The “horror” section of the video store always held such promise of lurid thrills in its menagerie of cover art filled with gruesome imagery. Before the days when you could look up a movie’s title on your phone (or even sufficiently research it at home), the VHS box cover art was all you had to go on when it came to getting a hint of what sordid treasures lay on the analog tape kept out of sight only by a weak, easily-flippable plastic container, just waiting to pounce out and onto your screen. Perhaps that artwork in which a faceless killer equipped with a pitchfork, an Oscar-winning actress’s head already encased in their chest, revealed a film so shocking, so horrifying, so unrelentingly vile that even you, dear horror fan, wouldn’t be prepared.

Or perhaps it would reveal a 1972 made-for-television movie with virtually no blood and a quintet of great actresses sparring off in what would become known as a “proto-slasher.”

That was certainly the case with Home For the Holidays, a Christmas-set telepic made during the golden age of television films. The VHS box art, produced in 1985 by distributors anxious to get in on the horror video book, promotes the film’s most slasher-worthy image of a figure in a rain slicker and no visible face pointing a sharp object towards the prospective viewer. Knowing that wasn’t enough to stick out in the crowd, it stuck poor Sally Field’s head in the middle of the figure’s chest as though she’s been decapitated and had her head eaten, then stuck her name at the bottom. She’d won two Oscars in the time between the making of the movie and the video debut, so damn straight they were going to use her head!

While I never managed to rent Home For the Holidays in its VHS incarnation (the box, honestly, terrified me, so I rented the likes of House By the Cemetery instead), I did finally catch up to it in its natural habitat -- television, where it circulated frequently among the cable channels of the early ‘90s. It quickly became one of my favorites with its mixture of great actresses and the can’t-miss-with-me premise of throwing a bunch of people in an isolated setting and having a murderer start picking them off. (See also: My inexplicable love for Howling V and Spellcaster.)

The Morgan clan, an upper-middle class group that were probably heirs to something or other, is reuniting for the Christmas season, but it’s not a happy reunion. The patriarch (Walter Brennon) believes he’s dying because his new wife Elizabeth (The Haunting’s Julie Harris) is slowly poisoning him, and he’s sent letters to his three daughters to assist. His fourth, eldest Alex (Eleanor Parker), has stayed with him through thick and thin, but the other three have various reasons for departing after the suicide of their mother and dad’s marriage to Elizabeth.

Jo (Jill Haworth) is the most bitter, claiming, “I swore I would never set foot in this place again, not even to have the pleasure of seeing his coffin close.” Freddie (Jessica Walter) has gone into a descent of booze and pills. And the youngest, Chris (Field), seems more interested in helping others than revisiting family drama. All are suspicious of Elizabeth, especially when pop makes the request that they kill her -- before she kills them.

Soon enough, the sisters start to be dispatched by a mystery assailant, but who could it be? The suspects are pretty limited (and just get more limited as the film progresses), so you don’t get any real bonus points for figuring out the conclusion, but at a quick 74 minutes, it doesn’t really matter. Especially since most of the time is spent with our five leads putting their most sincere efforts into essentially one-note characters -- Haworth is slutty and angry, Harris is worried, Field is innocent, Parker is concerned, Walter is drunk. It’s win-win for everyone.

There’s probably some increased meaning in Joseph Stefano’s script (he did write Psycho, after all) with the female characters all having gender-neutral names and Elizabeth’s character being described as “did he think she was going to give him the sons mother couldn’t?,” but it doesn’t really get a lot deeper than that. Fortunately, John Llewellyn Moxey knows what the audience wants -- a bunch of grand dames wandering around an old house spouting dialogue like “she’s got ears that can hear sunshine” while occasionally being picked off by the aforementioned psycho with a pitchfork.

The fact that Home For the Holidays is a Christmas movie is a nice plus, as it gives one a suitable occasion to watch it, but Christmas itself is tangential to the plot. (You could easily pair it with She’s Dressed to Kill, a 1979 telepic with Walter and Parker that’s ALSO a proto-slasher set in an isolated location.) There’s a Christmas tree in the house, and it’s an excuse to bring the characters together, but plot-wise, there’s nobody exchanging presents or singing carols here. What it does add, however, is a nice sense of perversion to the brooding atmosphere of the film itself - having a bunch of characters meeting up for solely deathly reasons makes a nice counterpoint to the “joyful” nature that the holiday is supposed to represent. It’s a welcome departure from the typical television Christmas offerings, and seems to slyly comment on the medium’s tendency towards unrelenting mirth.

Home For the Holidays may not make for perfect viewing on Christmas itself, with the family nestled all snug on the couch with sugarplums dancing in their heads or whatever. For the weekend prior to Christmas, however, when you’re gearing up for a few days with family, and want a nice, sordid little tale where a group of fabulous actresses wander around an old, rich house and suspect one another of murder? Pour yourself a fancy cocktail and settle in with Home For the Holidays.