As someone who doesn’t have a stepparent, it can be easy to think that nefarious stepmoms and stepdads are a thing of fairy tales and movies. They’re so omnipresent in these narratives that they stop feeling cliche and start feeling normal. In the Best Picture-nominated movie The Holdovers, the leading teen character has a whole arc surrounding his wealthy stepfather pressuring his mom into sending him to a military academy if he gets kicked out of his boarding school. That would be a classic cliche fictional stepdad move, but the cruelty is compounded by the fact that the movie takes place during the Vietnam War. This guy is lowkey trying to get his wife’s son killed, which is so absurdly cruel that it’s shocking how believable it feels in the context of the movie. 

Evil stepfathers aren’t just present in outstanding movies. They also exist in real life, and this one, in particular, is one for the history books.