Father’s Day: Bad Dads In Fright Films

As Enrique Monteverde, Julio Diaz plays a dad who has done terrible things. He's not only dismissive and emotionally distant, but he's also the dictator that carried out genocide against the indigenous people of your country and may have had the father of your child disappear. He showed the people he killed no mercy and seemingly has no remorse for anything he has done. He doesn't have any redeeming qualities.

In the "Father's Day" segment of George Romero's "Creepshow, lives one of the worst dads in horror. Jon Lormer plays Nathan Grantham, a selfish, rich invalid who bullies and terrorizes his daughter Bedelia. It is implied that he, like Enrique Monteverde, may have had the paramour of his daughter murdered. On a fateful Father's Day, he finally pushes his daughter too far, and she kills him. However, since this is the movie that it is, he comes back for vengeance as a living corpse. So even in death, he still won't let his family members live in peace.

As Frank Parker in this film, Bill Sage forces his female family members to partake in a ritual where they kill and cannibalize other human beings. It is a family tradition but is inherently wrong and made even worse because he has to force his daughters to comply after their mother dies when they don't want to do it. It's an evil act involving your family members in a horrific crime, an action that is taboo in human society. He is one of the worst dads.

Bill Paxton as the Dad in "Frailty" is most disturbing because he presents his delusion as so logical that it is astonishing when the details of his murderous activities are revealed. His belief in his mission to destroy demons plays with the viewer's mind, and Paxton's inherent charm can make you wonder if his actions may be justified in some way. But his actions pass to his children, and it becomes apparent that it is not real. He's a bad dad who doesn't think he's evil, but he is.

"The Shining" is a masterpiece of bad dad cinema. In it, the father, Jack Nicholson, as Jack Torrance, is an abusive alcoholic trying to get his life together. Stephen King famously disagreed with Nicholson and Kubrick's interpretation of the character and the story, but the idea that a malign supernatural force at the Overlook Hotel can use the weakness of Torrance to try and take control of his psychically gifted son rings true for a lot of people. Not the part about the supernatural hotel, but the part where a father who doesn't have the strength to resist anger and temptation is genuine to many whose fathers did something similar. Jack Torrance is one of the most terrifying bad dads.

The brother and sister, Finney and Gwen, have to deal with a serial killer of children on the loose, The Grabber, and their alcoholic and abusive father, Terrance. They have to show a lot of resilience to stand up to their father's temper tantrums when they do everyday things that children do. Terrance gets angry when they make too much noise when he has a hangover, and they can never be sure when something they do will send him into a rage. He's a bad dad because he puts his children, as a single dad, in a constant state of anxiety and fear in the one place where they should feel safe. The children do turn away his attempt to apologize at the end, which shows that they have grown and will need to see something more than an apology to forgive him if they ever could.

"The Changeling" has a good dad and a bad dad. The bad dad is never seen on camera but is the father of the angry spirit in the house that John Russell, played by George C. Scott, moves into. The spirit of a young boy, Joseph Carmichael, who was murdered, wants revenge for what his father, Richard, did to retain the family inheritance. Because young Joseph was sickly, the father murdered him and replaced him with a boy from an orphanage. Yes, that is horrible to do to someone who depends on you to protect them. We can understand the angry son's desire for revenge.

So while Jerry Blake, played by Terry O'Quinn, is technically a stepfather, he does his best to be a father to Jill Schoelen's character Stephanie Maine and a husband to her mother, Susan. His homicidal fantasy is based on having the perfect family and being the ideal dad to a single mother and her children. Jerry is particularly terrifying when he drops the mask of the ideal dad whenever something goes wrong or doesn't go his way. He usually resorts to murdering the person making his attempt to continue his fantasy difficult, which proves that he is far from the best dad.

In many of the films that feature excellent and bad fathers, I have found that there are often good examples of a dad and a bad example of one, and Julia Ducournau's "Titane" is one of those films. While Vincent, the fire captain who lost his son, does everything he can to make Alexia feel welcome and protect her even though she is not his child, Alexia's father is terrible to her. As a young child, Alexia's father, played by director Bertrand Bonello, withholds emotionally from the girl and treats her as a nuisance which causes the traffic accident that injures Alexia. Does that make her a serial killer? Maybe not, but that cruelty puts him in the ranks of bad fathers.