The Stepfather (1987)

I haven't seen this film in years - I'm glad to get a chance to watch it again. It is a good horror film overall.Terry O'Quinn is fantastic as Jerry Blake - his performance is amazing. He "MADE" this film - and made it scary. This one rates fairly high on my personal scare factor scale. The character Jerry Blake is one twisted, cunning, evil and vile man. This guy is definitely off his rocker - not a man you would ever want to be around.The story is not all that bad, interesting, but this film is worth watching for Terry O'Quinn alone. The rest of the cast is good as well. Generally speaking, horror movie fans should like this film - it is creepy slasher thriller.7/10

The Stepfather (1987)*** (out of 4) Troubled teenager Stephanie (Jill Schoelen) is still suffering the side effects of her father's death a year earlier but things don't get any better when her mother (Shelley Hack) marries a new man (Terry O'Quinn). Stephanie thinks there's something wrong with Jerry but she doesn't realize that he's actually a serial killer who gets rid of his "family" after they disappoint him.THE STEPFATHER pretty much came out of nowhere when it was released and became a nice little hit for the studio. There are certainly elements of various movies rolled up here but there's no question that the film works wonders especially with the terrific performances and some intense scenes towards the end. The movie certainly isn't flawless and at times it shows it's B-budget but it's still a nice gem that has plenty going for it.I think the greatest thing is the fact that O'Quinn is simply brilliant in his role. The first time we see him we see the aftermath of his brutal murders and yet the actor is so charming in the part and so charming to his new family that you can't help but like him. O'Quinn is so believable in the part that you easily forget that you're actually watching a cold-blooded monster. Once the character begins to crack, O'Quinn doesn't miss a beat. Schoelen is also extremely good in her role and is quite believable as the teen who just knows something isn't right. Hack, Charles Lanyer and Stephen Shellen are also good in their parts.The film has some nice tension throughout and especially the finale, which packs a nice little punch. As I said, the film certainly isn't flawless as there are some pacing issues that make the film move a bit too slow but this here doesn't take away from all the good stuff. I'd also say some of the sync music score could have been thrown away. Still, THE STEPFATHER contains some terrific performances that makes it worth watching.

"Terry O'Quinn really does elevate some stupid crap." - to loosely quote Brad Jones, the Cinema Snob. The biggest plot holes in the movie stem from how incompetent the police and media are at finding Jerry Blake! They HAVE his picture! All they had to do was run it in the paper! That's sort of how the serial killer John List (this movie was loosely based on) was finally captured! America's Most Wanted broadcasted his story on TV, which had the same effect. With his picture seen by enough people, he had no where to hide. The sub-plot of the Jerry's dead wife's brother hunting him down could have been dropped completely! Despite all of this, I still give the movie an 8 out of 10 for O'Quinn's performance alone. He's that good!

Before 1960, horror generally beckoned from places unmapped, from a little outside the common sphere of rationale and knowledge. We either traveled to them as in the Dracula mythos or as in Cat People their curse seeped back, nevertheless the boundaries were well defined. Here was home, where fear may occasionally intrude but is nevertheless dispelled by some understanding of its supernatural mechanism, and beyond was the unspeakable. Even when that unspeakable was found in the suburbs of Los Angeles, as in the case of House on Haunted Hill, the otherworldly architecture was a clear signifier of the threshold that separates the two worlds.Psycho changed all that. Now the dark, threatening world was a short drive away and the monster was the motel owner next door - meaning it's never quite dispelled, and could be each of us next. The vision was so startling it turned Gothic horror overnight into a semi-parodic anachronism. Eight years later Romero carried the idea to its revealing extreme - now the fabric of the world entire was chaos pulling at the seams and we were forced to barricade inside the mind. The idea was no longer to restore balance and eventually make good triumph, rather to simply survive and maintain sanity in spite of the terror. It resonated with people growing up in a world of random, inexplicable yet sensationalized violence close and far from home, whose true essence is so hopelessly removed from our immediate understanding that we can merely fumble in the dark as we retreat from it. In its own way, it situated us back into the spooky castle or mansion, only now there was nowhere to hide from it - the entire world is the monster's den.Now, The Stepfather goes the extra mile from Psycho. The monster is not simply disguised among us, it is the very figurehead of the household who is furthermore responsible for upholding the values that define social life. The ogre-father in Freudian terms, but also as arbiter of ethos. It is to some degree a successful venture for the reversal alone.Why it's not important in the grand scheme as Psycho or Night of the Living Dead, perhaps has to do with so much contrivance in the plotting. It's never quite so believable as it should be. And it's played with so much relish that the closest film I kept thinking of was not so much Psycho, as American Psycho. The psychotic person so peculiarly enjoyable in his frenzy that it's rendered a parody of the real thing. An Ed Gein who has seeped so deep into the cultural mainstream that he has been allowed, in part, to be deprived of the reality that could foster such a human being. It doesn't so much scare or scar with life, as passingly titillate.And it's so parodic I think, because audiences by now were so accustomed to the very idea of a father menacing his own family that it doesn't move like it might have at one time. It is acceptable to be the subject of gleeful fun. Slashers and zombie films followed the same path, becoming increasingly ironic of the terror they posited. Having made our peace with it, we could now make some fun of what is beyond the pale.It is not a bad film by any means. It could have been much more though. Watch it, if you've done the rounds of the genre and are now looking into the second-tier.