HOME SWEET HOME (1981)
aka Slasher in the House
Article 2571 by Dave Sindelar
Viewing Date: 4-19-2008
Posting Date: 8-27-2008
Directed by Netie Pena
Featuring Jake Steinfeld, Vinessa Shaw, Peter De Paula
Country: USA

A drug-crazed bodybuilding homicidal maniac is on the loose. He begins killing off members of a family getting together for Thanksgiving.

I used to wonder why the FRIDAY THE 13TH franchise was so popular. After having seen some of the other slasher movies of the period, I now know why. If you accept the fact that the time had come for the slasher film and that they would be wildly popular, then it’s simply because the FRIDAY THE 13TH films were better than the others. This one is particularly lame. Our psycho here wears no mask, is treated with no sense of mystery, and cackles maniacally after he kills someone; this is, quite frankly, the lamest slasher villain I’ve ever seen. The guests at the Thanksgiving get-together manage to accomplish only one thing; they manage to make you hope for their demises within seconds of meeting them, and this goes triple for the mime/magician with the portable electric guitar. The dialogue is horrendous and the acting is on par with the dialogue. Director Netie Pena has only one other major credit (that is, if you can call this one major) in her IMDB listing, and that was as producer for DRACULA SUCKS. Amazingly enough, the actor playing the psycho here would end up doing a voice of a lab rat in RATATOUILLE.