Homebodies (1974)

When a quiet group of pensioners learn that their homes are to be torn down to make way for a block of flats, they decide to take action. What starts as an attempt to discourage the ... See full summary »

Director:

Larry Yust

Writers:

Howard Kaminsky (screenplay), Bennett Sims (screenplay),

Stars:

Peter Brocco, Frances Fuller, William Hansen

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Peter Brocco	...	Mr. Blakely
Frances Fuller	...	Miss Emily
William Hansen	...	Mr. Sandy
Ruth McDevitt	...	Mrs. Loomis
Paula Trueman	...	Mattie
Ian Wolfe	...	Mr. Loomis
Linda Marsh	...	Miss Pollack
Douglas Fowley	...	Mr. Crawford
Kenneth Tobey	...	Construction Boss
Wesley Lau	...	Construction Foreman
Norman Gottschalk	...	Apartment Superintendent
Ireene Webster	...	Woman in Floppy Hat
Nicholas Lewis	...	Construction Worker
Michael Johnson	...	Policeman
Alma Du Bus	...	Apartment Superintendent's Wife

Storyline

When a quiet group of pensioners learn that their homes are to be torn down to make way for a block of flats, they decide to take action. What starts as an attempt to discourage the developers soon escalates into wholesale murder of both the developers and the construction workers.

---

Plot Keywords:

murder | stabbing | violence | suffocation | foot cut in two | 

---

Taglines:

Do You Know Where Your Grandmother Is Tonight?

---

Genres:

Comedy | Horror

---

Certificate:

PG

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

September 1974 (USA)

Also Known As:

Criminali in pantofole

Filming Locations:

Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Cinema Entertainment

Technical Specs

Runtime:

96 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Paula Trueman was nearly blind when she acted in this movie. Because of her poor eyesight, the car had to be towed in the scene with Trueman driving an automobile.

---

Connections

Referenced in Video Nasties: Moral Panic, Censorship & Videotape (2010)

---

Soundtracks

"Sassafras Sundays"
Music by Bernardo Segall (as Bernardo Segáll)
Lyrics by Jeremy Joe Kronsberg (as Jeremy Kronsberg)
Sung by Billy Van

User Reviews

Sassafras Sundays

Genuinely unique and creepy, Homebodies tells the depressing story of what life is like after society has discarded you. A group of elderly people have had their apartment building, home for much of their lives, condemned, and they have been asked to move to a new residence. When they realize they don't want to move, they take business into their own hands. They stab, sabotage, drown a man in cement, and kill in numerous other ways to keep home, sweet home. While director Larry Yust doesn't have a huge budget at his disposal, it clearly is not needed given the subject matter and the tenements of Cinncinatti serving as a backdrop. This film has a seedy, dark, futile feel to it, and underlying its sick,twisted plot - the deaths are executed with little remorse or feeling. The elderly, who at first illicit pity, soon turn into cold killing machines - very much like what they attack - a huge conglomerate business and "progress." Homebodies is a bona fide horror film and a black comedy as well. The humour is subtle but definitely there. I particularly liked the ending and thought that was a very clever bit to end such a film with. Solid direction and a perverse yet fresh and interesting script aside, the acting for me is what carried this film. The elderly inhabitants are all equally played with polish and pathos by a crew of geriatric character talents - all unfortunately no longer with us - that bring their characters alive - foibles, fears, and all. Paula Trueman plays the biggest role as Mattie. She is sort of a Ruth Gordon type. She is also the personification of evil in the group. She shows us what the elderly are able to get away with because everyone discounts them and their worth. Trueman does an able job creating a woman who is selfish, willful, and downright bad. Ian Wolfe and Ruth McDevitt play the couple that ran the building for so long. Both do very good jobs and create possibly more than anyone else the compassionate side of being old and "left out." Peter Brocco does a wonderful job as an elderly blind man - who has powers that probably any realistic elderly blind man would not possess. Brocco does an incredible job. The last two members are played by William Hansen and Frances Fuller. Fuller plays a woman that has not left her room for twenty years and speaks to her dead father at the dinner table. Hansen plays a man consumed with writing his memoirs of his marriage of 55 years. All of these actors did a marvelous job with their characters. Homebodies is a good film. It is a scary picture, subtly humorous, and thought provoking. The scenes of these tenants being moved to a soul-less huge apartment complex where every room is the same and people just sit on benches waiting to die struck me as particularly horrific. Or the scene with an elderly blind man being shoved into a room - not having learned the dimensions of the room at all. Or maybe the scene of a man pleading with a socially progressive woman about how moving his things, which had taken him a lifetime to sort, would never be able to be put together in the same fashion. He said he literally did not have the time left. These images and many more in Homebodies frightened me more than anything else. Because the sad truth is we offer little time and reflection to those concerns unless we are directly affected as a society. That is the real horror in Homebodies! A wonderfully old-fashioned song begins and ends the film. It reminisces about the joys of a day gone by.