100 Scariest Movie Moments: #70 The Stepfather

The Stepfather is based on a true story. The details are highly embellished, but the basic idea is in fact true. A man named John List actually butchered his entire family, having made preparations so thorough that no one noticed for a month. He then assumed a new identity and found a new family. However, this film makes him a serial family killer, who has done it before and fully intends to do it again if his new family is anything short of perfect, while the real man did it only once and for much simpler reasons (he lost his job and refused to feed his family with welfare).

I find it strange that with all of the tension surrounding this possibility, the scene that's often highlighted as the scariest is the one in which the Stepfather, under the name Jerry Blake (his real name is never given), played by Terry O'Quinn, goes down into his basement and starts talking to himself, yelling somewhat incoherently. The things he says imply that he was abused as a child. I fail to see what's frightening about this, but that might just be because I talk to myself when I'm alone. Hell, I'm even reading this out loud as I type it. So, someone going downstairs to yell when he's upset makes perfect sense to me.

The actual storyline is surprisingly complex as we follow several threads, with the Stepfather trying to ingratiate himself into his new family and his new wife Susan (Shelley Hack), working as a realtor, his stepdaughter Stephanie (Jill Schoelen) trying to convince both him and her mother that she should go to boarding school, and the brother of his murdered former wife (Steven Shellen) trying to track him down.

The added complexity of the story may be an unintentional side-effect of the subplots. The primary purpose of the subplots seem to be to give us more action in a storyline that requires the primary action to come at the end of the film. After all, Jerry can't attempt to kill his family until the final act of the movie, so something else has to happen.

In fact, there's a murder at almost exactly the half-way point of the film, just to remind us that he's a killer. Stephanie's psychologist (Charles Lanyer), trying to talk to the Stepfather about letting her go to boarding school, pretends to be an interested customer who is house shopping. The Stepfather falsely believes him to be an investigator searching for “Henry Morrison,” and kills him.

Beyond this, the actual murder attempts come so late in the film that they seem like an afterthought. I'm uncertain if the line “Who am I here?” was originally used to promote the film or was simply used later for VHS and DVD covers, but it is a chilling turn in the movie. The Stepfather calls himself by the wrong name, tipping off his wife, and beginning his next rampage.

Of course, plot contrivance is at play. He knocks his wife out, merely making preparations to kill her rather than getting it over with. At the same time, Stephanie is coming home. And of course, his former brother-in-law chose that exact moment to discover his true identity and race to the rescue.

Despite being so formulaic (the brother-in-law provides another body), the last fifteen minutes are carried primarily by O'Quinn's performance. They remain scary because he provides a bizarre mixture of chaos and order. He's losing control, but he's doing so in a methodical way. This serves to remind us that he's done this before, and if he gets away he'll do it again.

To me, the single most frightening moment in this film is also the single corniest. The three living people in the house, the Stepfather, his wife, and Stephanie, are all wounded to the point at which they can only crawl. The wife has a gun, but it's out of bullets, and she is too far away to interfere. So he and Stephanie both have to crawl towards a knife to try to finish each other off. The wife even conveniently yells “Stephanie, the knife!” just to let the audience know that yes, a mass-murderer getting to a knife before his intended victim would be bad. The scene reminds me of The Strangers in the sense that both are proof of how a movie's quality has little to do with its capacity to induce fear.

I strongly recommend this movie, if only to see Terry O'Quinn in something other than Lost. It's a lot of fun, and despite the implausibility of some events, it's never truly stupid enough to make you feel guilty for liking it.