Here's what to do... Google a picture of the real life sons after they were arrested... Look at their hard, calloused faces, edgy, mean, deadly... Then watch this as little dipper eyed Lance Kerwin and sweet little Eric Stolz play the whining, kindhearted, manipulated, vulnerable sons of the father they broke out of the jail... A father who kills an entire family including a small child...
Anyhow, if Killer in the Family were meaner and colder, like the real life Tison family, who were rampaging, white trash serial killers, unlike especially the law student son played by James Spader, supposedly wanting to kill his father while on the road, then it'd be more realistic and more an exploitation piece instead of a TV movie that's not sure who exactly the bad guys are... Much of the blame is laid on the dad's friend here, who was put to death in real life a decade later...
Sadly, this road movie could have been really good, but Robert Mitchum was far too old to play a man with sons that could be his grandchildren... He has one of those ballooned stomachs that looks hard as steel from drinking and he can hardly move his old bones... Miscast, to say the least... Again, Google the real Gary Tison and see the empty shell of a human being, around forty-years old and dead to life, dead to the world...
The lawyers of the sons must have made this TV-movie to get the surviving boys out of prison; or to keep them from spending too much time there... They never seem to have anything to do with the murders or anything else, pretty much, short of the opening breakout, which seemed more daring than anything else...
Either way, while not terrible and sometimes entertaining, this was a missed opportunity, on so many levels... Reminds one of the horrible Death of a Centerfold TV-movie, that was soon trumped by the incredible theatrical Star 80... Too bad nothing came out to straighten out this crooked mess... There's a Straight-to-Video job starring Robert Patrick from 2017, but... That's for another time, if it's free to watch...
The best thing to come out of this was the Warner Archives DVD with the original blue outlined cover; a collector's edition but, sadly, what's inside there is merely a forgotten curio, for good reason.
Anyhow, if Killer in the Family were meaner and colder, like the real life Tison family, who were rampaging, white trash serial killers, unlike especially the law student son played by James Spader, supposedly wanting to kill his father while on the road, then it'd be more realistic and more an exploitation piece instead of a TV movie that's not sure who exactly the bad guys are... Much of the blame is laid on the dad's friend here, who was put to death in real life a decade later...
Sadly, this road movie could have been really good, but Robert Mitchum was far too old to play a man with sons that could be his grandchildren... He has one of those ballooned stomachs that looks hard as steel from drinking and he can hardly move his old bones... Miscast, to say the least... Again, Google the real Gary Tison and see the empty shell of a human being, around forty-years old and dead to life, dead to the world...
The lawyers of the sons must have made this TV-movie to get the surviving boys out of prison; or to keep them from spending too much time there... They never seem to have anything to do with the murders or anything else, pretty much, short of the opening breakout, which seemed more daring than anything else...
Either way, while not terrible and sometimes entertaining, this was a missed opportunity, on so many levels... Reminds one of the horrible Death of a Centerfold TV-movie, that was soon trumped by the incredible theatrical Star 80... Too bad nothing came out to straighten out this crooked mess... There's a Straight-to-Video job starring Robert Patrick from 2017, but... That's for another time, if it's free to watch...
The best thing to come out of this was the Warner Archives DVD with the original blue outlined cover; a collector's edition but, sadly, what's inside there is merely a forgotten curio, for good reason.