The Stepfather (1987) on Netflix
A man kills his family, changes his name to Jerry Blake and marries Susan Maine, a widow near Seattle. Her teenage daughter Stephanie is suspicious of her new stepfather.
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- Netflix3.9/5
- IMDb6.7/1021,088 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes88%
Trailer
Plot summary
A man washes blood from himself, changes his appearance and walks out of his house past the bodies of his family. He boards a ferry and drops a suitcase holding his former life into the water. A year later he calls himself Jerry Blake, sells real estate and is married to Susan Maine, a widow in a Seattle suburb. Her sixteen-year-old daughter Stephanie keeps her distance from him, and Susan and the psychiatrist Dr. Bondurant press her to give him a chance. Elsewhere, Jim Ogilvie, whose sister was among the dead, prints a newspaper article about the killings and looks for the man who called himself Henry Morrison. Jerry sees the article at a neighborhood barbecue.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Stepfather (1987)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The film's story came from the crimes of John List, who killed his own family: Carolyn Lefcourt found a newspaper article about the case and brought it to Brian Garfield, and Donald E. Westlake then collaborated with them and based his screenplay on it.
- Director Joseph Ruben said the filmmakers tried to cast a name actor as the killer, but everyone they approached turned it down, uncomfortable with the extreme material and worried about typecasting the way Psycho damaged Anthony Perkins's career.
- Terry O'Quinn, auditioning for Jerry after name actors were ruled out, impressed producers with a scene in which his character folds a newspaper into a paper hat for a little boy; his mimed folding went beyond what the audition process expected.
- Director Joseph Ruben polished the script with writer Donald E. Westlake, adding scenes such as Stephanie spying on Jerry's basement tantrum, and turned an investigating cop into Jim Ogilvie, the brother of one of Jerry's earlier victims, to give him a driven reason to pursue Jerry.
