| The SF, Horror and Fantasy Film Review |
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| Science-Fiction |
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| Horror |
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| Fantasy |
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AMERICAN GOTHIC
Rating: 
UK/Canada. 1987.
Director/Screenplay – John Hough, Story – Michael Vines & Burt Wetanson, Producers – Chris Harrop & John Quested, Photography – Harvey Harrison, Music – Alan Parker, Special Effects – Allen Benjamin, Production Design – David Hiscox. Production Company – Manor Ground.
Cast:
Sarah Torgov (Cynthia), Rod Steiger (Pa), Yvonne de Carlo (Ma), Janet Wright (Fanny), Michael J. Pollard (Woody), William Hootkins (Teddy), Mark Ericksen (Jeff), Caroline Barclay (Terri), Fiona Hutchinson (Lynn), Mark Lindsay Chapman (Rob), Stephen Shellen (Paul)
Plot: A group of friends head off on holiday together to allow one friend, Cynthia, who has just been released from a psychiatric institution, an opportunity to recover. But their plane develops engine trouble and they are forced to put down on a remote island. There they meet a family headed by a patriarch who insists on ridiculously outmoded moral standards – on saying grace at dinner, that they clean their plates before leaving the table, and that everybody goes to bed at 8:30 pm. He and his wife have three middle-aged offspring who all have the minds of children. The weird family now make the outsiders their playthings, sadistically pursuing and then killing them.
Behind this film there’s a potentially amusing satire on Bible Belt Americana and the viper-tongued words it mouths about ‘family’ values. Indeed the film’s premise and particularly its poster are constructed as a take on Grant Wood’s famous painting American Gothic – that’s the often copied and parodied one with the puritan man with a pitchfork and his wife staring sternly out of the frame.
But the film misses the satiric potential by miles and is witless. The set-up is conducted in a passable way, but when its psychos – a group of giggling, overweight grownups playing at being children – are let loose they are so ludicrous and unthreatening one can no longer take anything in the film seriously. The film has almost been conducted as an opportunity to let its cast go wholly over the top, at which Rod Steiger, a past master when it comes to overacting, at least shows the newcomers in a splendid display of theatrics how real ham acting should be done. The film was a big comedown for British director John Hough who once made the excellent The Legend of Hell House (1973).
Copyright Richard Scheib 1992
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