The Stepfather **** (1987, Terry O’Quinn, Jill Schoelen, Shelley Hack) – Classic Movie Review 4402

The 1987 American psychological horror thriller The Stepfather is an effective, excellent, creepy chiller from a Donald E Westlake story. Terry O’Quinn stars as an identity-assuming serial killer who marries a widow with a teenage daughter.

Director Joseph Ruben’s 1987 American psychological horror thriller The Stepfather is an effective, excellent, creepy chiller from a Donald E Westlake story. It stars Terry O’Quinn as an identity-assuming serial killer, who marries a widow with a teenage daughter.

Terry O’Quinn is most chilling as a timid-seeming psychopath who marries widows and goes into a murderous rage. Having butchered his family, Henry Morrison starts a new life real estate agent named Jerry Blake.

Now he moves to another town, a suburb of Seattle, where he remarries a widow, Susan Maine (Shelley Hack) with a 16-year-old daughter, Stephanie (Eighties scream queen Jill Schoelen) and prepares to murder his entire family all over again.

There is plenty of suspense undercut by side-tracking black humour in a tautly handled, intelligent picture, carefully scripted by the story’s author, Donald E Westlake. The slick and satisfying result is well above average for the horror course, more of a psychological horror thriller than a slasher film.

Also in the cast are Charles Lanyer, Stephen Shellen and Robyn Stevan.

Filming started on 16 October 1985 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada and in 1986 New Century Vista Film Corporation agreed to distribute it, with the US release on 23 January 1987.

A sequel, Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy, followed in 1989, with Stepfather III in 1992. And it was remade in 2009 as The Stepfather.

John List (September 17, 1925 – March 21, 2008)

The story is loosely based on the life of John List, from New Jersey, who killed his family in 1971, and was on the run until 1989, till TV’s America’s Most Wanted prompted his capture. List died in prison in 2008, aged 82. He believed that his family members were straying from their religious faith, and that killing them would assure their souls a place in heaven, where he would join them.

Carolyn Lefcourt and Brian Garfield also worked on the screen story. Lefcourt found a newspaper article about how List killed his own family and brought it to Garfield (of Death Wish infamy). Westlake collaborated with them to write the story and then based his screenplay on it.

The cast

The cast are Terry O’Quinn as Jerry Blake / Henry Morrison / Bill Hodgkins / The Stepfather, Jill Schoelen as Stephanie Maine, Shelley Hack as Susan Maine, Charles Lanyer as Dr A Bondurant, Stephen Shellen as Jim Ogilvie, Stephen E Miller as Al Brennan, Robyn Stevan as Karen, Jeff Schultz as Paul Baker, Lindsay Bourne as Art Teacher, Anna Hagan as Mrs. Leitner, Gillian Barber as Annie Barnes, Blu Mankuma as Lieutenant Jack Wall, and Jackson Davies as Mr Chesterton.

The Stepfather is directed by Joseph Ruben, runs 89 minutes, is made by ITC Productions, is released by New Century Vista (US) and Virgin Vision (UK), is written by Donald E Westlake, is shot by John W Lindley, is produced by Jay Benson, and is scored by Patrick Moraz,

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4,402

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Jill Schoelen