everything you have heard about this movie is true.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Originally airing on November 28, 1972, this ABC-TV movie was produced by Aaron Spelling and debuted on VHS in 1986. It's packed with future talent and is at the center of what we love most here: TV movies, Christmas movies and horror.Benjamin Morgan (Walter Brennan, Rio Bravo) is rich and dying and suspects his wife, Elizabeth (Julie Harris, one of America's most famous stage actresses), of poisoning him. He sends his oldest daughter, Alex (Eleanor Parker, Eye of the Cat) to find her three sisters and bring them home - the first time they've been back since their mother's suicide.The three sisters are Freddie (Jessica Walter, Arrested Development), Joanna (Jill Haworth, The Brides of Dracula) and Christine (Sally Field, Steel Magnolias). Their father tells them that they must kill their stepmother before she kills them. At dinner that night, Joanna harangues her stepmother with questions about how her first husband died, while Freddie screams in her room about how their father's affairs led to their mother killing herself.This is obviously the holiday get-together everyone hoped for.Soon after, Joanna tries to leave but is killed by a pitchfork-wielding person in a yellow raincoat. That same killer also drowns Feddie in the bathtub while Elizabeth keeps offering everyone warmed milk and honey. Soon, the phone line gets cut and everyone is trapped with a killer. But who is it?There are plenty of twists and turns here, as the love between a father and daughter and the love between husband and wife is contested. It's bloodless, as it's a TV movie, but it's also pretty dark, because the 1970's were the end of the world and the movies made then reflected it. You also get a cast packed with Oscar winners and nominees, all acting within basically one or two rooms, so there's plenty of emotion and suspense.

It's not a happy Christmas for the unhappy Morgan sisters. Their father whom they've been estranged for years from has summoned them to his bed side. It's not happy news that Walter Brennan brings them. He thinks that his second wife Julie Harris is trying to poison him.The sisters cover quite a span of years. From Eleanor Parker the oldest to Sally Field the youngest with Jessica Walter and Jill Haworth in the middle. None of them seem to have any men in their lives for various reasons. Brennan was quite the tyrant in his younger days and no doubt scared a lot of them off. As it goes in these Gothic horror films the bodies start dropping and the survivors start running. One of the women is indeed the guilty party. I think you'll probably figure it out as this is a made for TV film. A theatrical film might have had it come out differently.The cast is as professional as they come. Sally Field was shedding her Gidget/Flying Nun image and on her way to a pair of Oscars. Eleanor Parker is the tower of strength and Walter and Haworth are a pair of party animals. Brennan did not look well, I suspect he was having real health issues.Fans of Gothic horror and any and all of the cast should be pleased.

The plot = Four sisters are summoned back to they're family home by their sick father who suspects that his current wife is slowly poisoning him Though the sisters disagree on the validity of their Father's rantings, it soon becomes clear that someone wants to silence the girls as well! But who could it be? There's nothing like a good murder at Christmas time. An old Gothic mansion, mystery and suspense are all the makings for a good horror, in this early 70's TV movie. Although not bloody or gory, it's the performances that makes this movie work, especially from the 4 sisters, we get Alex played beautifully by Eleanor Parker whose the oldest sister who watches over her three younger siblings ever since they're mother died, then we have the party girl Jo (Played by British Actress Jill Haworth), Freddie the tragic pill popping alcoholic whose never got over her mother's death (A wonderfully hammy performance by Jessica Walter) and the youngest sister the sweet naive Christine (Played by Sally Field) who would go on to bigger and better things. We also have Julie Harris who plays the step mother who was once accused of poisoning her last husband, could she be doing it again.The dark eerie settings of the mansion and the tension between the sisters really makes this movie work mixes up the horror/thriller themes of the 50's and 60's and before (old dark house; sibling rivalry; American Gothic; grand inheritances and murderous motives) and what was to become the slasher standards of the 80's. Sally Field makes a wonderful heroine like when she's getting stalked in the hoods by someone with a pitchfork and yellow raincoat. This movie was very low budget and it does show in some parts and also, this movie does get quite boring at times, but other than that, this relatively unknown thriller makes for good viewing.

I remember this movie on the Wednesday night suspense movies. It was very creepy. What I remember most of all is the sound of the tinsel tinkling on the Christmas tree every time someone walked by and then Sally Field running past the tree to escape from the killer. The rain in the film made for an unhappy holiday season and then for wrestling in the mud down an embankment with the grandmother who was trying to kill her with a pitchfork -- I thought it was Susan Hayward. How can one get videos of this and other films that played on 70's TV, I wonder? There are many obscure titles that I recall from this series of movies many of which scared the bejesus out of me as a kid.