Narrator: “I don’t know my dad. I mean, I know him but he left when I was, like, six years old, married this other woman and had some other kids. He, like, did this every six years. He goes to a new city and starts a new family.”
Tyler Durden: “Fucker should open up franchises.”
-David Fincher’s Fight Club
The Stepfather was a shot in the dark in that it appeared as an actual effective slasher film made during 1980’s when such films of this ilk were not only permitted to be rote, but were expected to lower the bar with each addition to the genre. To add to the filmmakers’ aesthetic audacity, The Stepfather–now get this–has a point. Of course, considering the work was adapted to the screen by Donald Westlake from his own Hitchcockian novel (whose work would also be done justice in Brian Helgeland’s phenomenal film, Payback), a scathingly satirical indictment of American familial mores and standards (during the Regean Era no less), the work merely needed a competent director and cast, both of which the writer was granted in Joseph Ruben’s directorial expertise and Terry O’Quinn’s amazing descent into and understanding of the titular character.
Jerry Blake (Terry O’Quinn) has the ideal life: A nice home, wife–Susan Maine (Shelley Hack), and stepdaughter–Stephanie (Jill Schoelen), all which is topped off with a terrier named Randy. Yet he should considering that Jerry has already dispatched several makeshift families throughout his life, which he kills at a drop of a hat as soon as he receives the slightest indication that his newest family’s moral fiber is weakening and that the familial bond might be dissipating. Can Jim Ogilvie (Stephen Shellen), brother to Jerry’s previous wife, find the enigmatic killer before he murders again and merges into another partial family?
Westlake is a masterful writer (nonetheless underrated) who possesses a gift for creating and presenting suspense, who is only rivaled in his potency and consistently by the Master of Suspense himself, Alfred Hitchcock. (The film contains homages to Psycho and The Birds while it tweaking the plot of Shadow of a Doubt.) The Stepfather is equal parts character study, satire, and thriller as Westlake begins with one of the more readily disagreeable characters in society: the stepfather. The manner in which the writer fleshes out his antagonist is so subtle that the viewer literally dreads upsetting Jerry yet, turning the psychological thumbscrews, once a sentiment is voiced which we anticipate will provoke the serial killer, Westlake permits Jerry to pause as he retains his composure, thus making the figure all the most dominating in his ability to control his urges, ergo allowing his malevolent actions to be all the more intense once they are acted upon. Even Jerry’s lies are so thoroughly premeditated and comprehensive as to alleviate the least chance of error that the viewer needn’t resort to suspending disbelief at any time during the film. Westlake’s expertise in the suspense genre is perhaps best served in the example that once Jerry presents his stepdaughter with a terrier, we anticipate a dire end for the canine prior to the film’s climax. However, as Jerry selects a butcher knife in which to murder what he deems to be yet another failed venture into familial bliss, the dog naively appears and Jerry coaxes the canine over to him. What results is so well presented in its pacing and atmosphere I cannot permit myself to divulge any more.
Yet the plot only serves as a means to an ends for Westlake as his modernization of Hitchcock is the segue for the author’s original, daunting denunciation of the All-American family by way of the Regean Era’s recourse back to 1950’s morality. Film critic Richard Scheib makes an interesting observation in his comparison between The Stepfather’s refutation of such notions, stating they are “cloying, outmoded, and makes the clear point that the ludicrously clean-living ideals of family as promulgated by 1950’s tv shows are quite out of step in the 1980’s” and Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction. The latter, released the same year as Ruben’s work, sets out to do the exact opposite, that is, affirm such values. Predictably, Lyne’s studio-backed production garnered greater attention from the masses yet was lambasted by the critics, whereas Ruben’s film, though vastly superior in its writing and execution, received little mainstream recognition, due by and large to its limited release via independence distributors, but generated positive critical reviews.
Aside from presenting a plot where the facade of a perfect family veils mass deception, faux morality, and literal murder behind dream houses, forced smiles, and standardized gender roles which all happily meet, Ruben does a masterful job of associating the two conservative eras in U.S. history by way of subtly hinting at the genesis for Jerry’s insanity: television’s seemingly omnipotent influence (which makes the figure of Jerry arguably inculpable for his crimes as such). During the course of the narrative, he not only refers to the family pet as Rin Tin Tin, but also divulges to Susan that he wasn’t aware that horses couldn’t talk until he reached high school as he reminisces about the many enjoyable hours he spent watching Mister Ed as a child. Conclusively, a birdhouse which Jerry builds and erects during the film understandably topples as the closing frame of the feature permits us to see for the first time that the birdhouse (which is devoid of a nest) was modeled after the central family’s home.
Though the script is concise and the directing solid, many a would-be monumental screenplay has be ruined due to poor character depiction and acting. Yet O’Quinn’s performance is outstanding as he perpetually opts for understatement throughout, thus making the pathology of Jerry all the more resounding as a consequence. Even though we are aware from the opening scene of who and what Jerry is, O’Quinn’s smile is so personable that instead of feeling apprehensive when his lips begin to curl upward, we find ourselves paradoxically smiling with him. Though the leitmotif is issued that children are able to see through Jerry’s overwhelming demure, a.k.a. children as psycho Geiger Counters, due to the fact they are still largely dependent upon instinct and that their social scripting has not been fully integrated, the manner in which Jerry gracefully quells Susan’s almost validated suspicions as to his true identity makes the terror almost paramount. The only aspect of The Stepfather which is arguably more harrowing than the writing or the acting is O’Quinn’s transformations between families as he makes himself literally unrecognizable, the most fascinating of which is his second metamorphosis which we are allowed to witness in that it is so complete, absolute, and convincing that is causes shivers to course down the audience’s spine.
Though a masterpiece in most every respect, the film does suffer from Swedish composer Patrick Moraz’s (former keyboardist for Yes and The Moody Blues) overly distracting, dated, synthesizer-laden soundtrack and the inclusion of Jim as the Deus Ex Machina.
Donald Westlake’s ingenious, witty script and the stunning acting prowess of Terry O’Quinn culminated in one of the most underrated slasher films of all time, Joseph Ruben’s The Stepfather. Only George Sluizer’s Spoorloos can be offered as a more thorough, convincing depiction–not only of a serial killer–but of his genesis and the society which created him. Not content to merely issue a sound slasher picture, O’Quinn permits his film to also speak, not only of the time in which it was made, but to stand as a comprehensive overview of American society within a thirty-year period and, de facto, posits the criticism of how little said society has changed its naïvely idealistic notions upon what produces and comprises happiness.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
