''The Stepfather'' is a 1987 American
psychological horror film directed by
Joseph Ruben
Joseph Porter Ruben (born May 10, 1950) is an American filmmaker.
Movie career
His earlier films, such as '' The Stepfather'', have become cult classics. In the 1990s, he went to direct high-grossing mainstream films such as ''Sleeping with the ...
and starring
Terry O'Quinn
Terrance Quinn (born July 15, 1952), known professionally as Terry O'Quinn, is an American actor. He played John Locke on the TV series ''Lost'', the title role in '' The Stepfather'' and '' Stepfather II'', and Peter Watts in ''Millennium'', ...
,
Jill Schoelen
Jill Marie Schoelen (born March 21, 1963) is an American former actress. She is best known for ''Chiller'' (1985), '' The Stepfather'' (1987), '' Cutting Class'' (1989), ''The Phantom of the Opera'' (1989), '' Popcorn'' (1991), '' Rich Girl'' (1 ...
, and
Shelley Hack
Shelley Marie Hack (born July 6, 1947) is an American actress, model and producer. She is best known as the face of Revlon's Charlie perfume from the mid-1970s until the early 1980s, and for her role as Tiffany Welles in the fourth season of ''C ...
. O'Quinn stars as an identity-assuming serial killer who marries a widow with a teenage daughter. Having killed his previous family and changed his identity, his murderous tendencies continue after his stepdaughter becomes suspicious of him. The film is loosely based on the life of mass murderer
John List, although the plot is more commonly associated with
slasher film
A slasher film is a genre of horror films involving a killer stalking and murdering a group of people, usually by use of bladed or sharp tools like knife, chainsaw, scalpel, etc. Although the term "slasher" may occasionally be used informally as ...
s of the era. The film was written by
Donald E. Westlake
Donald Edwin Westlake (July 12, 1933 – December 31, 2008) was an American writer, with more than a hundred novels and non-fiction books to his credit. He specialized in crime fiction, especially comic capers, with an occasional foray into ...
, from a story by Westlake, Carolyn Lefcourt, and
Brian Garfield with an uncredited rewrite by
David Loughery.
The film was theatrically released in the United States on January 23, 1987. It grossed $2.5 million at the box office and was well-received by critics. It has since gained a
cult following and was followed by two sequels, ''
Stepfather II
''Stepfather II'' (also known as ''Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy'') is a 1989 American psychological thriller film directed by Jeff Burr and written by John Auerbach. It is a sequel to '' The Stepfather'' (1987) and stars Terry O'Quinn as th ...
'' (1989) and ''
Stepfather III
''Stepfather III'' (also known as ''Stepfather III: Father's Day'') is a 1992 American thriller film directed and written by Guy Magar. It stars Robert Wightman, Priscilla Barnes, David Tom, and Season Hubley. It is the second sequel to 1987 film ...
'' (1992), and a remake, also called ''
The Stepfather'', released in 2009.
Plot
Henry Morrison assumes a different identity in the attempt to find the perfect family. In the beginning of the movie, he washes off blood in a bathroom after murdering the family he had been living with. He then changes his appearance and puts his belongings into a suitcase. Henry leaves through the front door of his house, nonchalantly passing the butchered remains of his family. Boarding a
ferry, Henry throws the suitcase containing the objects from his former life into the ocean. One year later, Henry—now operating as a real estate agent named Jerry Blake in the
suburbs of
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...
—has married the widow Susan Maine. Jerry's relationship with Susan's 16-year-old daughter, Stephanie, is strained. Her psychiatrist, Dr. Bondurant, advises her to give Jerry a chance. Stephanie, meanwhile, has a lot of behavioral issues at school and is skeptical of Jerry and his intentions.
Meanwhile, Jim Ogilvie, the brother of Jerry's murdered previous wife, runs an article about his sister's murder in the newspaper and attempts to find the man that killed his sister. While hosting a neighborhood barbecue, Jerry discovers the article and is disturbed by it. Jerry goes into the basement of the house and begins maniacally rambling to himself, unaware that Stephanie has also entered the basement. Discovering his stepdaughter, Jerry brushes off his outbursts by saying that he was simply letting off steam. He tells her not to worry. Stephanie finds the newspaper mentioning Jerry's earlier killings and comes to believe her stepfather is the murderer mentioned in the article. She writes a letter to the newspaper requesting a photo of Henry Morrison, but Jerry finds the photo in the mail and replaces it with a stranger's photo, allaying her suspicions.
Curious about Stephanie's stepfather, who has repeatedly refused to meet him, Dr. Bondurant makes an appointment with Jerry under an assumed name, saying he wants to buy a house. During their meeting, Bondurant asks too many personal questions and Jerry realizes that Bondurant is not who he says he is, and, mistakenly believing he is an undercover cop, beats him to death and puts him in Bondurant's car. He then sets the car on fire. The next day, Jerry informs Stephanie of Bondurant's death, claiming he was in a car accident, and succeeds in bonding with her. Jerry's newfound relationship with his stepdaughter is quickly cut short when he catches Stephanie kissing her boyfriend, Paul. Jerry accuses Paul of attempting to rape Stephanie, which causes an argument with Stephanie and Susan, and drives Paul away. Stephanie runs out on Jerry and Susan because Susan says Jerry is her father, though he is not. The next day, Jerry quits his job and creates a new identity for himself in another town. He begins to court another widow, while planning to get rid of Susan and Stephanie.
Having discovered where Jerry is now living, Jim begins going door to door, in search of his former brother-in-law. After Jim stops by, Susan phones the real estate agency to tell Jerry that someone was looking for him, only to be informed that Jerry quit several days ago. Susan asks Jerry, but, while explaining himself to Susan, Jerry confuses his identities and Susan realizes Stephanie was right about him. Realizing his mistake, Jerry bashes Susan on the head with the phone and knocks her down the basement stairs. Content that Susan is dead, Jerry then sets out to kill Stephanie.
Jim, who has realized Jerry is the man who killed his family, arrives wielding a revolver, but Jerry stabs him to death before Jim can shoot him. After terrorizing Stephanie, he corners her in the attic, only to fall through the weak floor down to the bathroom. Susan shoots Jerry twice when he tries to attack Stephanie, and Stephanie stabs him in the chest. He weakly utters "I love you" and tumbles down the stairs. Stephanie later cuts down a birdhouse she and Jerry had built during the time they bonded.
Cast
Production
Development
The film was inspired by the crimes of
John List. Lefcourt found a newspaper article about how List killed his own family and brought it to Garfield. Westlake collaborated with them to write the story and based his screenplay on that.
[
]
Music
Soundtrack
* "Run Between the Raindrops" – Pat Benatar
Patricia Mae Giraldo ('' née'' Andrzejewski, formerly Benatar; born January 10, 1953), known professionally as Pat Benatar, is an American rock singer and songwriter. In the United States, she has had two multi-platinum albums, five platinum al ...
* "Sleeping Beauty
''Sleeping Beauty'' (french: La belle au bois dormant, or ''The Beauty in the Sleeping Forest''; german: Dornröschen, or ''Little Briar Rose''), also titled in English as ''The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods'', is a fairy tale about a princess cu ...
" – Divinyls
Divinyls () were an Australian rock band that were formed in Sydney in 1980. The band primarily consisted of vocalist Chrissy Amphlett and guitarist Mark McEntee. Amphlett garnered widespread attention for performing on stage in a school uni ...
* "I Want You" – Patrick Moraz
Patrick Philippe Moraz (born 24 June 1948) is a Swiss musician, film composer and songwriter, best known for his tenures as keyboardist in the rock bands Yes and The Moody Blues.
Born into a musical family, Moraz learned music at a young age a ...
and John McBurnie
* " Gwine to Rune All Night (De Camptown Races)" – Stephen Foster
Stephen Collins Foster (July 4, 1826January 13, 1864), known also as "the father of American music", was an American composer known primarily for his parlour and minstrel music during the Romantic period. He wrote more than 200 songs, inc ...
Release
Home media
The film was released on DVD for the first time in North America by Shout! Factory on October 13, 2009. Shout! Factory released the Blu-ray version of the film on June 15, 2010.
Reception
Box office
''The Stepfather'' was initially marketed as a psychological thriller. When audiences did not respond to this as well as New Century would have liked, they marketed it as a slasher film.[ The film was theatrically released in the United States on January 23, 1987. During its opening weekend, ''The Stepfather'' grossed $260,587 in 105 theatres. Ultimately playing in 148 theatres, it earned a total US gross of $2.5 million.]
Critical response
''The Stepfather'' has an 89% approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes and an average rating of 7/10 out of 35 reviews. Film critic Roger Ebert with the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' gave the movie 2.5 stars out of 4 and wrote, "Violence itself seems to sell at the box office, even when it's divorced from any context. Maybe that's what the filmmakers were thinking. What often happens, though, is that in an otherwise flawed film there are a couple of things that are wonderful. ''The Stepfather'' has one wonderful element: Terry O'Quinn's performance."
Terry O'Quinn
Terrance Quinn (born July 15, 1952), known professionally as Terry O'Quinn, is an American actor. He played John Locke on the TV series ''Lost'', the title role in '' The Stepfather'' and '' Stepfather II'', and Peter Watts in ''Millennium'', ...
was nominated for both a Saturn and an Independent Spirit Award
The Independent Spirit Awards (abbreviated Spirit Awards and originally known as the FINDIE or Friends of Independents Awards), founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glas ...
. O'Quinn came in third place in the voting for the 1987 National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Actor. Director Ruben
Reuben or Reuven is a Biblical male first name from Hebrew רְאוּבֵן (Re'uven), meaning "behold, a son". In the Bible, Reuben was the firstborn son of Jacob.
Variants include Rúben in European Portuguese; Rubens in Brazilian Portuguese ...
was honored with the Critics Award at the 1988 Cognac Festival. The film was nominated for the International Fantasy Film Award for Best Film at the 1990 Fantasporto
Fantasporto, also known as Fantas, is an international film festival, annually organized since 1981 in Porto, Portugal. Giving screen space to fantasy/science fiction/ horror-oriented commercial feature films, auteur films and experimental proje ...
, and included in Bravo's ''100 Scariest Movie Moments'' at spot #70.
Describing it as a cult film, Scott Tobias interprets the film as a critique of Reaganism.
Accolades
Sequels
The film was followed by the sequel ''Stepfather II'' in 1989, which opened to negative reviews. The TV movie ''Stepfather III'' was released in 1992, with the title character played by another actor.
Remake
A remake titled ''The Stepfather'' was released in 2009 to negative reviews.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Stepfather, The
1987 films
1987 horror films
1987 independent films
1980s psychological thriller films
American horror thriller films
American independent films
Horror films based on actual events
American serial killer films
Uxoricide in fiction
Fiction about familicide
Films set in Washington (state)
Films shot in British Columbia
Films directed by Joseph Ruben
ITC Entertainment films
American psychological horror films
1980s English-language films
1980s American films