Who’s your daddy?

If you think that sounds creepy, good. These are two creepy movies. (Unmarked Spoilers)

The Stepfather (1987) is about an unnamed serial killer (Terry O’Quinn)  who’d marry single mothers, only to kill his new family when they inevitably fail to live up to his Leave it to Beaver aspirations. He is currently married to Susan Main (Shelley Hack) and her daughter Stephanie (Jill Schoelen), whose father died a year before the movie’s events. Oh Stephanie, they served the leftover food from your father’s funeral at your mother’s wedding. Prince Hamlet feels your pain.

The film’s highlight is O’Quinn’s performance, as anyone who’s seen this movie will tell you. Not only does he manage to be incredibly creepy, but he’s also really charming. There’s this one scene where he watches a father coming home get warmly greeted by his daughter with tears in the Stepfather’s eyes. I started feeling for him, longing for something that he’ll never have. For a moment, I forgot that he’s a serial killer. Or how demanding such perfection from reality is deeply unhealthy for anyone.

One of the things threatening the Stepfather’s domestic bliss is Jim Ogilvie (Stephen Shellen), the brother of one of the Stepfather’s victims. He will stop at nothing to bring the Stepfather to justice, even with the police telling him they have no leads, which shows you how useless the police are in horror movies because Jim tracks the Stepfather down through amateur crime fighting. 

While making arrangements to start over, the Stepfather would pretend to go to work and then come home at the same time every day. From that, Jim is able to narrow his location down to a so and so mile radius. Then, while searching his sister’s house for clues, Jim discovers a magazine with pages torn out. Pages concerning the top ten places to start a family. From there, he just goes door to door and down the list of everyone that’s been recently married.

Granted, the Stepfather leaving behind the magazine in the first place is sloppy, especially given how meticulously he’s otherwise shown to be. However, that could be justified by how the pressure of being so many people is clearly starting to get to him. One of the most iconic scenes in the movie is him, upon realizing that he said the wrong name, saying, ‘who am I here.’

At the end of the movie, Jim burst in guns blazing, only for him to get killed and tossed aside with no fanfare. The reason that Jim’s killed is in order to emphasize the danger the mother and child are in from the crazy father. It’s a good thing Jim’s not black like Scatman Crothers, or else that would have been kind of racist. 

If you’re ever in a film history class, this movie provides a great example of the male gaze. Towards the end of the film, Stephanie has a shower scene that you can look at in two ways. From a Watsonian perspective, it’s so she doesn’t notice Jim getting killed. From a Doylist perspective, it’s there for fanservice. The camera lingers on her far more than the Stepfather’s shower scene at the beginning of the movie. It’s also jarring because it’s not like there’s any other gratuitous nudity in the rest of the film. All of this shows that I am trying very hard to act like nudity for no reason is something that I don’t love about horror films. I’m sorry, but as you can see, I do have some standards. 

The Stepfather might be one of my favorite horror movies. It tells a good story with good characters and with a nice build. As I said, O’Quinn’s great, but the rest of the cast isn’t too bad themselves. So what’s not to like? Though all of that does beg the question of why you would want to remake a movie done so well the first time?

The Stepfather (2009) sees Michael Harding (Penn Badgley) return home from military school and steadily becomes suspicious of his mom Susan (Sela Ward) ’s new boyfriend, his soon-to-be Stepfather (Dylan Walsh). I’d say that Freud would have some interesting things to say about that, but Micheal actually has a hot girlfriend named Kelly (Amber Heard). No gratuitous shower scene for her. They just settle for sticking Kelly in a bikini or show off her legs in almost every scene she’s in.

Unfortunately for Micheal, his mom is either not that smart or in denial about how much of a bad idea David is. The crazy cat lady from across the street says he looks like the mugshot she saw on the news? You can be forgiven for that. Your ex-husband questions how much you know about this guy after the Stepfather roughly manhandled your youngest son? Well, he does admit what he did was wrong and promises never to do it again, so a second chance isn’t totally out of the question. Finally, your sister Jackie (Paige Turco) points out that the Stepfather inexplicably quit his job as soon as she hands him the W2s that would have verified his past. Yeah, that’s a massive red flag, even without all the other suspicions surrounding this guy.

Speaking of Jackie, it’s funny how she’s always hanging out with Leah (Sherry Stringfield). They are in almost every scene together, carpool together, live together, and say farewell with ‘I love you.’ Writing them off as friends and roommates seems painfully naive, but I still can’t be 100% sure. It’s not like they do anything overtly coupleish like kiss or even hold hands. Though that’s hardly surprising, given the year this movie was made. Or it could be a case of the filmmakers not making it explicit due to playing bury your gays utterly straight.

There are two reasons why I wanted to see this remake. The first was that buzzsaw pendulum scene that was in the trailers. That was so cool. Unfortunately, it’s not in the actual movie, though you can pinpoint when it would have occurred. Though the big reason was Walsh as the Stepfather. Upon seeing his performance in Nip/Tuck, I knew he was going to be perfect as this character.

Walsh’s whole take on the Stepfather is different. In the original, the whole Golly Gee Wilikers thing comes off as the character’s actual personality, while in the remake, it seems more like an act. The remake version is also a far colder individual, not flying into a rage as much as the original. And when he does, it’s in a more subdued manner. Not that any of that’s a bad thing, because if it’s just going to be the same thing, then there’s no point.

Overall, this remake runs a good gamut. In a lot of ways, it tries to differentiate itself from the original. For example, the main character’s a teenage boy instead of a girl, his biological dad is still alive, and Michael has younger siblings. At the same time, several scenes and lines from the original film are recreated, which should please longtime fans.

For some strange reason, this remake is rated PG-13. We can probably chalk the lack of nudity up to that, but the rating is most noticeable in the death scenes. There is almost no blood in this movie, with the Stepfather killing most of his victims through some form of oxygen deprivation. The few times that blood does show up, there should probably be a lot more.

Unlike the original film and its sequels, which all end with the Stepfather dying, here he gets away at the very end. The final scene is him setting his sights on a new mom set to an edgier version of “Happy Together,” which is such a mistake. The irony of juxtaposing the happy original song with a disturbing scene would have been better. Like they do at the beginning of the remake with “Silent Night.”

All in all, this remake wasn’t that bad. In fact, it’s better than I remember it being. Walsh is a worthy successor to O’Quinn, and Badgley, who’d later be quite the crazed romantic (NSFW) himself, turns in a good performance here too. Granted, I’m always going to prefer the original. If only because I enjoy the 1980s horror aesthetic more than the 2000s horror aesthetic.

Oh, and Happy Father’s Day, everyone! If you’re a father or stepfather yourself, I would highly recommend watching these movies today. It could serve as a very passive-aggressive warning against getting on your nerves. Or just make your kid appreciate what a good father you are.