A broken family comes together for a Christmas dinner that degenerates into an orgy of incest, suicide, and murder. Carol (Candy Hammond) invites her estranged brothers and sisters to the house she shares with her mother (Maggie Rogers), a bitter, reclusive wheelchair-bound alcoholic who flies into a rage when she hears the news. The mother hates each of her children and is convinced that they're all after her considerable fortune. The siblings and their spouses arrive and the dinner begins peacefully as they all catch up on each other's lives. However, their mother refuses to mask her contempt, and her drunken recriminations raise tempers to a fever pitch and set the tone for an ugly evening. Later that night, a furtive incestuous dalliance is followed by a bathtub electrocution and a desperate act of hari-kari. A young military academy student is revealed to be a homosexual, an arsonist, and a blackmailer, and subsequently slashes his wrists in the backyard. The beautiful eldest sister is disfigured with acid, while her husband receives an axe in his forehead. Meanwhile, Carol is trying to resurrect her own incestuous relationship with her brother Michael (Robert Service), which ended when he moved away from home. His reluctance pushes her over the edge, and she takes violent retribution against their hateful matriarch.
by Fred Beldin
synopsis
