The fine line of Stepfather films are underrated classics of the 1980’s horror film genre. The Stepfather is about a deranged knife wielding serial killer whose real name we never know as he’s been changing identities for an unknown series of years. However, some fans refer to him as Scary Jerry. He starts out in the first film as Henry Morrison and then Jerry Blake for the rest of the movie. Jerry has extremely old fashioned notions about the quintessential nuclear family. He is obsessed with moral perfection. This is quite ironic coming from a guy who has no issue with killing people he professes to love or anyone who gets in his way!
Jerry’s shtick is to woo vulnerable single mothers needy for love and a father figure for their kids. The love is clearly fake as evidenced by his blank expression when having sex with the ladies. In the second film he even rants about how he had sex with her as if it was a chore for him. Inevitably nobody can live up to his 1950’s style TV family and at that point he begins the process of setting up a new identity in another town. Once that is in place he kills his current family and begins the process of finding a new one to invade. At the end of the first two films he is seemingly killed by his family but then pops up for the next movie. He’s very resistant to knife and even bullet wounds! Although, he finally meets his maker in part 3 via wood shredder. There’s no surviving that! Plausibly they could have done a part 4 where he came back as a poltergeist who haunts single mother families!
An interesting story line for sequels would have been him marring into a family where one of the children was a troubled foster child. Perhaps a young serial killer in the making who lived in a fantasy world of the perfect family. Jerry develops a true kinship with the child and is conflicted after killing the rest of the family. The foster child then calls Jerry “dad” amid the bloody carnage and wants to go with him to insinuate into the next family. They go on an identity changing odyssey together as the child aids in the murdering of immoral families. Plausibly When Jerry dies his adopted child takes on his murderous legacy as The Stepfather of the future.
Along the way Jerry reveals the secrets of his tormented childhood that made him into a serial killer. Perhaps his father was strict yet loving at the center of a supposedly happy family until he died when Jerry was barely five years old. Maybe his memories are revisionist fantasies since he only has sparse recollections of his dad. Then an abusive stepfather with loose morals entered the picture making Jerry’s life a living hell! In his teens Jerry finally snaps and kills his stepfather in one of his nutty rages! He even kills his mother who he blames for allowing the stepfather into the house along with her bending to his low morals. Jerry might even blame any siblings if they were treated better than him. However, in all the films the single mothers only have one kid so this might imply that Jerry was an only child as well. You Can Watch The Stepfather Online Here…
