
The tagline makes no sense, as only one character is named Bradley.
Home Sweet Suck: A Thanksgiving Story
A couple years ago, Joanna and I watched a duo of flicks with Thanksgiving as the backdrop. The first was the annual standardĀ Home for the Holidays. The second was a movie that I had been wanting to see for years, and of which I was finally able to procure a copy over the summer (thank youĀ VHS Preservation Society): the 1981 slasherĀ Home Sweet Home. I didnāt know anything other than it was a slasher that took place at Thanksgiving.
The movie starts out by disregarding the then-standard of slasher cinema by showing us the killer. No mask, no mystery (and no connection to the victims and no motiveānot even a flimsy oneābut that part didnāt bother me). So we see a beefy, Lou Ferrigno-type guy in a skintight shirt kill some dude and take his station wagon. He then runs down an old lady crossing the street, and proceeds to drive out to the country where a wannabe record exec guy (played byĀ Don Edmonds, director of theĀ IlsaĀ movies) is throwing a California-style Thanksgiving gathering for his friends (also present are his son Mistake, a rock-and-roll-obsessed-but-looks-more-like-a-mime-than-KISS amateur magician and his daughter Angel, played byĀ a very young Vinessa Shaw).

The first half hour or so of the film is enjoyable, but in a bad way. Itās entertaining to watch the stereotypical bad acting, the flimsy plot and the absurd set-up and characterization going on. After everything is in place, though, the movie is just boring as hellĀ for the final hour. The kills certainly are not very inventive. You donāt care one way or the other about a single character. And again, the killer looks like Lou Ferrigno.
Suffice it to say, we will not likely be making this flick a November tradition. But still, in my never ending quest to see every 80s slasher ever madeā¦at least I get to scratch one off the list. Other films we may be thankful for this month include the Parker Posey-starringĀ The House of Yes, the hour-long, turkey-slasher mini-epicThankskillingĀ (this movie is actually pretty fun if you go not expecting anything other than a turkey killing kids and dishing out one-liners), and the Pauly Shore classicĀ Son-in-Law. Just killing time until we can sink our teeth into the many and varied Christmas flicks we watch every December.
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