The Stepdaughter

When a Young Beatuful Woman Named Susan Miller Who Throughout Of Her Entire Life Been into Different Foster Homes Years Later When She Was Older She Finds One Day She's Sees a Paper Ad Of a Ranch Working Happy Family And The Wife in The Picture Ad Just Might Be Susan Miller's Birth Mother And Who Sets Out Looking For Her Real Birth Mother And To Get Revenge On Her For She Did By Leaving Her Abandoned After She Was Born. Andrea Roth Plays The Main Title Villian As Susan Miller. i Consider The Stepdaughter a Great Lost Gem Of a Movie.

The problem with this TV movie? It isn't trashy enough! Andrea Roth's portrayal of twisted anti-heroine Susan Heller is the saving grace of this tawdry thriller. She alternates sweetness and villainy well but there are times when she could have hammed it up more. I also found the structure of the film amateur. It starts improbably and little background information is revealed. It is not clear why Susan revisits the horse-ranch until more than half-way through. Little is revealed about Susan's mysterious upbringing, leaving her murderous deeds harder to understand. Another problem was the dour performance by the other daughter who was supposed to represent goodness in contrast to Susan's evilness. She was far from sympathetic, allowing Susan to take centre stage. Not the best of its genre.

This film generates a lot of hate but it's not so bad. It is teribly format and there are so many ananswered qudestions and loose ends but ... it's a made-for-tv movie that has to rein in the blood and gore and doesn't care about things making sense, For example, Susan does say something about her stepfather (not much) but because of the very limited backstory we don't really get why the film called The Stepdaughter. The way she answers questions it's as if she's trying to get caught in lies. But... Andrea Roth is extremly dishy and it's nice to see her runnning around and the ranch setting is really beautiful, so it's not too bad a ride at all.

An unsuspecting family takes in a woman named Susan (Andrea Roth), who claims to have been in a car accident. Of course, the viewers know that Susan has just committed a coldblooded murder. The victim just happens to work on the very ranch that Susan has now "stumbled" upon.

The family has no idea that this woman knows who they are. Only the daughter seems to smell a rat. Mom and dad are oblivious, and junior even goes so far as to take Susan to a cave to show her the bottomless pit he's discovered. No one else knows about it.

This could come in very handy!

THE STEPDAUGHTER is a suspenseful movie, though it's pretty obvious what Susan's up to and why she's picked this particular family. Her state of mind is shown to be... troubled. Especially, since she has a doll that she talks to. A lot! The tension builds well, and Ms. Roth's character is sly and diabolical...

I'd never seen this before. And man was I shocked to see Tommy Gavin's wife Janet and super wow Buck Rogers is in it too!

This way over predictable schlock is really remindful of a Hallmark Channel movie. I mean it is really pretty bad.

The general gist of course is the silly stepdaughter becomes a creepy killer because of whatever background she had as if that's some sort of excuse. In the tradition of the Stepfather series of movies which were also fairly bad.

The movie is full of overused cliches and dumb characters. And the end was really bad and dumb. But at least there were closing words from Buck Rogers.

3/10.