Have you ever suspected — or fantasized — that your parents aren't what they seem? Ten-year-old Michael has. Maybe they're into eating human flesh, or maybe he just walked in on them having sex. Maybe they're committing murder to satiate their bellies, or maybe this is just 1950s California life. This kind of thinking is just normal kid stuff, right? 

Bob Balaban's surreal big-screen directorial debut is an offbeat treatment of one of horror's more unsettling tropes: a secret clan of cannibals trying to win recruits into their way of life. In the tradition of late-80s suburban paranoia tales where the kid protagonist is alternately ignored and gaslit at every turn, Parents twists a layer of intergenerational mistrust around a core of terror wrapped in black humor. Randy Quaid, embodying chaotic suburban normalcy gone rotten as Michael's daddy, was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for his role, but Parents wasn't widely appreciated until decades later, when film writers and academics rediscovered the riches of Reagan-era horror. 

The sealed Vestron VHS release of Parents will run you over $300 on eBay, but you can enjoy this slice of sick horror history on 35mm for just twelve bucks with us. Roger Ebert naysayed the film, mistaking its strength for weakness, wondering "Is this a horror movie? Or a psychological comedy about the secret fears of children?" Perhaps it's both! Or neither. We'll let you be the judge. (TV) 

81 min • Vestron Pictures • 35mm from the American Genre Film Archive

Preceded by: "Fetal Pig Anatomy" (Heather McAdams, 1989) – 7 min – 16mm

This short subject was preserved by the Chicago Film Society with funding from the National FIlm Preservation Foundation