Searching high and low for a trustworthy baby-sitter to take care of your precious toddlers while you`re otherwise occupied?
Check the references of those prospective job hunters carefully. That`s the lesson to be gleaned from ”The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” the hit thriller just released on home video.
The steamy shocker stars Rebecca de Mornay as Peyton, a treacherous young woman who harbors revenge in her twisted mind toward the asthmatic young mother (Annabella Sciorra) that she believes caused the suicide of her husband, an unscrupulous doctor who was more than a little bent himself.
Posing as a loving nanny for the family`s two youngsters, Peyton rapidly worms her way into everyone`s confidence.
In short order, she frames the brood`s loveable handyman for molesting the couple`s older daughter, surreptitiously nurses the couple`s newborn baby during the wee hours, and makes goo-goo eyes at the household`s yuppie breadwinner. And that`s before the violence begins.
Peyton has some serious competition in the scary 1980 made-for-TV ”The Babysitter.”
As an errie 18-year-old waif who seemingly materializes out of thin air to care for a dysfunctional family headed by an alcoholic mom (Patty Duke) and a workaholic dad (William Shatner), Stephanie Zimbalist is suitably creepy.
Masterfully playing the troubled parents against one another and their 12-year-old daghter against both, Zimbalist wreaks havoc at the family`s picturesque Pacific Coast island residence until a creaky old doctor deduces that this is one baby-sitter who leaves no unsatisfactory references behind.
Psycho nannies aren`t always so deadly. When a burned-out mom leaves nubile teenager Christina Applegate and her four young siblings behind for a two-month Australian soiree, she hires a grizzled old hag with a foghorn voice to look after the family in the 1991 comedy ”Don`t Tell Mom the Babysitter`s Dead.”
After instituting a set of house rules reminiscent of a Marine boot camp, the sitter mercifully keels over and the liberated crew drops her corpse off on the doorstep of the neighboorhood funeral home. Applegate scams her way into an executive post at a fashion design house and singlehandedly saves the firm from ruin.
Pressed into service as a sitter when his snobby North Shore relatives leave town unexpectedly ”Uncle Buck” is a big likable lug who wins over the household`s two younger members instantly (including a pre-”Home Alone”
Macaulay Culkin), but takes considerably longer to impress his snotty teenage niece.
John Candy`s winning portrayal of Uncle Buck made the 1989 comedy a smash, and writer/director John Hughes uses a few Chicago exteriors (Buck lives across from Wrigley Field) and some familiar local faces, including Amy Madigan as Buck`s long-suffering girlfriend and Laurie Metcalf as a horny neighbor.
A mysterious nanny is dispatched to a wealthy household to keep a protective evil eye on cherubic 5 year-old Damien, who turns out to be the offspring of old Beelzebub himself in ”The Omen,” a 1976 chiller.
As the child`s aristocratic parents (Gregory Peck and Lee Remick) delude themselves into thinking everything`s peachy keen, one violent death after another strikes.
Although it isn`t currently available on home video, it`s worth checking out the cable listings to catch ”The Nanny,” a 1965 British drama that casts the formidable Bette Davis as the mysterious title character. The mentally disturbed lad she`s hired to kep track realizes something is amiss, but his warnings go unheeded.
Susan George betrays her adorable little charge in ”Venom,” a 1982 British thriller that finds a deadly black mamba snake thwarting the plans of a gang of kidnappers (including a creepy Klaus Kinski and a raging Oliver Reed). The traitorous George is bitten by the poisonous reptile and suffers a hideous death.
Everybody`s missing a few screws in ”The Baby” (1974). A grotesquely overprotective mother (Ruth Roman) imprisons her drooling teenage son in a playpen, only to see a wacko social worker (Anjanette Comer) take an unnatural interest in the kid.
Naturally, Roman and her two sleazy daughters aren`t too happy when Comer kidnaps their human pet and takes over as his surrogate mom.
But Comer isn`t about to let them retrieve him without a fight, and she fiercely battles the evil triumverate to the last diaper pin.
