After escaping the insane asylum in which he was incarcerated, the Stepfather impersonates a marriage counselor and manages to win over a patient and her young son
2 years after “The Stepfather” we got a surprise sequel where we find out he survived and is now locked up.
I was hoping Joseph Ruben would return to direct this sequel but instead we got Jeff Burr who was allegedly contacted to direct the movie before a script was even written. He’s a competent enough Director who actually did a decent job with this film.
Luckily we also get to see Terry O’Quinn return to our screens in a role he plays so well, apparently it was a battle to get him to agree to do this sequel as he didn’t want to be typecast. We also have great additions with the likes of Meg Foster, Caroline Williams and Jonathan Brandis.
Unfortunately as strong as the cast is the story is just weak and full of plot holes that just can’t be ignored, it jumps from one part of the story to the next with no explanation and this creates more questions begging to be answered but they never do.
Ultimately this film is inferior to it’s predecessor but if you can look past all the mistakes then it’s an okay movie that does what you expect it to and could serve as a decent enough film for a Sunday afternoon but in all honesty this release was just totally unnecessary.
“Stepfather II” isn’t a film I’d recommend but if you want to see the story continue you’ve got no choice.
Miscellaneous facts about the film:
Max Reid was considered as a director for this movie.
Several additional moments of gore were filmed after principal shooting on the movie had wrapped. That is because the Weinsteins, after a test screening of the film, complained about the lack of blood and demanded re-shoots. Jeff Burr refused, and another director was hired to do the reshoots. In an interview, Burr commented, “they cut a little bit of [the film] out and they added some badly done blood effects. Badly done, because Terry O’Quinn refused to do it. Really, they were meaningless, so that was irritating.”
The makers of the film originally had Kay Lenz and Season Hubley in mind for the role of Carol. Season Hubley did however, play Jennifer in the next entry in the Stepfather series.
Meg Foster almost wasn’t cast because of her striking light blue eyes.
Brian Austin Green was originally up for the role of Todd.
Terry O’Quinn ad-libbed some of his dialogue.
This film was made in four months.
Carol had a daughter and a dog in an earlier draft of the script.
This film was originally intended as a made-for-video release.
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