It’s Friday…
Ahem…I mean Frightday…
And I have some recommendations for you to enjoy this weekend…
Okay…This Frightday’s theme is…
Crappy Father’s Day!
In 1980…
I watched Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation…
Of Stephen King’s The Shining…
And for the first time…
I discovered a father…
On the big screen…
That instilled the selfsame fear in me…
That my own father did…
Here was a man…
That at the start of the film…
Was utterly consumed by his demons…
And although those demons were already there…
By the film’s climax
He found a whole shit-load of new demons…
When he took a job that brought he and his family…
To a place called…
The Overlook Hotel…
And once there…
His pre-existing demons…
And the ones he found waiting for him…
Within this horrifying hotel’s hallowed halls…
Came together…
To create a culmination of weaponized aggression…
That was assigned the sole purpose…
Of destroying his wife and child…
And as I sat there…
Watching this whole thing unfold…
I came to understand…
That my own father…
Much like the ones in this list of recommendations…
Was a lot like Jack Torrance…
In fact…
This pair of damaged alcoholics…
Were two squares…
Stitched into the same quilt…
And all I could think was…
Man…
I sure am glad that my old man…
Never took a job like this…
In a place like that…
But if he ever does…
I’m locking his ass in Room 237…
And following Dick Hallorann…
Right the fuck outta there.
So, let’s take a chronological look at the best, most frightening, and possibly even unknown to you, Crappy Father’s Day Movies…In the years following The Shining.
Creepshow (1982) – Kinda like the creepy corpse that crawls from his grave in the first segment…This film screams “Father’s Day.” The opening sequence which takes us into the credits by way of the pages of a horror comic…Does so on the bruised backside of Stephen King‘s own son…A damn fine creator of horror, himself…Joe Hill…His heavy-handed, ham-fisted, hater of horror comics of a father, is played by horror icon, Tom Atkins…Who after berating and torturing his son for being…Well…One of us…He kicks this whole film off with that delicious Father’s Day vibe by informing his wife in a condescending tone that his horrible behavior is justified because…”That’s why God made fathers, babe…That’s why God made fathers.” That amazing opening title sequence and the subsequent first segment are more than enough reason for this film to have earned a spot on this list.
The Stepfather (1987) – Terry O’Quinn (Lost) was incredible in his role as the menacing chameleon-like serial killer, Henry Morrison…I mean Jerry Blake…I mean…Wait…Who is he here? After murdering one family, and then changing his identity, and moving on to a new one…This guy has an equally hard time remembering who the fuck he is…This time, he has set his sights on a widow and her teenage daughter, played by then-burgeoning scream queen, Jill Schoelen…As a stepfather…I can tell you that it is an extremely difficult transition to enter a family and take on a parental role…But when you are a serial killer…The transition is probably a whole lot tougher…And folks…I gotta say…This dude is fucking scary…He really is…For years…I had an extremely difficult time accepting him as any other character….Even when he played John Locke in Lost…I remember being like, “Nope…No way! He’s the fucking Stepfather.” That being said…Based on O’Quinn‘s bone-chilling performance alone…This film stands up after over thirty years…And without a doubt…Shines way more brightly than the unnecessary 2009 reboot.
Frailty (2001) – Oh man…I sure do miss me some Bill Paxton…This film marked his directorial debut…And even though he only helmed two films in his lifetime…This dark-as-sackcloth thriller is one of my all-time favorite scary films about religion…And it tells the story of the bizarre relationship between two sons…Fenton (Matt O’Leary) and Adam (Jeremy Sumpter)…And how they deal with their uber-religious, and most likely insane father, played by the aforementioned Paxton…The story plays into the established belief that religious extremism accounts for a shit-ton of life’s problems…But then…Out of left field…The film tosses those beliefs, and many others…Into reality’s wood-chipper…And as the dogmatic chips come flying out the other side…You will find that this film has taken you on a trip…One that will keep you guessing…Keep you uncomfortable…And most of all…Keep you entertained.
28 Weeks Later (2007) – In the follow up to 28 Days Later...We follow two children who have been orphaned by the Rage Virus…And are now being stalked by their infected father…And this film’s Bad Dad is played by none other than Robert Carlyle (Trainspotting)…A cat who doesn’t need the Rage Virus to be totally fucking scary…Jeremy Renner (Hawkeye) and Rose Byrne (Damages)…Were outstanding in the lead roles as the protectors to the aforementioned children…And as they are forced to traverse a re-infected London…Their ragey patriarch is hot on their heels…Now, I’ll admit…This film is not as good as the original…But to be fair…It would be tough for any sequel to beat a taut script by Alex Garland that was brought to life by Danny Boyle…But the most important part for me…Is that this film is different…Different enough that it stands on its own…And when you look at a sequel in that way…Judging it solely based on its own existence…It gives you the opportunity to lose any bias…That’s the mistake we all often make with sequels…We think it’s a comparative study…And it’s just not.
Father’s Day (2011) – In the 80’s…There was a little back room, inside the corner store, down the street from my house…Inside that room, were some slapped-together plywood shelves, filled with a cornucopia of cheese-tastic films from production companies like Paragon Video, Video Treasures, Cannon Films, and Vestron Video…Now let’s get something straight…These were not the best films…And that’s okay…Because these films were the most bizarre, the most outrageous, the bloodiest, the dirtiest, and often times, the funniest movies that I had ever seen…And that is what I loved about Father’s Day from Astron-6…Here’s a film that approaches the process the same way those great heaping buckets of cheese did in the 80’s…There are tons of tongue-in-cheek laughs…The gory practical effects are disgusting…And the nudity and sexual situations would make soft-core Skinemax actors blush…In this film…Steven Kostanski, Adam Brooks, Matthew Kennedy, Conor Sweeney and Jeremy Gillespie…Are the boys that make up Astron-6…And they are paying necessary homage to those uber-cheesy 80’s home videos…And folks…I gotta tell you…They are really onto something here…So…If this Father’s Day…You just so happen to be in the mood for a heaping helping of father-raping…Then this is your film.
The Woman (2011) – This one comes from Lucky McKee…His debut film, May is still one of my favorites…This one is a pseudo sequel to the 2009 film, Offspring…And I have recommended it several times…I will probably recommend it again…Deal with it, fuckers…Pollyanna McIntosh, plays the titular Woman…Reprising her role from Offspring…A role which she reprises for a third time in her 2019 directorial debut, Darlin’…In all three films she plays the role of a feral cannibal woman to perfection…But in this film…Unlike the first film…Rather than abducting locals so she and the rest of her flesh-hungry clan can dine on them…She is the one who gets abducted…For the sick entertainment of the patriarch of the Cleek clan…The Bad Dad in this film…Is played by Sean Bridgers…A performance so good that the character that he portrays…Is quite easy to hate…The country lawyer is already pretty damn abusive to his entire family…Including his wife, played by Angela Bettis (from the aforementioned film, May)…But the abuse they endure is nothing compared to what he does to The Woman…Because his captive is someone he believes he can take full advantage of…Do whatever he wants with…He does just that…But hey.,..Not to worry…You remember the part where I told you she was a feral cannibal? Yep…That’s right…All that hard-to-watch torture and abuse in the second act is a whole lot easier to stomach…When the film becomes an all-out, no-holds-barred, revenge flick in the third and final act.
We Are What We Are (2013) – This film, directed by the amazing Jim Mickle, is a re-imagining, of sorts…Of Jorge Michel Grau‘s 2010 Mexican horror film of the same name…After speaking to Grau…Mickle and his long time writing partner, Nick Damici…Got the green-light to take the story in a new direction…The direction took the tale that they told into the home of an unusual and ritualistically strict family…A family that undergoes a huge cosmic shift…Following the death of their matriarch, due to Kuru disease…One of her daughters is compelled to take on a new role…While the other begins to question these family rituals…Bill Sage (Fender Bender) is outstanding as the terrifyingly reticent, and rigidly domineering patriarch of the Parker clan…And of course, I must mention the incredible performances of both actresses playing the two Parker daughters…Ambyr Childers (You) as Iris…And Julia Garner (Ozark) as Rose…This film made me feel like there was a massive storm that could be heard brewing in the distance the whole time that I was watching it…And when the eye of this storm finally came rumbling across my screen…It nearly blew me away.
Mom and Dad (2017) – Also found in my Crappy Mother’s Day post…This was a blast to watch…Brian Taylor the man behind the high-octane action franchise, Crank…And the man who developed the dark and twisted TV series Happy!…Wrote and directed this pitch-black horror comedy starring Selma Blair as Mom…And turning out a deliciously over-the-top performance that only he could pull off…Nicolas Cage is Dad…And when the weird static starts coming through all of the TV and radio speakers…The sounds that are emitted in this deadly transmission make the listener overwhelmed with the desire to murder their own children…And what makes this one extra freakin’ creepy…Is the calm, methodical, almost matter-of-fact way that the parents behave while trying to complete their task…This Bad Dad is not full-on raging out like the Bad Dad in 28 Weeks Later…He is not a killing machine, hell-bent on killing all of the world’s children either…You see, for this Bad Dad…It’s rather personal…He is focused exclusively on the eradication of his own progeny…And as messed up as it might sound for me to say it…It was a fucking hoot.
The Clovehitch Killer (2018) – In this slow burn serial killer story from director Duncan Skiles…We meet Tyler Burnside, portrayed by Charlie Plummer…He’s the epitome of a good boy…He’s good…He’s polite…He’s respectful…Hell…He’s even a freakin’ boy scout…But as the film progresses down the darkened corridors that dwell within almost every suburban home…Tyler becomes convinced that his own father, and scout master…Is the legendary Clovehitch Killer…A serial killer who had been plaguing their small Kentucky town…For years…Until the murders mysteriously stopped about ten years earlier…I gotta tell you…The multi-faceted performance that Dylan McDermott turned out, as the crappy father in this film, is one of his best…And as Tyler…With the help of his smart and savvy new girlfriend Kassi, played by Madisen Beaty…Begin to uncover the clues that reveal all of the secrets contained within this mystery…Secrets that are even darker, deadlier, and more disturbing than they could have ever imagined.
The Video Store Clerk 