La Tour des Monstres

Genuinely unique and creepy, Homebodies tells the depressing story of what life is like after society has discarded you. A group of elderly people have had their apartment building, home for much of their lives, condemned, and they have been asked to move to a new residence. When they realize they don't want to move, they take business into their own hands. They stab, sabotage, drown a man in cement, and kill in numerous other ways to keep home, sweet home. While director Larry Yust doesn't have a huge budget at his disposal, it clearly is not needed given the subject matter and the tenements of Cinncinatti serving as a backdrop. This film has a seedy, dark, futile feel to it, and underlying its sick,twisted plot - the deaths are executed with little remorse or feeling. The elderly, who at first illicit pity, soon turn into cold killing machines - very much like what they attack - a huge conglomerate business and "progress." Homebodies is a bona fide horror film and a black comedy as well. The humour is subtle but definitely there. I particularly liked the ending and thought that was a very clever bit to end such a film with. Solid direction and a perverse yet fresh and interesting script aside, the acting for me is what carried this film. The elderly inhabitants are all equally played with polish and pathos by a crew of geriatric character talents - all unfortunately no longer with us - that bring their characters alive - foibles, fears, and all. Paula Trueman plays the biggest role as Mattie. She is sort of a Ruth Gordon type. She is also the personification of evil in the group. She shows us what the elderly are able to get away with because everyone discounts them and their worth. Trueman does an able job creating a woman who is selfish, willful, and downright bad. Ian Wolfe and Ruth McDevitt play the couple that ran the building for so long. Both do very good jobs and create possibly more than anyone else the compassionate side of being old and "left out." Peter Brocco does a wonderful job as an elderly blind man - who has powers that probably any realistic elderly blind man would not possess. Brocco does an incredible job. The last two members are played by William Hansen and Frances Fuller. Fuller plays a woman that has not left her room for twenty years and speaks to her dead father at the dinner table. Hansen plays a man consumed with writing his memoirs of his marriage of 55 years. All of these actors did a marvelous job with their characters. Homebodies is a good film. It is a scary picture, subtly humorous, and thought provoking. The scenes of these tenants being moved to a soul-less huge apartment complex where every room is the same and people just sit on benches waiting to die struck me as particularly horrific. Or the scene with an elderly blind man being shoved into a room - not having learned the dimensions of the room at all. Or maybe the scene of a man pleading with a socially progressive woman about how moving his things, which had taken him a lifetime to sort, would never be able to be put together in the same fashion. He said he literally did not have the time left. These images and many more in Homebodies frightened me more than anything else. Because the sad truth is we offer little time and reflection to those concerns unless we are directly affected as a society. That is the real horror in Homebodies! A wonderfully old-fashioned song begins and ends the film. It reminisces about the joys of a day gone by.

I saw this movie when I was about 8 and it gave me a serious case of the heebeejeebies. So much so that here, over 20 years later, I still remember it. Its horror value isn't based on a lot of gore, or startles, but just plain creepy situations. It's worth renting, although it will probably seem pretty tame by today's standards.

Are you a "grumpy old man" or a "sweet old lady"? Yeah? Then chances are good that you will empathisize with the characters in this film. Are they sinister, misguided or simply nostalgic - perhaps desperately so? Watch and find out for yourself!

This is a macabre story about good people doing bad things. Well, mostly they're good. But they are certainly all old and dedicated to the status quo of their sunset lifestyle. And their apartment building.

Desperate circumstance often calls for desperate action. This is just such a film. An action film, albeit of a geriatric quality.

Will you have fun watching? You betcha. Will you be gruesomely inspired? Perhaps. Say... is that the sound of a wrecking ball working nearby?

Neighbor be warned. Neighbor beware.

I watched this movie with my grandmother when I was about 6 years old. The movie was PG, so I could get away with watching it then. What a hoot! We managed to watch that movie every time we could catch it on and the last line in the movie kept us laughing for the longest: It's me, Mattie.

I know that a movie about old folks killing to keep their homes may be totally horrific to today's society that salivates over brutality performed on perky-breast blonds, pencil-waist brunettes, and their associated blockhead boyfriends. The irony of "Homebodies" is that you're force to have to acknowledge those old folks for what they were doing -- whether you liked it or not. They refused to be pushed around and their tactics were crude, yet effective.

Having said that, I watched it again recently and I found it just as funny, but with a better understanding. While I could say that the murders were truly without warrant, they were in better context than what you see in most slasher flicks nowadays, where the killings are for shock value and good measure.

The premise of "Homebodies" is certainly unique:a bunch of old people don't want to leave their apartment complex so they start murdering anyone who tries to force them to leave.This weird little shocker is one of the most underrated horror movies of early 70's.The main characters are well-played and very believable and the murders are quite shocking in its viciousness.The cast includes veteran character actors including Ian Wolfe and Ruth McDevitt from "The Night Stalker" and "The Birds".The killings include stabbing to death with a butcher knife and encasing one victim in cement.Construction workers are also mysteriously dying on a construction site.One of old ladies named Mrs. Loomis resolves to tell the police everything,but Mattie kills her by bashing an urn containing the ashes of Miss Emily deceased husband over her head.Very grim and darkly funny "Homebodies" is a must-see for fans of 70's American horror.