The Joy of Positivity pick of the day is the 1987 Cult Classic The Stepfather

Terry O'Quinn is chilling in a career-best performance as a mass murderer based on real-life family annihilator John List

Director Joseph Ruben and novelist/screenwriter Donald Westlake’s 1987 masterpiece The Stepfather updated Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt for the Reagan era. The life and crimes of John List, the notorious family annihilator, who cold-bloodedly murdered his wife, mother, and three children in 1971, then adopted a new identity, remarried, and remained a free man until an episode of America’s Most Wanted resulted in his arrest and imprisonment, inspired the cult classic.

List was famously a drab, grey, unremarkable man, an accountant with OCD, whose forgettable appearance and personality helped him stay off the radar of law enforcement for nearly two decades. However, the sociopathic chameleon future Lost star Terry O’Quinn plays in a career-defining performance is handsome, confident, and charismatic. He seems too good to be true because he’s a con artist whose grinning, All-American exterior hides a bottomless inner darkness and homicidal need for control.