It may have been produced for television by Aaron Spelling, but it still counts! In 1972, a couple of years after The Flying Nun’s final flight, Sally Field played the youngest sister in Home for the Holidays.
A foursome of sisters comes home to their daddy’s house to find out he believes his new wife (Julie Harris of Knots Landing “Lilimae” fame) is poisoning him to death. But it gets worse. He wants his daughters to “take care of her”! They better get to it before they are knocked off one by one!
Home for the Holidays isn’t exactly the most festive Christmas horror flick. There’s a big tree in the house and a wreath on the door, but there’s no snow. In fact, the whole film takes place during a spooky thunder and lightning rainstorm.
The killer is always seen only from the lower half, wearing boots and a yellow raincoat and carrying a pitchfork. Being the experts that we all are on slashers at this point, we can pretty much guess the mystery of this one from the beginning. There are no brutal deaths since it was made-for-TV, but the chase scene in which the killer pursues Sally goes on for a helluva long time, making it the most memorable aspect of this forgotten early entry into what would become the slasher genre.
