Far From Home - Trailer Park Psycho's In Love

Far From Home
1989
D: Meiert Avis
W: Theodore Gershuny , Tommy Lee Wallace 

S: Matt Frewer, Drew Barrymore, Richard Masur 

Taglines:
 - There is no one you can trust...least of all the one who loves you.
 - Growing up can be murder.
 - One boy wants her love. One boy wants her dead.

 - On the other side of innocence lies fear.

Alternate Titles:
Germany - Lolita Kill
West Germany -Wilder Sand
Finland - Nightmare in the Desert
France - Bad Meetings
Greece - Seduction and Rape
Hungary - Desert Serial Killer



"My first and last night in Banco, Nevada....probably the shittiest place in the whole world."
                                             -Joleen

It wasn't a very good day yesterday.  Nothing terrible happened, really, it just wasn't my day.  So after the Mrs. turned in for the night I decided that I'd settle in with some cocktails and catch up on some of my DVR.  After watching a couple episodes of Freddy's Nightmares (thanks to the El Rey Network!) I came across this flick, which I had completely forgotten that I recorded a while back.  What a pleasant surprise!

First off, what a great cast!  Drew Barrymore!  Matt (Max Headroom) Frewer, Richard (The Thing) Masur, Susan (Big Top Pee-Wee) Tyrell, Dick (Gremlins) Miller & Jennifer (Bride of Chucky) Tilly just to name some!  I mean, come on, that's pretty damn good!

Joleen (Barrymore) and her father Charlie (Frewer) are returning home to Los Angeles after a cross country vacation.  They run out of gas and end up stranded in the small desert trailer park town of Banco, Nevada.  Seems the gas delivery truck is running late and nobody in town has any gas to spare or sell.  Duckett (Masur) is the eccentric, but helpful gas station/repairman who is anti-government and no longer worships the mighty dollar, helping people simply because it's the right thing to do.

Chalie rents a trailer for the night and that's when things start going south.  Joleen meets Jimmy, who is a rather intensely angsty teen (played by Andras Jones...who played Rick in Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master!  Man this flick is full of peeps!) who clearly is interested (probably a bit TOO) in her.  Jimmy has one hell of an attitude problem, which of course 14 year old Joleen finds attractive.

After settling in and going for a swim in the surprisingly clean trailer park swimming pool, Joleen meets another boy named Pinky who seems to be the complete opposite of Jimmy.
Ooh, rival action for Joleen's affection!

That night Jimmy's mother is murdered via an electric fan in her bathtub.  Jimmy (being a complete dick) is of course our prime suspect.  The next day, Jimmy takes Joleen to a car junk yard and then swimming in a pond where he tries to rape her.  Pinky comes to the rescue however and they hide out in an old abandoned apartment building that Pinky uses as his hideout.

I'm not going to go any further into the plot because I'm not a spoiling kinda guy.  There are more murders, however and it becomes evident that there is a psychopathic killer loose in the park and no one is safe.  I was quite surprised by the film and enjoyed it quite a bit.  It's a tight little thriller with a  heck of a cast, so check it out!

GORE
There's a little bit of blood here and there, but not a whole lot.

T&A
There's a little bit of T&A on display during a raunchy little sex scene between two trailer park residents as Joleen is looking through their window.

MONSTERS
One psychotic killer on the loose!

FINAL THOUGHTS
I really don't know how this one managed to slip by me because this definitely looked like something that my sister and I would have rented back in the day....or would have seen on HBO late at night.  At any rate, it's a great flick with a great cast.

Home Sweet Home - Typtophan and PCP

Home Sweet Home
1981
Directed by Nettie Peña
Written by Thomas Bush
Starring  Jake Steinfeld, Vinessa Shaw & Peter De Paula

Color
Rated R - Approx. 85 Minutes

Taglines:
 - This year, it's not the turkey being carved for Thanksgiving

 - Be it ever so humble, there's no place to HIDE
 - The Bradleys Won't Be Leaving Home.  EVER.

Alternative Titles:
Slasher In The House - US Alternative Title
La nuit du saigneur (The Night of the Bloodletter) - France
Bloodparty - West Germany




"Oh wow!  My lucky day!  Two for the price of one!"
                                                                                  - Mistake

Not sure if this is supposed to be a tattoo...looks more like a nightclub stamp.

While Home Sweet Home is part of the 80's so called "Slasher Boom", it also belongs to a much more rare family of films:  Thanksgiving Horror.  A search on the internet will yield you about 8 results typically.  Sure there are films that you can watch that certainly lend themselves to the holiday.  It's long been tradition around these parts to watch Children of the Corn around this time of year.  Why?  I dunno....corn....harvesting....reminds us of Thanksgiving kinda.....totally getting off track here.  So, the point is that there are about 8 films that directly take place on or around Thanksgiving.

Mistake......doing what he does best.

Home Sweet Home tells the tale of an escaped mental patient (natch) who, after killing a man drinking beer in his station wagon and stealing it, runs down an old woman crossing the road and heads for the country.  As it just so happens, a group of friends (or family.....it's not really clear on that.  It's an odd group of people to be sure) is having Thanksgiving at a ranch out in the middle of nowhere.

After the psycho takes out the guy in the station wagon and the old lady crossing the street, it's about half an hour before the killings start up again.  You don't really notice too much of a lag though because it's rather amusing watching these strange characters interact.  By far the most intriguing is an odd guy they call Mistake.  Wearing white make up and perpetually playing his electric guitar through an amplifier backback, Mistake generally makes a nuisance of himself, but you can't help but like the kid.  After all, he does a pretty good magic routine halfway through the flick.

Just a normal Thanksgiving on the ranch......

For the most part, the kills are not very imaginative and the killer himself looks like Lou Ferrigno and Joe Piscapo had a love child (!).  The whole thing functions on this wonky, off-beat charm and I like that quite a bit.  I will say, however that the third act really lags in some places....but if you can get past that, all in all this is a fun little slasher flick that you can watch while chompin' on some homemade pumpkin pie!

0_o

Midnight Cinephile Tally

Death Toll - We got Nine deaths total here.  As mentioned before most of the killings aren't very imaginative, but there is a nifty electrocution and another dude gets crushed under the hood of a car.

Nude-O-Meter - We're on the low end of the meter tonight.  We get one quick glimpse of breasts.

Things That Go Bump In The Night - Once again, the human monster is on display.  A jacked up mental patient on PCP with one of the most annoying and out of place laughs I've heard in a long time.


Final Thoughts
The Thanksgiving Horror genre is an incredibly small one, so if you're looking for holiday themed scares you aren't going to have much of a selection.  However, I think this is a pretty good place to start.  Though it's got a respectable body count, the gore quotient is pretty low, so you won't have to worry about losing your turkey dinner while watching it.  The whole film has a strange, wonky vibe to it that I really dug.  This will definitely have a place in my November movie cycle from now on.

Final Rating
Three out of Five Pizza Rolls!