With The Forest up next regarding backwoods slashers, I
decided (since I will be acquiring this today) to include the sequel to a big
favorite of mine, The Stepfather, The Stepfather II with returning Terry
O’Quinn, Meg Foster, and a young Jonathan Brandis. I've been wanting to write a blog review for this sequel so tonight just might the night to do so.
These definitely weren't slasher pictures, though. The first one in particular is like an anti-slasher--it reverses everything about the subgenre. Terry O'Quinn is very good in these movies. This second one is a huge step down from the original (and there's a 3rd one nobody remembers--it is the abyss).
ReplyDeleteBack when this was in current release, Geraldo Rivera still had his talkshow, and O'Quinn appeared on it alongside a VERY young Danielle Harris (who had just done the underappreciated HALLOWEEN 5), Tony Timpone (from "Fangoria") and Richard Rubenstein. You have to love TV (even Geraldo) when it can put together a cast like that! This was broadcast on regular television, but Geraldo, doing his shock thing, played a clip of a killing from STEPFATHER 2 that had to be cut from the release print in order to get an R-rating. O'Quinn said he didn't approve of the more violent horror movies in general, and didn't really appear in them.
The Stepfather flicks, he argued, were different, and to an extent, he's certainly right. John Emil List, on which they were based, was certainly a real enough fellow. In the context of the horror genre, both of the Stepfathers were a refutation of the slasher movie. The reactionary sentiment in them is placed firmly in the head of O'Quinn's character and clearly presented as diseased and wrong (whereas the slasher formula endorses such sentiment).
I watched the documentary of the movie tonight and director Burr commented that his cut before Miramax and the Weinsteins gained rights to distribute the film wasn't violent at all. They demanded some bloodshed to compete with the market's bloodthirst at that time. Actually, Burr was replaced because he refused to reshoot more violent bits excluded from his cut. So your comments have merit. In the final version, I think O'Quinn's character has psychotic tendencies one might associate with the slasher genre. His "diseased" mind motivates him to rid himself of the family that disappoints him. Anyone that stands in his way at creating the model family he so desires bit the big one as well. What infuriated several of the crew behind the making of the film was the lack of subtlety that was removed in favor of bludgeoning the point home that O'Quinn was a homicidal maniac. Like taking the guy's car. In Burr's cut, the film hints at the car's owner's death through the scarf of the victim slightly sticking out from the trunk door; whereas, in the newer cut, O'Quinn slams the door on the guy's hands. So perhaps the Burr cut may have interested you a bit more.
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