These city slickers are going to learn what country living entails: blood, sweat, and slaughter!
American Gothic is a 1988 horror film directed by John Hough and starring Rod Steiger, Yvonne De Carlo, Michael J. Pollard, Sarah Torgov, William Hootkins, and Janet Wright.
Following her release from an institution after the accidental drowning death of her baby, Cynthia accompanies her husband Jeff and their friends Rob, Lynn, Paul, and Terri on a weekend getaway. When their seaplane encounters engine trouble, the group is forced to detour to a remote island. Looking for help, they stumble upon a cottage, occupied by the elderly and old-fashioned Ma and Pa and their adult children Fanny, Woody, and Teddy. The horror begins when the group discover just how psychopathic the family is...
"If you don't finish these tropes, you can't be part of the Clean Plate Club!"
- American Gothic Couple: Befitting the film's title, its poster parodies the Grant Wood painting, with Ma and Pa instead of the father and daughter.
- Ax-Crazy: Ma, Pa, and their family.
- Bittersweet Ending: Heavy on the bitter: Cynthia kills the family and avenges her friends, but is Driven to Madness by the whole ordeal, as the last shot shows.
- Death by Irony: After spending the entire film railing against "sinners", Pa angrily renounces God after coming home to find his family dead, seconds before Cynthia kills him with his own shotgun.
- The Dog Bites Back: Cynthia annihilates the family all by herself in the finale.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Pa brutally whips Teddy for molesting Terri's dead body.
- Final Girl: Deconstructed and reconstructed. The meek and emotionally fragile Cynthia does indeed become the last girl left standing, but in her survival she ends up losing her sanity and does a Face–Heel Turn when she joins the murderous family as a full-fledged member. This doesn't stop her from going batshit crazy on the family and becoming a killer herself, reconstructing the trope as she in her madness takes out the family of killers one by one.
- Improvised Weapon: The children kill Lynn by lynching her with a jump rope, while Cynthia utilizes a washtub, a figurine of a knight on a horse, and a pair of knitting needles during her Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
- In the Back: How Cynthia kills Pa.
- I Love the Dead: After killing Terri, Teddy rips her top off to molest the corpse.
- Living Doll Collector: What Fanny calls her "big dollies" are actually the corpses of people her parents have murdered.
- Knight Templar: Ma and Pa don't take kindly to sinners...
- Neck Snap: Teddy kills Terri by shaking her with enough force during a scuffle that he accidentally breaks her neck.
- Psychopathic Man Child: Fanny, Woody, and Teddy are grown adults who were never allowed to grow up mentally and are seriously Ax-Crazy.
- Room Full of Crazy: The cellar, which contains the corpses of other people who have encountered Ma and Pa.
- There Is No God: Pa comes home to find his family dead at Cynthia’s hands. Distraught, he walks outside to have a chat with the Almighty... and he responds in the form of Cynthia with Pa’s own shotgun...Pa: My God... oh, God... I wanna talk to you! Yes, I do! I want you to listen to me. Listen... my family... is dead! And we lived by your teachings... I beat it into ‘em! I taught it to them! And what have you done? You did away with them! Well, I got news for you... I renounce you, God! (sobs) I renounce you, and I give my soul to Satan!
- Tragic Hero: In a way, Cynthia becomes this. While she slaughters the evil family and survives, she is ultimately unable to overcome her mental issues stemming from the death of her baby, as well as the death of her friends. She'll likely stay behind at the old house forever, thinking that the mummified baby Fanny had is her son.
