Thursday, December 16, 2010

Home For The Holidays (1972)

3 / 5 Dec '10
Tagline: N/A
Directed by: John Llewellyn Moxey
Written by: Joseph Stefano
Actors include: Jessica Walter, Sally Field, Julie Harris
Genre: Horror, Mystery
Length: 73 minutes
Banned: Nope




Review:
An impressive cast and reasonable (though unsurprising) ending make this tolerable, but the wooden dialogue and the fact that they tried to cram too much into a tv movie work against it. The plot is about a sickly Father and his Daughter Alex (Eleanor Parker) who suspect his new Wife is poisoning him. They call all of his other daughters home to assist even though they aren't too eager. See their Mother committed suicide but they believe their Father pushed her to it for the most part so they aren't too eager to forgive. Daughter Christine (a young Sally Field) is the young sweet one, Jessica Walter is hilariously over the top as the alcoholic pill popping sister Frederica, and Jill Haworth plays the sister of many failed marriages Joanna. Step mom Elizabeth (Julie Harris) seems rather evil, and when the daughters start getting knocked off could she be responsible? It's a silly little murder mystery that is low on the murder scale (at one point someone is tapped with a pitchfork and dies...how does that work exactly?) that takes place over the holidays. There are definitely worse made-for-tv movies but there are better ones also.

Availability:  Not currently on DVD

No comments:

Post a Comment