The Stepfather – Psycho of the Month

Hey, there, everyone, and welcome to a brief respite from International Zombie Week.  I know that I said I’d do a week’s straight of zombie films, and I intend to keep my word there, but this is Father’s Day!  The one day of the year that we honor the male parent in our lives, and I thought I’d take an in-depth look at one of horror’s most underrated fathers, the title character from the film The Stepfather.

Terry O’Quinn, Lost’s John Locke himself, plays Jerry Blake in the first film, a man obsessed with finding the perfect family.  To this end, he’ll do whatever it takes to make his family life work… even if he has to kill his family and take on a new one.  In this film, he marries a widow and becomes the stepfather to her daughter, Stephanie, who doesn’t trust him at all.  As Jerry tries to build what he sees as the perfect life, events conspire against him until he eventually starts to lose it and tries to start over from the beginning.

In Stepfather II (aka Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy), he succeeds in finding a perfect family with a son who loves him, but has to deal with outside forces trying to bring his past back to haunt him.  This was, I believe, the first Stepfather film I saw (the first one I remember seeing, at any rate), and I enjoyed it alot.

Stepfather III sees the same character played by a different actor, Robert Wightman (explained as him receiving plastic surgery to alter his looks).  This time, he poses as Keith Grant and takes a job at a plant nursery.  Wooing another woman with a son, Grant soon marries her but things go downhill quickly for him again as his new stepson starts trying to look into his past.  After deciding to just move on to another woman, Grant’s life becomes even more complicated when his current wife and the woman he’s wooing for his next marriage become friends.

That’s the last of the original run of films, but there’s a new one in the works!  That’s right, Dylan Walsh is set to take over the role of the Stepfather when the remake rolls out October 16 of 2009.  Only time will tell if this new film can stand up to the original run, but I think it’s looking pretty good.  And so, until next time, when we bring you Zombie, this is Red Hawk signing out!