The opening to Joseph Ruben’s The Stepfather (1987) finds Jerry (Terry O’Quinn, pre-Lost) just after murdering his wife and children in their Seattle home. He is in the midst of transformation, shearing his Unabomber scruff and metamorphosing into a clean-cut Leave It to Beaver everyman. He ups and leaves to find his next family in a neighboring suburb, only a short ferry’s ride away: a smitten widower (Shelley Hack) and her skeptical daughter (future scream queen Jill Schoelen), who isn’t buying Jerry’s unusually upbeat father-knows-best schtick. Meanwhile, the brother of Jerry’s late wife starts sleuthing around, trying to revive the unsolved murder with the help of the press and police.
Far less macabre than suggested by the opening’s blood-red tableau, The Stepfather is at its heart a psychological thriller masquerading as a slasher pic that doesn’t lean strongly enough into either aspects, at times to its detriment. But as far as potboilers go, you could do far worse. O’Quinn is credibly haunting, and the movie is succinct and succeeds on metaphorical grounds. While Jerry, and/or the screenwriters, keep his backstory and personal history—something about a strict upbringing—under wraps, the character’s present-day motivations are unmistakably clear: to protect the nuclear family; to have and to hold; to achieve A1-patriarch status.
But when wife and daughter inevitably reveal their imperfections, he resorts to murder.While these dichotomous extremes are germane to B-horror schlock, they also serve as an on-point critique of Reaganism: here is a man wedded to Traditional Family Values, collapsing under the societal expectations of the ’80s and losing control of his designs on the American Dream
Ruben imbues Jerry’s basement with sinister undertones, tying its associations with man-of-the-house maintenance to the craftwork of serial killers. Chillingly, The Stepfather is inspired by real-life sociopath John List, who committed familicide when he couldn’t face the supposed indignity of accepting welfare after being laid off, a fact he shamefully hid from everyone for months. The tragedy unfolded in Westfield, NJ, and was folded into the series The Watcher, based on another set of bizarre, idyll-shattering events that took place in the very same town. Something is rotten in the suburbs of America indeed, and The Stepfather exposes it with twisted glee.
The Stepfather screens tonight, April 24, in 35mm at Nitehawk Prospect Park
