Happy Father's Day! - Stepfather 2

 No one can just present pure rage out of a boil like Terry O'Quinn. Whatever his name is persona to persona, O'Quinn's always going to eventually lose control, have an outburst in his workshop, explode out of this barely contained facade of All American Dad with the White Picket Fence ("Should've bought American, Phil."), and kill folks who stand in his way of some ridiculous notion of the American Dream (including the family who just can't be perfect enough).

O'Quinn is celebrated for these performances because he's able to give you all the fully realized performance theater of a psychopath unable to hold in who he really is. Hilariously "Gene" is a family therapist, inspired by the hospital shrink who trusted him ignorantly at Puget Sound before O'Quinn sticks him with a hidden spike in a painted model man. Take from experiences, apply them to a new persona, cultivate that persona, and try to "get it right this time". And, of course, that persona is always shattered. Matty (Caroline Williams) is a nosy postal worker who is worried that her friend (Meg Foster) has met someone sinister, not exactly the psychiatrist he claims to be. That "personality quirk" has Matty always going folks on her route's mail. Including Gene's. Or the ex-husband (that guy from HBO's Not Necessarily the News) dentist returning to patch up a bad marriage after leaving her for his hygienist. They have to be dealt with.

Poor Jeff Burr never really had much of a chance to define his own career with that one great film, unless you count "From a Whisper to a Scream" (which has some really nasty characters and results in the anthology stories). He was always the "sequel man". He always tells us of studio/production interference. Rarely does he seem to get a film that isn't tinkered with. I don't hate his work here. He has a damned good actor in the lead, and Williams as the interfering friend ("Don't struggle, and this will be a lot easier.") has the naughty bit of humor I enjoy. She just comes across someone devious and too dangerous to provoke. Burr's finale where before a wedding everything goes horribly wrong is what I would often see in "horror gore clip shows"...great stuff. The stepfather goes down in inspired fashion, just as violent as the previous film. O'Quinn remains the strength even as the sequel is rather been there, done that.

Jonathan Brandis killed himself the year of my daughter's birth, so I got to tell her a bit about him while watching the film, including SeaQuest DSV. The film really lets us sympathize with the boy, since he seems to be aching for a dad. A bit different than Schoelen, who rejects him outright. Camptown Races, a blind man who hears Gene, a bottle of champagne, and the wedding arrangements Gene wants to continue despite "Matty's suicide"; Burr really lets the maniac loose at the end! This is my preferred poster to the one you see on Wikipedia...they used to do some great ones, even for the many slasher sequels.