Director: Nettie Pena
Year: 1981
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: Slasher in the House
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
Traveling together for Thanksgiving dinner, a large family prepares for being around each other when they start to realize that a bunch of weird incidents has left them stranded in the house and it soon dawns on them that a mental-asylum escapee is stalking and killing them all at the house.
Review:
This one here wasn't so bad and had a few things going for it. One of the main things positive here is that the film is simply weird, with the killer being one of the more memorable ones around. He's so muscular and wide that he looks just plain freakish, and add the shrill giggle and the perm then you have a one of a kind villain that remains memorable because of this. It also plays into a fun slasher trope as he is so pumped full of PCP that he takes the old cliché of the indestructible bogeyman to new levels. It's far more believable under that condition that when he gets stabbed in the back with the knife handle protruding from his bloodsoaked t-shirt, he continues stalking his victims and throwing them around giggling with reckless abandon. It creates a strong and unique killer that definitely makes this one better than it should be.
The weirdness also extends into the interaction with the characters, especially at the beginning where everyone is attempting to chase around the one incredibly irritating character around the house or even their relationship with the families, all make this one feel weirder than usual. There's also a couple of fine stalking scenes here when the killer goes around the grounds of the house knocking off the isolated members of the family or a fun encounter out in the woods. The best encounters are at the end, where the killer goes after the family in the house and chases them around, making for a couple of tense moments. All together with some great kills which also add to the weirdness factor where there's a strangling with a bare hands, thrown over a car landing headfirst onto a rock, a stabbing with a broken beer bottle and having the car hood crushing the body when the killer leaps onto it, these are the film's best moments as this one here did have a couple things wrong with it.
The main thing here is that nothing much in the way of actual horror scenes happens. This one just doesn't really do a whole lot to keep the excitement up during the main part of the film, mainly focusing on everybody wandering around looking for everyone else that's gone missing so that nothing happens in here. The film does take a long time with its set-up to get to the good parts of the film so that there are too many periods of inactivity to really make it feel like anything interesting or exciting is happening and it just comes off as really dull. This is due to the film's habit of throwing the weirdness into it rather than doing anything else, leaving so many scenes to try to feel weird and come off as dull instead. The other flaw here is that the film is often-times so dark that it's impossible to see what's going on. The film darkens whenever it gets to the good parts when there's a kill going on or preparing for one, and to have them be flawed is a major mistake. It's impossible to be able to tell what happened during these scenes, where the strike happened and where it's taking place, and that is not a good sign in a slasher. These elements here are the film's problems.
Overview: **1/2/5
Overall, it's not that this was a bad film of any kind, but it's merely the kind of films that hardcore slasher fans will enjoy more than anyone else. This is really recommended to those who prefer these kinds of slashers or fans of trashy cinema as well, while those who aren't big on this style should just ignore altogether.
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