It is Thanksgiving, and everyone is ready to celebrate at Harold Bradley’s house, including Scott and his ladylove, Jennifer. Unbeknownst to everybody, Jay Jones, a mental patient who has recently escaped from the psych hospital he was confined to, has decided to celebrate the holiday in his own way – by murdering everyone who crosses his path. Eventually, friends and family alike are all killed by the PCP addicted Jay, and for those who survive his rampage, they will never be the same again.

Home Sweet Home, directed by Nettie Peña, could have been so much more than it was. There were a lot of kills in the movie, and that is a good thing, for what is a slasher without them, but they were uninventive and usually bloodless or offscreen. One could say a lot of things about that, but sad is perhaps the most opportune word to describe it. Jones, the Body By Jake guy, turned out to have the right amount of charisma to play a killer and, for the most part, while he was menacing and more than a little imposing, he was wasted in the part as the makers of this film decided to tame it down with a lack of risk. They could have gone all out and killed all of these people in all sorts of ways, and yet, whether it was Peña or someone else, instead of making the slasher of the year, they cut themselves off at the wrists to deliver this. The best part of the movie, and perhaps the most brutal out of all the kills, was near the beginning of the feature when Jay steals a car and runs over an old lady crossing the street. Cold, calculating, and, truth be told, fun, that is the only moment that would really tickle the horror bone in the audience, and it would leave them wanting more, not realizing nothing else was on the way.

The atmosphere was good throughout; the house was way out in the middle of nowhere, with no real power, and the lack of background noise, like a radio or television, drove that unease home. The complete silence aside from the bits of conversation had by the dinner attendees was unnerving, and one has to give Peña credit for that at least. The film is also quite suspenseful at times, as one never knows where Jay is going to strike next, though it is evident he will eventually arrive at the house. The cast is an able one, though the script could have used a little more punch to make things a bit more interesting, especially when it came to caring about the characters. Aside from the little girl, the only one who provoked an emotion was the teen called Mistake. A magician/mime/rocker who gets on everyone’s nerves throughout the whole picture was indeed a mistake, but worked, as the viewers would cheer when he eventually met his obligatory end at the hands of the PCP killer.

In the end, Home Sweet Home is serviceable, but it is probably one of the worst slashers to come out of 1981, much less the whole decade. It had the bones to be great, but a poor script and a lack of horror really hurt it. A good time-waster, nothing more.

2 out of 5