Director
Joseph Ruben
Terry O'Quinn - Jerry Blake, Henry Morrison, Bill Hodgkins
Jill Schoelen as Stephanie Maine
Shelley Hack as Susan Maine
Stephen Shellen as Jim Ogilvie
Charles Lanyer as Dr. A. Bondurant
Robyn Stevan as Karen
Gillian Barber as Annie Barnes
Blu Mankuma as Lieutenant Jack Wall
The 1987 psychological horror "The Stepfather" is either some sort of social commentary on "patriarchal society," or it's simply quite the horror thriller movie. Either way, it remains quite the horror thriller movie.
It's certainly very much a slasher flick with a lot of suspense and blood.
The story is loosely based on real life murderer John List according to a Dec. 3, 1989 article entitled "How Profitable Sequels Succeed" by Inquirer Movie Critic Desmond Ryan. On the flip side, the movie smacks of sharp social satire. It strikes me as a bitter critique of the perfect nuclear family by the way the story flips ideals like order, loyalty, domestic happiness into the very things that destroy it.
The good elements of "The Stepfather" begin with Terry O'Quinn's performance. His performance as repulsively sinister underneath a facade of a charming and likeable family man is fantastic.It's an underrated performance indeed.
I don't know. "The Stepfather" takes a true story and uses it as inspiration for what seems like a critique of traditional family values and the pursuit of those values. When Jerry's family doesn't meet those values and standards, his conservative-looking self destroys them. He's obsessed with creating the picture perfect, traditional family. He's evil, irrational, barbaric, sick, twisted and to quote actress Emma Watson in regard to those "pressuring" girls to marry, cruel. The story presents such ideals and values as rigid, difficult and potentially dangerous. It tosses in psychological horror with social commentary on identity, control, and domestic life.
The movie starts as Jerry Blake (Terry O'Quinn) has just murdered his family for nothing more than disappointing him and not meeting the high standards of a perfect family that he expects. He leaves the murder scene inside his home, and takes off with a new look and new identity to pursue a new life and a new family.
Jerry meets a widow named Susan Maine (Shelley Hack) whom he ends up marrying. Her teenage daughter, Stephanie (Jill Schoelen) is weary and a bit suspicious of Jerry despite his mild-mannered, seemingly friendly, and "father knows best" demeanor. However, during a barbeque he and Susan are hosting for friends, Stephanie catches him having an angery mood swing in the basement after he reads about his murdered family in the paper.
So, she looks into his past and discovers he may not be whom he says he is.
Not only is she hot on his murderous sadistic trail, but there's also another individual trying to find Jerry. Of course, Jerry is aware she's snooping. He's not aware, however, that the other person is his old brother-in-law from his last marriage. He's right on Jerry's heals.
Anyways, the more Stephanie investigates Jerry's past, the more his facade starts to crumble, and his murderous true self surfaces until he has to...take care of them just like he did with his previous family.
I have mixed feelings about this flick.
For starters, it's a decent thriller but it doesn't excel above other similar movies.
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| Terry O'Quinn in "The Stepfather." |
Terry carries this movie from beginning to end. Jerry starts over as the happy family like nothing happened before, slowly transitioning into a disappointed man driven to murdering more victims for preventing him from establishing a moral and bright future together as a family.
Jerry insinuates that the murdered family from the beginning were a disappointment.
As for the rest of the cast, everyone else just goes through the emotions and actions. I wasn't completely convinced.
Outside of great elements thanks to O'Quinn's performance, I think it's an average film with enough turmoil and thrilling suspense to keep an audience invested.
The story gives the audience barely enough insight into Jerry's motives for being the homicidal man that he is. I think it's included to avoid making the movie just another mere slasher flick. The character needs exploring but this movie just touches the surface of his mindset.
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but I picked up on some subtle criticism of conservative family values. I wouldn't be surprised. These were the Reagan years, after all. By 1987, those years were winding down. And by 1987, Hollywood was already well established as a place where wholesomeness and virtue incite the influences-that-be down there to recoil with painful aversion like a vampire in the presence of a crucifix.
So, I have doubts this is meant to be a mere thriller about a safe, suburban setting turning into a household of hidden terror.
The movie struck me as exploitative as the main character murders his families when they fail to live up to his ideal family image. So, Jerry quickly turns to murder.
Again, maybe I'm overthinking it, and "The Stepfather" is really just about a crazy maniac who murders each family he enters because they don't meet his expectations. Plus it uses the safety of a suburban family to intensify the dread and trepidation. And it's the modern left's criticism and scathing contempt of the tradition family constantly shouted from that camp nowadays that has me seeing this movie with all this skepticism.
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The movie takes the male character with high ideals who pursues that natural desire to start a family, as any virtuous man does, and turns him into an obsessive, insane, violent murderer. So, what's the alternative then? Modern society would paint Jerry as the "patriarchy" personified.
Director Joseph Ruben has made similar movies depicting the ideal good person as an uncontrollable evil. Based on the movies he's made, I wonder if he's just a solid skeptic.
He directed the 1989 courtroom drama, "True Believer" about the wrongful conviction of Chol Soo Lee who was accused of a gang-related murder in San Francisco's Chinatown back in 1973.
Ruben also directed "Sleeping with the Enemy" (1991) with Julia Roberts, and "The Good Son" from 1993 with Macaulay Culkin.
In that movie, Culkin plays a young, blond hair and blue-eyed kid who appears as a happy normal boy but is really a violent and callous child inside. It's a decent thriller but I have mixed feelings about that movie, too. Also, I didn't like the choice of casting Culkin as an evil child. I'll get to that some other time.
It's the notion "The Stepfather" presents that a perfect nuclear family can easily be an illusion that gets to me. Nuclear families and having children quite often turn people into conservatives to some degree or another. I think that doesn't sit well with Hollywood and the political side that operates the movie making industry. Then again, Jerry is the one destroying families, and is the antagonist of the movie. He's the bad guy who needs to be stopped and destroyed, which he is. So, maybe I have this move all wrong? The hand that destroys the cradle, destroys the world.
Still, all things considered, Jerry O'Quinn's performance is the best part. The rest of it just didn't sit well with me. It gave me mixed messages. I'm not above watching a murder mystery/ horror- thriller flick. "The Stepfather" just rubs me the wrong way.
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