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Poster for The Stepfather
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Released
1987 · FILM

The Stepfather

A charming widower with a murderous past fights to conceal his true identity while courting a grieving mother, only to have his stepdaughter’s growing suspicion threaten both his new family and his sanity.

“He wanted a perfect family in a perfect town. But they couldn't measure up...Neither could the others...”

Directed by
Joseph Ruben
Written by
Carolyn Lefcourt, Brian Garfield
Runtime
89 min
HorrorThriller
Streaming on
  • Prime Video

Synopsis

Henry Morrison, who appears to be a mild-mannered man, has recently committed the murder of his entire family. After assuming a new identity and leaving town, he starts forming a relationship with a widow and her teenage daughter. However, he soon faces increasing difficulty in concealing his true identity and maintaining his grasp on reality.

Credits

Actors
Editor
Production Designer
Director of Photography
Writers
Director

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How many hands made this film

The scale of the collaboration

Principal cast & crew: 23

These are the principals we have on file — the full crew ran to the hundreds. Every film this size was made by far more hands than any credits list ever names.

Why a floor?

This is a minimum, not a total. We only count the credits we’ve captured so far, and coverage is uneven — a blockbuster might show a few hundred names while another of the same size shows a couple dozen. The real crews all ran into the thousands. The number here only grows as full credits are enriched — so we frame it as a floor, never a headcount.

Craft leads on file

Edited by George BowersShot by John LindleyScored by Patrick MorazDesigned by James William Newport

Box Office

1987 · Box office

⚖️ Fell short of break-even — grossed 2.1× its budget

Why 2.5×?

Cinemas keep roughly half of every ticket sold, and a wide release’s marketing often costs about as much again as the film — so a movie needs to gross around 2.5× its production budget just to break even theatrically. It’s a rule of thumb, not the studio’s ledger (home video and streaming come later).

Worldwide gross

$2.5M

Budget$1.2M
Worldwide gross$2.5M
break-even (2.5×)

Also known as

  • Kill, Daddy, Killde
  • El padrastroes
  • Le Beau-pèrefr

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