I know I'm going to be the bad guy here: 5 inappropriate Father’s Day movies
Father knows dick: The Royal Tenenbaums
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According to no less an authority than the Alamo Drafthouse, “Father's Day has always been a tricky one for film programming.” Rather than take the mawkish route—say with a double-feature of Nothing In Common or the Ted Danson/Jack Lemmon match-made-in-movie-heaven Dad—the Alamo takes a typically ironic approach with tonight’s Father’s Day Feast, featuring Wes Anderson’s ode to paternal dysfunction, The Royal Tenenbaums, which stars Gene Hackman as a neglectful patriarch so tactless and selfish that he [spoiler alert] actually fakes stomach cancer in order to reconnect with his estranged family. If you and your pops can’t make the show, fear not: Decider presents five alternative home-viewing options, each of which is just as awkward and inappropriate.
Chinatown (1974)
John Huston is such a charming, avuncular presence as Noah Cross, you’d hardly guess he’s a murderous, power-crazed megalomaniac intent on seizing the entire San Fernando Valley through nefarious means. Or, maybe you would guess that if you were sly detective J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) in Roman Polanski’s classic neo-noir… but surely you’d never suspect this crinkly-eyed codger had raped his own daughter and given her a sister [slap!], a daughter [slap!], a sister and a daughter—a cycle that seems doomed to repeat itself.
The Shining (1980)
Jack Torrance wasn’t a Father Of The Year candidate even before landing the gig as winter caretaker of the remote Overlook Hotel: As we learn from his perpetual doormat of a wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall), Jack has struggled with the bottle and his temper for many years. Now clean and sober, Jack has vowed never to lay a hand on his young son Danny again, but since Jack Nicholson plays him in full eyebrow-cocked leering mode, can you really trust him? All it takes is a little case of writer’s block to push him over the edge from frustrated family man to axe-wielding maniac. Decider can relate.
The Stepfather (1987)
Long before he landed the role of John Locke on Lost—the father of all “daddy issues” TV shows—Terry O’Quinn played a creepy serial killer with a unique M.O. in this underrated (and sadly unavailable on DVD) thriller. Obsessed with a Father Knows Best vision of domestic bliss, O’Quinn woos and marries a series of widows with children, hoping to find a perfect family of his own. When the latest candidates inevitably disappoint him, he simply butchers them, changes his identity, and moves on. It’s a gruesome solution, true, but it does eliminate the need for any protracted divorce proceedings or custody battles—and isn’t that concern for needlessly tying up the courts worth something?
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992)
For most of his run on the network television incarnation of Twin Peaks, Leland Palmer was a loving father devastated by grief over the loss of his daughter, murdered homecoming queen Laura. Ray Wise gave his tear ducts quite a workout in the role, but it wasn’t until the second season episode where [spoiler alert for a nearly 20-year-old TV show] Leland was revealed as the killer (with an assist from his denim-clad demon Bob) that Wise really got to cut loose and strut his stuff. That goes double for David Lynch’s unfairly maligned prequel, in which Leland’s unduly harsh punishment for sitting down to dinner with unwashed hands is finally revealed.
This Boy’s Life (1993)
Early on in this adaptation of Tobias Wolff‘s acclaimed memoir, Robert De Niro’s Dwight Hansen is more annoying and embarrassing than terrifying—a comically simple-minded man in a Boy Scout uniform, given to hackneyed pronouncements like, “I know a thing or two about a thing or two.” The verbal abuse mounts as Dwight makes himself at home with new wife Caroline (Ellen Barkin) and her son, and before long Dwight is going all Jake LaMotta on teenage Tobias (a wet-behind-the-ears Leonardo DiCaprio). Watch this one with dear old dad and you’ll both soon realize that love means never having to say, “Shut your piehole!”
