FATHER'S DAY WITH THE HORROR DADS

The Horror Dads have convened yet again, and for the second year, in honor of perhaps the Most Important Day of the year coming up this Sunday, we’re weighing in on a subject near and dear to our black hearts-- what makes a really bad dad in the world of horror? Here’s Richard:

In preparation for Father’s Day this year, let’s talk about one of horror’s key motifs: Bad Dads. Some bad dads are born that way, some achieve badness; still others have badness thrust upon them. I guess the poster child for the bad dads of horror is Jack Nicholson in The Shining (1980), who starts off as a troubled but basically decent father and winds up doing some very dodgy parenting indeed.

This conversation gets good, and very quickly, so I encourage you to jump in a dig it all over at the home of the Horror Dads, TCMs fantastic blog, Movie Morlocks. We’ve done the Horror Dads roundtables for several years now, and I always find it an honor to be included in the august company of such smart, loving and sca-a-a-a-ry dads. But this one might just be the best Horror Dads roundtable yet, and the credit for that is due mostly to Richard Harland Smith, who manages to rope us all in from wherever the hell and whatever the hell we’re occupied with and get us talking, and then putting it together in a way that makes us all look good. (Well, maybe not me. Or Greg.) Thanks, Richard, for another outstanding effort.

And happy Father’s Day to all you horror dads, and the musical dads, and the film noir dads, and the western dads, and the costume drama dads—Well, you get it. Happy Father’s Day!