Nick Laemle

"There's one dark place we have to be careful in. You know where that is? (Points to his head)"

- Nick trying to reassure his son Michael about the dark and the dangers of it. "We'll have another one, Lilly. We'll bring him up right."

- Nick who attempts to kill Michael after he refuses to eat the human meat and being stabbed in the shoulder.

Nick Laemle is the main antagonist of the 1989 horror-comedy Parents. He was portrayed by Randy Quaid, who also played Elijah C. Skuggs in Freaked and Alameda Slim in Disney's Home on the Range.

Biography
Nick Laemle is a family man, married to his wife Lilly and has a son named Michael, who all live in 1958 Massachusetts. He works as a scientist at the division of Human Testing at Toxico, where he's working on developing a weapon similar to Agent Orange. On the surface, Nick seems like the standard 1950s family man, loving and reasonable. Michael however begins having nightmares, even being a little iffy on the food source. He starts questioning where he gets it and when he starts snooping around, Nick starts to get hostile towards him, even at one point saying that he feels Michael hates him and Nick isn't too fond of him either. Going into Nick's basement and place of work, he learns the truth: Nick is a serial killer who takes the meat for his family to eat as well as keep corpses in his basement. He managed to get Lilly to adapt to eating the meat and is determined to get his son to do the same.

Later on, Michael and his school guidance counselor, Millie Dew, go into the Laemle's house where he shows her proof of his father's crimes. But Nick arrives home, where he kills her by striking her with a golf club, then harvests her for food. After cooking her remains, Nick sets up dinner, but gets attacked by his son with the golf club. He recovers, then ties Michael up, saying they're bound together, no matter what. He unties him and brings him to dinner. He attempts again to feed Michael the human meat, but he once again refuses and responds by stabbing his father in the shoulder. At this point, Nick snaps, then takes him off to kill him. Lilly attempts to stop him by stabbing him in the back, but he manages to kill her. Wounded, Nick chases his son down the basement, where he falls down a flight of stairs. Getting weaker, Nick attempts to grab him but ends up stumbling over gas lines, then into his wine shelf, which falls over and crushes him. Michael then runs out of the house before the gas ignites and blows up the house.

After the events, Michael ends up under the care of his grandparents, who tuck him in for bed, leaving him a meat sandwich, which suspiciously looks like human meat, implying Nick learned his cannibalistic ways from them.