The Stepfather (1987), Terry O'Quinn at His Finest and Craziest!

Jerry Blake is a crazy man who marries women with children in search of the perfect family but it always fails and he remedies it by killing the family and moving on to another using a new identity. After his latest family fails, he moves on to his next try and marries Susan Maine, a recent widow, with a teenage daughter, Stephanie, who is always getting into trouble in school, which upsets Jerry's idea of the perfect family once again. Added to Jerry's troubles are a meddlesome doctor, who befriends Stephanie, and the brother of Jerry's last wife, Jim Ogilvie, who is in search of "Jerry" for revenge and to keep them from killing again.

With the remake, The Stepfather (2009), that releases on October 16, 2009, I thought it would be a good idea to go back in watch the original again before watching and reviewing the remake, so that it is fresh in my mind and I can make better comparisons between the two. I'm not really excited about the remake because I am a fan of the original.

I haven't watched The Stepfather in a long time, so I really did not remember much about it except for the really insane acting by Terry O'Quinn. Other than that, I really do not remember much at all. I do know that I really liked the original. After watching it just this past week, I have mixed feelings about the movie, so this will not be 100% positive review.

The Stepfather is a very outdated movie in my opinion. It was released in 1987 but it feels like a little sooner; it's definitely an 80s movie and feels like that for most of the movie. This is not to say that it is an awful movie but much of it will not stand up to modern viewers or technology.

The music is awful! There are a few 80s songs scattered throughout the movie but nothing that I remember as being a big hit or anything like that. Most of the music in the movie is really crappy and generic electronic music that really dates this movie. I felt like I was stuck in a bad 80s B-movie. Viewers will really need to overlook this negative aspect of the movie to enjoy it more, unless they really like this sort of cheap music.

The Stepfather would not work today from a technological standpoint. The main sticking point of this movie is that Stephanie can't find a photo that was printed in the newspaper of the killer that slaughtered a nearby family a year previously because she believes the killer might be Jerry. There was no Internet, as we know it, at the time, so Stephanie can't just look it up on the Internet; instead, she has to rely on snail mail that is intercepted by Jerry, who substitutes the photo of himself with that of a stranger. Stephanie believes she was wrong because she has no other way of finding a photo of the killer. Of course, she could have gone to the library or newspaper publisher and search through old papers to find the photo that was published. It just happened to be a coincidence that the newspaper reporter was unable to publish a photo of the killer in his article that he wrote at the request of Jim Ogilvie. Everything just worked out too nicely for it to feel realistic.

The acting is hit or miss with The Stepfather. Most of the cast is not comprised of great and/or well-known actors or actresses. Most are no-namers that act very flat. There are really only a few main characters in this movie. We have crazy Jerry, mother Susan, daughter Stephanie and Jim Ogilvie, brother of Jerry's last victim. Beneath them, we have Dr. Bondurant and the news reporter, Al Brennan.

Terry O'Quinn is the main reason to see this movie because he plays a really good psychopath, Jerry Blake, with a split personality, not unlike that of Norman Bates, and the brutal attacks of Hannibal Lector. O'Quinn does a perfect psychotic killer with his sudden mood changes in facial expressions. It's like he goes from 0 to 100 mph in a split second, which is perfect for his role. Not too many actors could pull it off as well and he has in this movie. He only won one award for his role here but it is a very minor award; I think he deserved to have one several major awards for his role. If you see this movie for just one reason, see it to watch O'Quinn go nuts -- it really is a thing of beauty!

Jill Schoelen as Stephanie Maine would be the second main reason to watch this movie. She does a fantastic job of playing Jerry Blake's rebellious stepdaughter. She was 24 one this movie was released but she plays a high school age girl, which she pulls off well. At first, I really did not find it too realistic that it would be a girl to play the part of the rebellious teenager, getting into fist fights and arguments every day; I think it's much more suited to a boy, although, there are some girls like this. After I got into the movie, I appreciated her role much more. Jill is a beautiful young woman with a very cute voice. As an added bonus, we get to see her naked for a few seconds near the end of the movie -- it's well worth the wait!

Now for the rest of the cast. Shelley Hack, as Susan Maine Blake, while her performance is not horrible, it's kind of lackluster and boring. Stephen Shellen, as Jim Ogilvie, is okay in his role but not as emotional as it could have been. Charles Lanyer, as Dr. Bondurant, does a likable performance, I think that he could have done much more with the role.

Stephen E. Miller, as reporter Al Brennan, feels like more of a cardboard performance but he is only on-screen for a few minutes, if that. Blu Mankuma, as police Lt. Jack Wall, has been in hundreds of small roles and they get no smaller than this -- he is in the movie for about three minutes, just to tell Ogilvie that the police have no leads on the killer and that, if he were him, he would get a gun and "blow him [the killer] away." That really does not sound like a real police Lieut. would say.

I want to talk a little bit about the wardrobe and props. Jerry always wears red and black striped or plaid shirts, which is kind of strange to be wearing so often -- when we first see him and his new family's house, he is wearing a red and black striped shirt under his suit, giving him a Freddy Krueger appearance. The other thing that bothers me is Ogilvie's car that is rusted and falling apart. What is the reasoning behind giving him a crappy car? Was the budget so low that they could only afford to plaid shirts and clunker cars? One other thing I just remembered are Ogilvie's boots -- throughout the movie he's wearing these big worker boots that are more suited to cold locations, such as Alaska, not the warm location here.

There really are not that many killings in this movie, at least compared to other modern horror films. In turn, there is also very little blood and gore to be seen, which will disappoint gore hounds. There is a brutal attack with a 2 x 4, which is about as gory as this movie gets. The Stepfather is more of a psychological horror, very much like Psycho.

Despite all of the criticism I wrote about The Stepfather, I still enjoy the movie. All his 80s aspects make it a bit cheesy but it's a good kind of cheesy gives the movie a sense of warmth for lack of a better word. Terry O'Quinn and Jill Schoelen are the main reasons to watch this movie -- without them, this movie probably would not have worked with its budget. They give A-level performances in this B-level movie. This is requisite viewing for horror fans. 3.5/5

I have just a few comments about The Stepfather (2009) remake. Dylan Walsh, of Nip/Tuck fame, plays the killer stepfather, David Harris, which just happens to be the same exact name as one of my friends. So far, from what I have seen in the trailers, I really do not think Walsh is anywhere near as good as O'Quinn. O'Quinn did the role in such a way that he was never over the top angry, yet it was creepier and if he was full out of control angry, whereas, Walsh does the role in a direct, full throttle angry, which can be good in a different way but I am used to O'Quinn's version. Who is Walsh anyways to be doing a role like this? If the studios were really serious about this remake, I think that they could find much bigger, better actors for the role.

As with most remakes, there are several changes, often unnecessary, to the story. In this case, the daughter, Stephanie, has been replaced with a son, Michael. While I said that it felt weird to have a rebellious daughter in the original, I see no reason to change it. The studios think that, by changing the sex of the step child, they are making a completely different movie? In the remake, Michael returns home from military school to find his mother already with the stepfather, where as, in the original, Stephanie was at home from the very beginning, attending public school. After lots of trouble in high school, she gets expelled once to go to private school but the stepfather doesn't want to break up the family with her going to private school. The remake goes against the usual pattern used by the stepfather, who always looks for families with a single mother and young child that lives at home. It's these little changes for no reason that bother me.

The remake, of course, has to change things technologically due to current technology, such as the Internet. The trailer shows the stepson finding the killer's picture online, which I predicted in my review of the original. This is probably the only reason that really justifies the remake. I do hope that better music is used too!

Trivia:

The Stepfather is loosely based on John List, a New Jersey man who murdered his family and disappeared for 16 years, until he was shown on America's Most Wanted.

Quote:

[Before hitting his wife in the face with a telephone]
Jerry Blake: Wait a minute, who am I here?
Sue: Jerry?
Jerry Blake: That's right. Jerry Blake. Thanks, honey. Scroll