The Stepfather II (1989)
Directed by Jeff Burr
Somehow forgotten in the world of slasher movies is the movie The Stepfather. I have mentioned before my love for the movie. There exists two sequels and a remake, up until now I have not seen the sequels. Recently Stepfather II was added to Amazon Prime so I was pretty excited to give it a watch. Is it a good sequel to the movie that I am so fond of? Let’s take a look.
The Stepfather II: Make Room for Daddy follows Jerry Blake the insane murderer from the first movie played by Terry O’Quinn, as he escapes from a mental institution (naturally) and finds a new family to make his own. Jerry moves into a nice subdivision in California and changes his name to Dr. Gene Clifford, a psychiatrist that holds sessions with the women in the neighborhood. After a few sessions he ends up pursuing Carol Grayland (Meg Foster), whom he ends up proposing to. Carol has a preteen son named Todd (Jonathan Brandis) whom is also fond of Gene. As the movie goes on, people start dying off, of course in the hands of Gene but he makes each death look like a suicide or accident. Soon Gene and Carol’s relationship strains because of Gene’s temper and everything comes to a climax at their wedding.
The acting is pretty solid, Terry O’Quinn is amazing as always and Meg Foster does a great job as Carol. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw Jonathan Brandis, since I watched the Rodney Dangerfield movie Ladybugs just a month or so ago. Brandis dresses up as a girl to play soccer for Rodney’s boss’s team in order to win a championship. As a kid in this movie he’s not annoying and does a decent job in a small role. All in all, you really can’t complain about the acting in this, it is above average.
The kills are really nothing to write home about (god that’s a weird saying) they’re tame, but with this series you really don’t need graphic kills. Being tame there isn’t much room for special effects or gore really so I can’t comment much about it. One that made me scratch my head was when Gene killed Carol’s ex husband and put him in the trunk of his car. Then Gene takes the car to a junkyard and smashes it up. The next scene shows the junkyard crushing the car. At the time I was confused on why Gene smashed up the car, then I realized he was making it blend in with the other junk vehicles in the junkyard. Gene is a very cunning and intelligent murderer, whom makes efforts to cover his tracks yet keeps the murders simple.
The story is kind of dull to be honest. This is really where the movie lacked to me. The Stepfather character is so interesting that they could have went further with the sequel. It was nice to see a short wrap up and background of the first film and Jerry as a person. This story is just too similar to the first movie, and maybe it is just one of those ideas that you really can’t branch out that far. Jerry is a guy that is obsessed with having the perfect family and he’ll never find it. The plot was too much of the first movie but it is still slightly entertaining, just slower that the first film. Granted watching this I had to stop it and go get my 8 month pregnant wife some ice cream, so it may have went slower for me than you.
All in all I enjoyed this movie, but I much prefer the first installment. Terry O’Quinn is so incredibly underrated as an actor. My lord I mean he can seem so unassuming then a switch hits and he makes you incredibly uncomfortable. That takes great skill for sure. I also found pride in the fact that he was born and raised in Michigan just like myself. The dialogue between any characters not involving O’Quinn is kind of awkward at times and you kind of raise an eyebrow during it. I would give this a B-, it is competent enough to enjoy but doesn’t do anything new from the first film. Brandis isn’t as good as Jill Shoelen from the first movie but his role isn’t as big either.
