This review will have spoilers because this movie is just too much fun to talk about to leave anything out. If you have not seen the movie yet, see it before reading this review.
It was another great evening with New Beverly Midnights at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. With them, you can always count on having a fun midnight showing of 80’s trash. Seriously, just look at what they have lined up for the next few weeks: “Never Too Young To Die,” “Waxwork,” and “Action Jackson.” They are also going to be showing William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” which is not really trash, but one of his more underrated movies. But last night, we got to see Joseph Ruben’s “The Stepfather” which was released back in 1987. It tells the story of a man who is searching for the perfect family, and who is not having a lot of luck. But this is a guy who can’t seem to stomach divorce, so he ends up ending things a little viciously by murdering his whole family. But soon, he is on the lookout for a new family to make his own. But will it last longer than the last? WILL IT?!
“The Stepfather” has all the hallmarks of a cheesy 80’s horror movie; There is a lot of overacting, characters doing the dumbest things (there wouldn’t be a movie otherwise), a synthesizer score that has aged as well as the movie (which is to say, not at all), and a brutal killing or two. I remember when Siskel & Ebert reviewed this movie so many years ago as that was my first introduction to it. It’s too funny to believe that when this movie first came out, it seemed very intense. Looking at it today, we have to wonder what the hell we were thinking. Geez this movie looks corny!
Siskel & Ebert both gave “The Stepfather” thumbs down, which was unsurprising considering how they feel about horror movies in general. The one thing they did agree on (and this goes for anyone who likes or hates this movie) is that the movie has one truly great element, the performance of Terry O’Quinn as the title character. Roger Ebert was dead on saying that he made a really creepy villain. Terry gives us a man who is so terminally in love with the Normal Rockwell vision of the family, and who is one of the few adults that I can think of who can still laugh at old reruns of “Mr. Ed.” The fact that he said it took him till high school to realize that horses couldn’t talk should show just how deeply psychotic this man is.
What you have to love about Terry O’Quinn’s performance here is how he gives those around him a convincing façade of the happily married family man. Yet at the same time, his eyes completely betray the raging monster beneath the surface, and of how he threatens to kill again in the blink of an eye. Terry’s performance is truly frightening, and it is really the only thing about this movie that has not lost anything with age. There is no real psychological background as to why his character does what he does. This will drive a lot of people crazy in that it will make the movie seem completely senseless in its violence. If nothing else, the movie is a satire on those who believe that they can have the perfect family. We all should know by now that no such thing exists.
Terry O’Quinn also makes you believe how smart this psycho can be in terms of changing his identity. The movie opens with him washing himself up and shaving himself after butchering his family (the reveal of which is one of the movie’s most horrific scenes), and aside from the eyes which should give him away instantly, you could easily believe how someone like him could get away with it. That is, at least back in the 80’s. When things with the family he meets up with after that, you see him donning a whole new disguise which he just disappears into even while having the same over earnest voice.
What does this guy in? Well, he wants what none of us can never truly have – the perfect family. Any sane person can accept imperfection and love their family anyway, but not this guy. Also, when he finds a new love with Susan Maine (Shelley Hack), he tries to make her daughter Stephanie (the lovely Jill Schoelen) his own. With this family, the psycho calls himself Jerry Blake, and he buys Stephanie a cute little puppy (is there any other kind?). When Stephanie gleefully accepts this new bundle of joy, Jerry replies:
“That’s my girl!”
Right away, you know this relationship is screwed. Stephanie has recently lost her dad, and her mother Susan sees this relationship with Jerry as a second chance in life. But the problem is, you can’t replace someone’s father. You can be a father figure to this kid, but you can never replace this child’s true parents. But I guess some people want this family thing so much that they tend to overreach a little.
We also see Jerry completely overreact when he sees Stephanie kiss a local boy goodnight (the moment leading up to it is hilarious considering how many times they say goodbye to each other). Jerry treats this kid like he is trying to rape Stephanie which couldn’t be further from the truth. Earlier in the movie, we see Shelley and Jerry making love, and he has nothing but this blank stare in his eyes during the act. Have you ever seen a guy with such a hang up about sex? The fact that he is more comfortable with killing people than he is making love makes me think that he is the kind of guy that the late Jack Valenti would have loved to have on the MPAA.
Hey Blake! Some of us would love to be where you are. Why can’t you enjoy sex like the rest of us do?
Anyway, enough about Jerry for the moment, and let’s talk about others in the cast. While she overdoes it at certain moments in the movie, Jill Schoelen is very fetching in this role as the sullen daughter who, like any good teenager, sees through the bullshit and hypocrisy of her adult counterparts. She has never trusted Jerry from the first moment she laid eyes on him, and she yearns to be away at boarding school which is more of a punishment than anything else. The fact that she is later almost fooled into believing that Jerry is not the creep she thought he was is scarily believable, but she is still a teenager, and she again succeeds in cutting through the bullshit to get to the truth of the matter.
Shelly Hack is also good here even though she overdoes it from time to time as Jerry’s new unsuspecting wife. You have to wonder sometimes if she was so lonely that she would go after anybody like Jake, but you can see why she could fall for him, and how she could possibly blind herself to the man that Jerry is. Thank god for teenagers!
The rest of the cast, however, works on playing the emotion more than giving performances that are not unintentionally hilarious. One of the chief offenders here is Stephen Shellen who plays Jim Ogilvie, a man whose sister was Blake’s previous wife and victim. Jim spends the movie searching for this man and believes that he is still in the area and that he has married again. How hilarious it is that he comes to save the day like Scatman Crothers in “The Shining,” and ends up dying almost exactly like Scatman in “The Shining.” I love it, this guy comes in to save the day and gets killed. You can just picture it:
“Hello? Anybody home? I am here to save the day and…. AHHHHH!!!!! MY BACK! MY BACK! YOU’RE NOT FAIR! I CAN’T EVEN GET A SHOT OFF!”
I also noticed that there are not a lot of black people in this movie. I guess this is further proof to presume that the white man is really the one to fear! The one black guy in the movie, Lt. Jack Wall (Blu Mankuma), gives him the main reason as to why they haven’t been going after this guy; The police don’t have any leads to go on. The only thing that Jack suggests to Jake is to get a gun and blow the son of a bitch away. Guess where we see Jake next? That’s right, the shooting range. Still, he can’t get a shot off when it counts. Bummer!
“The Stepfather” was directed by Joseph Ruben, and he has directed a lot of thrillers that can be high on thrills, but completely low on logic. Several years later, he directed “Sleeping With The Enemy” with Julia Roberts which had several plot holes that could have been avoided. Of course, if you had the crush I had on Julia Roberts at the time, none of that really mattered. You just wanted to hold her, protect her, and hug her hug her hug her… Anyway, he also made that god awful movie “The Good Son” which was supposed to be Macaulay “Home Alone” Culkin’s big break into psycho territory. That movie sucked big time, but we may have to blame Kit Culkin (Macaulay’s much reviled father) for screwing things up on that one. Still, even if he is not as concerned as he should be with the script, he still does direct an entertaining thriller that never bores its intended audience, and he gets a great performance out of Terry O’Quinn.
For a horror movie, “The Stepfather” is actually rather chaste compared to other movies like all those “Friday The 13th” sequels. For those from the Joe Bob Briggs fan club, there is only one nude shot with Jill Schoelen taking a shower, but that feels kind of arbitrary in retrospect. In terms of violence, it is nothing compared to other movies of its kind, and it’s got nothing on “Hellraiser” among others. The violence though is very brutal. We see Jerry smashing Stephanie’s psychiatrist with a 2x4, and we have another moment where he smashes a telephone in Shelley Hack’s face. There is not a lot of blood here for those looking for it, except of course for that image of Jerry’s aftermath that opens the film. All the same, you do feel the brutality of what Jerry does in the movie. As cheesy as this movie may seem, it still feels pretty vicious after all these years.
“The Stepfather” works best as a guilty pleasure, and that makes it perfect for midnight showings like these. While it is certainly not great, I got a kick out of watching it again after all these years. It of course was followed up with the inevitable sequel, which is kind of funny considering that this movie basically tanked when it first came out. I guess that ITC Entertainment (the same group that gave us “The Muppet Show”) was betting on this to have a cult following, and I guess that paid off for them in the end. Plus, Jerry Blake is no supernatural being who can regenerate himself, so I am curious to see “Stepfather 2” to see how the money man resurrected Blake for another go around.
But what makes “The Stepfather” worth the price of admission, other than unintentional laughs, is the lead performance by Terry O’Quinn. He is creepiness personified here, and it is so great to see him doing so well after all these years in shows like “The X-Files,” “Alias,” and “Lost” among others. Terry’s performance was no fluke, and he continues to be a great actor to this day. While “The Stepfather” will be inevitably be remade, I don’t think any actor will be able to top what O’Quinn did in this movie. Who ever intends to prove me wrong, I wish you the best of luck… You’re gonna need it…
**1/2 out of ****
It was another great evening with New Beverly Midnights at the New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. With them, you can always count on having a fun midnight showing of 80’s trash. Seriously, just look at what they have lined up for the next few weeks: “Never Too Young To Die,” “Waxwork,” and “Action Jackson.” They are also going to be showing William Friedkin’s “Sorcerer” which is not really trash, but one of his more underrated movies. But last night, we got to see Joseph Ruben’s “The Stepfather” which was released back in 1987. It tells the story of a man who is searching for the perfect family, and who is not having a lot of luck. But this is a guy who can’t seem to stomach divorce, so he ends up ending things a little viciously by murdering his whole family. But soon, he is on the lookout for a new family to make his own. But will it last longer than the last? WILL IT?!
“The Stepfather” has all the hallmarks of a cheesy 80’s horror movie; There is a lot of overacting, characters doing the dumbest things (there wouldn’t be a movie otherwise), a synthesizer score that has aged as well as the movie (which is to say, not at all), and a brutal killing or two. I remember when Siskel & Ebert reviewed this movie so many years ago as that was my first introduction to it. It’s too funny to believe that when this movie first came out, it seemed very intense. Looking at it today, we have to wonder what the hell we were thinking. Geez this movie looks corny!
Siskel & Ebert both gave “The Stepfather” thumbs down, which was unsurprising considering how they feel about horror movies in general. The one thing they did agree on (and this goes for anyone who likes or hates this movie) is that the movie has one truly great element, the performance of Terry O’Quinn as the title character. Roger Ebert was dead on saying that he made a really creepy villain. Terry gives us a man who is so terminally in love with the Normal Rockwell vision of the family, and who is one of the few adults that I can think of who can still laugh at old reruns of “Mr. Ed.” The fact that he said it took him till high school to realize that horses couldn’t talk should show just how deeply psychotic this man is.
What you have to love about Terry O’Quinn’s performance here is how he gives those around him a convincing façade of the happily married family man. Yet at the same time, his eyes completely betray the raging monster beneath the surface, and of how he threatens to kill again in the blink of an eye. Terry’s performance is truly frightening, and it is really the only thing about this movie that has not lost anything with age. There is no real psychological background as to why his character does what he does. This will drive a lot of people crazy in that it will make the movie seem completely senseless in its violence. If nothing else, the movie is a satire on those who believe that they can have the perfect family. We all should know by now that no such thing exists.
Terry O’Quinn also makes you believe how smart this psycho can be in terms of changing his identity. The movie opens with him washing himself up and shaving himself after butchering his family (the reveal of which is one of the movie’s most horrific scenes), and aside from the eyes which should give him away instantly, you could easily believe how someone like him could get away with it. That is, at least back in the 80’s. When things with the family he meets up with after that, you see him donning a whole new disguise which he just disappears into even while having the same over earnest voice.
What does this guy in? Well, he wants what none of us can never truly have – the perfect family. Any sane person can accept imperfection and love their family anyway, but not this guy. Also, when he finds a new love with Susan Maine (Shelley Hack), he tries to make her daughter Stephanie (the lovely Jill Schoelen) his own. With this family, the psycho calls himself Jerry Blake, and he buys Stephanie a cute little puppy (is there any other kind?). When Stephanie gleefully accepts this new bundle of joy, Jerry replies:
“That’s my girl!”
Right away, you know this relationship is screwed. Stephanie has recently lost her dad, and her mother Susan sees this relationship with Jerry as a second chance in life. But the problem is, you can’t replace someone’s father. You can be a father figure to this kid, but you can never replace this child’s true parents. But I guess some people want this family thing so much that they tend to overreach a little.
We also see Jerry completely overreact when he sees Stephanie kiss a local boy goodnight (the moment leading up to it is hilarious considering how many times they say goodbye to each other). Jerry treats this kid like he is trying to rape Stephanie which couldn’t be further from the truth. Earlier in the movie, we see Shelley and Jerry making love, and he has nothing but this blank stare in his eyes during the act. Have you ever seen a guy with such a hang up about sex? The fact that he is more comfortable with killing people than he is making love makes me think that he is the kind of guy that the late Jack Valenti would have loved to have on the MPAA.
Hey Blake! Some of us would love to be where you are. Why can’t you enjoy sex like the rest of us do?
Anyway, enough about Jerry for the moment, and let’s talk about others in the cast. While she overdoes it at certain moments in the movie, Jill Schoelen is very fetching in this role as the sullen daughter who, like any good teenager, sees through the bullshit and hypocrisy of her adult counterparts. She has never trusted Jerry from the first moment she laid eyes on him, and she yearns to be away at boarding school which is more of a punishment than anything else. The fact that she is later almost fooled into believing that Jerry is not the creep she thought he was is scarily believable, but she is still a teenager, and she again succeeds in cutting through the bullshit to get to the truth of the matter.
Shelly Hack is also good here even though she overdoes it from time to time as Jerry’s new unsuspecting wife. You have to wonder sometimes if she was so lonely that she would go after anybody like Jake, but you can see why she could fall for him, and how she could possibly blind herself to the man that Jerry is. Thank god for teenagers!
The rest of the cast, however, works on playing the emotion more than giving performances that are not unintentionally hilarious. One of the chief offenders here is Stephen Shellen who plays Jim Ogilvie, a man whose sister was Blake’s previous wife and victim. Jim spends the movie searching for this man and believes that he is still in the area and that he has married again. How hilarious it is that he comes to save the day like Scatman Crothers in “The Shining,” and ends up dying almost exactly like Scatman in “The Shining.” I love it, this guy comes in to save the day and gets killed. You can just picture it:
“Hello? Anybody home? I am here to save the day and…. AHHHHH!!!!! MY BACK! MY BACK! YOU’RE NOT FAIR! I CAN’T EVEN GET A SHOT OFF!”
I also noticed that there are not a lot of black people in this movie. I guess this is further proof to presume that the white man is really the one to fear! The one black guy in the movie, Lt. Jack Wall (Blu Mankuma), gives him the main reason as to why they haven’t been going after this guy; The police don’t have any leads to go on. The only thing that Jack suggests to Jake is to get a gun and blow the son of a bitch away. Guess where we see Jake next? That’s right, the shooting range. Still, he can’t get a shot off when it counts. Bummer!
“The Stepfather” was directed by Joseph Ruben, and he has directed a lot of thrillers that can be high on thrills, but completely low on logic. Several years later, he directed “Sleeping With The Enemy” with Julia Roberts which had several plot holes that could have been avoided. Of course, if you had the crush I had on Julia Roberts at the time, none of that really mattered. You just wanted to hold her, protect her, and hug her hug her hug her… Anyway, he also made that god awful movie “The Good Son” which was supposed to be Macaulay “Home Alone” Culkin’s big break into psycho territory. That movie sucked big time, but we may have to blame Kit Culkin (Macaulay’s much reviled father) for screwing things up on that one. Still, even if he is not as concerned as he should be with the script, he still does direct an entertaining thriller that never bores its intended audience, and he gets a great performance out of Terry O’Quinn.
For a horror movie, “The Stepfather” is actually rather chaste compared to other movies like all those “Friday The 13th” sequels. For those from the Joe Bob Briggs fan club, there is only one nude shot with Jill Schoelen taking a shower, but that feels kind of arbitrary in retrospect. In terms of violence, it is nothing compared to other movies of its kind, and it’s got nothing on “Hellraiser” among others. The violence though is very brutal. We see Jerry smashing Stephanie’s psychiatrist with a 2x4, and we have another moment where he smashes a telephone in Shelley Hack’s face. There is not a lot of blood here for those looking for it, except of course for that image of Jerry’s aftermath that opens the film. All the same, you do feel the brutality of what Jerry does in the movie. As cheesy as this movie may seem, it still feels pretty vicious after all these years.
“The Stepfather” works best as a guilty pleasure, and that makes it perfect for midnight showings like these. While it is certainly not great, I got a kick out of watching it again after all these years. It of course was followed up with the inevitable sequel, which is kind of funny considering that this movie basically tanked when it first came out. I guess that ITC Entertainment (the same group that gave us “The Muppet Show”) was betting on this to have a cult following, and I guess that paid off for them in the end. Plus, Jerry Blake is no supernatural being who can regenerate himself, so I am curious to see “Stepfather 2” to see how the money man resurrected Blake for another go around.
But what makes “The Stepfather” worth the price of admission, other than unintentional laughs, is the lead performance by Terry O’Quinn. He is creepiness personified here, and it is so great to see him doing so well after all these years in shows like “The X-Files,” “Alias,” and “Lost” among others. Terry’s performance was no fluke, and he continues to be a great actor to this day. While “The Stepfather” will be inevitably be remade, I don’t think any actor will be able to top what O’Quinn did in this movie. Who ever intends to prove me wrong, I wish you the best of luck… You’re gonna need it…
**1/2 out of ****
I haven't seen this like forever.
Great review.
Same here, Jerry. It's been a long time since I've seen this and THE STEPFATHER 2, which I also like. Quinn is incredible in both films. I remember when I was younger and wishing this dude never met my mom. LOL! I have enough father issues as it is. This guy would just give me more than I could handle. Sucks that this is being remade but the good thing about it is that a new DVD will come out and a lot more people will check out the original. I guess remakes are good for something. Great review, Ben!