Wilfred Brimley was two years young than me when he made this movie and that’s kind of screwing me up right now.
Paul Stanton (Edward Herrman) has sent his son Billy (Peter Billingsly) into going to California to meet up with his mother Sally (Catherine Hicks) and her boyfriend Mike (Paul Le Mat) who are on the way to Arizona. As things usually occur, Billy accidentally walks across the crime scene of a serial killer, takes a turtle necklace and unleashes unwitting hell.
Directed by Dick Richards and written by Richard Rothstein, this movie puts a young child into the claws of a serial killer, which is scary now but had to be even worse in 1982 when we hadn’t really come to understand the evil around us.
A year later, Peter Billingsly would be in A Christmas Story in which he’d also dress like a cowboy and bring up Black Bart. What are the odds, I ask you?
Also: Wilfred Brimley was a bodyguard for Howard Hughes.
Also also: This is part of that most wonderful of horror genres, the RV movie.
If I saw this as a kid, I would have made sure that my parents never took us on vacation.
