all these "lost" slasher films that turn out to be bore-fests, why do I bother?

Another killer. Another group of victims. Only this time around the story takes place on Thanksgiving to a Spanish family. The opening of this film suggest where in for one heck of a ride. The opening takes no prisioners in the selection of it's victims, it's brutal and it's even tacky, but it shows a lot of promise. After the opening though, the film settles into predictability. The film's pacing is dramatically slowed down, with your standard stalking scenes and routine murder sequences. A total washout.

1981 was a memorably dire year. We had assassination attempts on The President and The Pope. A cement walkway in Kansas City fell, crushing over one hundred people. The first cases of AIDS were reported, California was beset by ravenous fruit-flies, and hundreds of Beirut civilians were wiped-out during Israeli bombings. In select theaters, audiences were subjected to a slasher-film atrocity concerning a musclebound PCP freak who escapes from a nuthouse and proceeds to successively kill off members of a family at their Thanksgiving dinner. That film was HOME SWEET HOME.

Groan in pain while you watch famed fitness instructor Jake Steinfeld flex his acting muscles as the cackling killer...somehow he manages to deliriously overplay a character who has virtually no dialog whatsoever. The circumstantial humor in Steinfeld's towering inferno of ham-handed histrionics is, however, the sole glimmer of virtue in this unbearable bagatelle, a bland early entry in the slasher cycle which is surprisingly spare on gore and nudity.

Potentially gratifying for ultra-masochistic bad movie fans, I suppose...in this capacity, I might suggest watching it back-to-back with THE FREEWAY MANIAC.

3.5/10

I rented this for a sleepover with my friend Cait with one of those Mondo movies. (Ugh, how gross. We couldn't even finish it.) We watched this first, though. And I must say, it was quite cheesy.

This family of all twenty-somethings and older (who seem like a group of friends) get together at this in-the-middle-of-nowhere ranch for Thanksgiving. At the same time, a psychopath escapes from the mental ward, and is out to kill. And what do you know, he stumbles upon the Bradley's, this somewhat disfunctional and weird family. One by one, he kills them off after those cheesy stalking scenes where apparently nobody can see out the corner of their eye. (And if you like that stuff, definitely see "The Last Slumber Party." Those girls were as oblivious as Helen Keller.)

This is pretty standard, all up to the mediocre ending. You really aren't missing anything if you don't see this, and anyway, I've seen better. Much better. I say, skip it.

What did I just watch?! Another holiday day themed slasher, but this one you gotta see, to believe. It's bad, beyond bad. But it's how ridiculously stupid and inept, you're just so bemused to what you're seeing on screen. Some of the early death scenes are just laughable. That's even before the stalk and slash enters the picture. And Jake Seinfield's over-the-top killer's performance goes a long way to cementing that. Watch this buffed lunatic shooting up on PCP, while crazily laughing at every bruising encounter. However he's not the most irritating character. Yes, there's someone worse. A weird teenager decked out in what looks like mime makeup, while running around playing his electric guitar. And what type of name is Mistake? Oddly creepy character with an identity crisis. With these type of inclusions you just wonder if its definitely intentional in its attempts to raise your eye-brows.

The Bradley family and some of their friends are celebrating Thanksgiving in a remote country home. However this is disturbed when an escaped mental patient decides to crash the celebrations.

As for it being a slasher, it's fairly tame (after such a promising start) and predictably mundane. Some blood here and there. While the kills were rather daft, then actually brutal. Creativity was indeed lacking. But with such poor lighting and shooting it mostly in the dark, just made it hard to make out at times what was happening. The overwrought music on the other-hand wanted to telegraph everything. Just making sure that you knew there was evil around. Director Nettie Peña's handling is rough around the edges, as it's stingy budget shows and no tension whatsoever despite its rural forlorn location. It was dull, when it wasn't centering and using close-ups shots on the jacked-up, bodybuilding killer giggling away and carving up the guests. The rest of the cast give nothing more than disposable performances working with an inane script. There are some names like a very young Vinessa Shaw, Sallee Young (known for 1980 "Demented") and then you got all-rounder Don Edmonds (who's acting/producing on this one).

Aside for a few amusingly dumb moments, "Home Sweet Home" is a lousily plain 80s slasher turkey.