Stepfather III - Vatertag

I get a kick out of these Stepfather movies. One minute the wife is this `Oh I'm so in love with you Henry/Jerry/Bill/Keith etc'. Then the next minute after he snaps she's calling him a seven letter word beginning with a B meaning an illegitimate child. This installment doesn't have Terry O'Quinn and it's not the same without him. The I just wanna be a family man gets a super duper facial make over from an underground plastic surgeon then finds another single mom with child and we're off and running. Not as good as the first two. Robert Wightman just didn't seem to be able to project that Psycho demeanor that Terry O'Quinn was so good at. As many times that the Stepfather had been stabbed, shot, hit over the head etc. you'd think that he would have wised up and said `This time I'm gonna get a girl who doesn't already have a child and try it that way for a change.'

Terry O'Quinn was fantastic as the antagonist in the previous films, he made them entertaining and better than by all rights they should have been.

Having a sequel without him in was just asking for trouble but to Robert Wightman's credit he actually did a good job.

Sadly the film starts off poorly, the very concept of the plastic surgery is quite frankly offensive to the viewers! If you can get past that this is essentially the same film as the previous two and is a passable if much not needed effort.

The one difference here is that our antagonist decides that one family isn't enough and pry's himself into the lives of two while desperately trying to keep them apart.

This is harmless enough stuff but in many ways felt more like a Lifetime original than a Stepfather movie.

The Good:

Strong performance by Robert Wightman

The Bad:

Plastic surgery concept is ridiculous

Keith Grant (Robert Wightman) seems like an ideal choice for a husband. He's the new single man on the block, cheerful, polite, morally sound and employed at a successful neighborhood greenhouse. Unfortunately, Keith is also the same mass murderer played by Terry O'Quinn in the two previous entries. Thanks to the miracle of plastic surgery, the psycho is now a new man (literally) and is free to continue on in his psychotic search for the "perfect" family. He meets, romances and marries a schoolteacher (Priscilla Barnes) with a prodigal, computer-obsessed, wheelchair-bound son (David Tom), who sees right through Keith's facade. And they're not perfect so you know what to expect.

Wightman has his hands full trying to fill in for the wonderful O'Quinn, and comes off more nerdy and weird than psychotic and calculating. That aside, this third entry is acceptable genre fare, with a good supporting cast, realistic characters and some stupid fun with a garden mulch machine.

Score: 4 out of 10

Welcome to Deer View, CA, where police forces don't exist (or people don't ever call them), where locals can go missing without anyone ever looking for them, and where it's still perfectly normal for a young boy to be best friends with an elderly priest! All in all, the ideal spot for the serial killer with the weirdest modus operandi in the history of horror cinema to start over again. Terry O'Quinn didn't want to depict the crazed stepfather for the third time, but the script ingeniously resolves this little complication. During the sinister opening credits - shot through an odd blue filter - we witness how our escaped psycho undergoes clandestine plastic surgery by a clandestine surgeon. You can recognize clandestine surgeons because they smoke whilst operating.

Enter the utterly anti-charismatic Robert Wightman, who assumes the fake identity Keith Grant and rapidly finds fitting victims for his favorite game: courting a single mother and posing as the perfect stepfather for her children; - in this case a psychosomatic crippled boy. And if someone grows suspicious? Well, then stepdaddy murders them with a shovel.

There are two possible ways to look at "Stepfather III". As a lousy and redundant 90s sequel, in which the suspense and creativity of the 1987 semi-classic are replaced by extremely sick and gratuitous gore. Undeniably, the plot is full of holes, the script full of clichés and predictable twists (from the moment we learn the boy's illness is psychosomatic, you just know he will walk at the end. I don't even consider that a spoiler). On the other hand, you could also state it's an unscrupulous and incredibly amusing slasher with all the right ingredients. The latter is how I remember "Stepfather III", for sure! My advice would be to ignore all the dumb things the characters do and say, and just massively enjoy the vile and unhinged murder sequences. The climax, involving an industrial threshing machine, is so tremendously over-the-top I couldn't stop grinning. Try to plastic surgery yourself out of that, ha!

The return of psycho Jerry Blake (Terry O'Quinn) in Stepfather II proved that he was impossible to kill, and sure enough, here he is again, up to his old tricks despite the claw-hammer to the chest he received at the end of Jeff Burr's sequel. Part three also shows 'the stepfather' to be impervious to pain, the killer having plastic surgery to alter his face (and, miraculously, his voice and hairline) all without the need for anaesthetic. With his new look (the character now played by Robert Wightman, who resembles Jim Carrey with a touch of Christian Bale), the killer once again goes looking for the ideal family unit.

This time, the murderous loony - now calling himself Keith Grant - marries divorcee Christine Davis (Priscilla Barnes), once again without the need of a birth certificate or any kind of legal documentation, but her wheelchair-bound amateur detective son Andy (David Tom) isn't convinced of his new stepfather's apparent good intentions. When Christine learns that she cannot have any more children, and Andy goes to stay with his father for the summer, Grant becomes angry that his family is no longer perfect and starts to romance widow Jennifer (Season Hubley) in preparation for his next move. Meanwhile, Andy has been investigating Grant's mysterious past and begins to suspect that his stepfather is a serial killer.

Those familiar with the series' formula will no doubt know how the film will pan out, Grant killing anyone who threatens to spoil his plans, before turning his murderous intentions to Christine; this time around, the deaths are a tad gorier despite this being a made-for-TV movie (Grant uses a bone saw and a rake, and a wood-chipper comes into play at the end), but this is still a very tired three-quel lacking in originality and genuine thrills, and which, at 110 minutes, is at least 20 minutes too long.