Deadly Friend

Kid genius isn't about to let the girl he adores just die, and the obliterated remnants of his cute robot could support him in keeping her alive.

*****/***** (more for my own personal love than content quality)



I hadn’t realized just what Wes Craven endured during the production of his film (a film I also discovered through the reading of some back story he disowned) thanks to an audience screen test and Warner execs, learning of the director’s popularity with horror fans. I didn’t know that Deadly Friend (1986) was intentionally a dark love story and thriller about domestic abuse producing the worst kind of monster: a human father. Also included was a nasty piece of work neighbor who packs a shotgun and isn’t afraid to use it if any unwelcome stranger comes remotely close to her premises. I absolutely wholeheartedly love the film, mainly because it is so tonally deranged.

“Guilty Pleasure” is tossed around all the time, describing the likes of films considered questionably dubious in their quality but nonetheless a pleasure or delight for a certain audience who embrace such product perhaps unintentionally produced as dreck. Tone problems and wacky plot developments can often instead attract instead of repel. But admitting that you like a film considered a bit off the deep end and not particularly embraced by a critical majority seems to earn it the distinction of that guilty pleasure label. Still, I don’t feel the least bit guilty for loving Deadly Friend. Is it batshit crazy? Yep. It is so wonderfully bonkers.wonderfully

It has one of my all-time favorite kills. The infamous basketball exploding head kill. And the recipient of this most wonderfully crazed kill? Anne Ramsey of “Throw Mama from the Train” and “The Goonies” fame…to my generation, she was the essence of the “old, cantankerous, batty shrew”. Her face literally explodes! God, it is great. Now that I know the history behind the production, I can just imagine the sole purpose of the kill was a big “fuck you” to Warners courtesy of Craven. There is a sweet kind of homage to Freddy Krueger during one scene where the film’s science whiz kid (Matthew Labyorteaux of Little House on the Prairie”), a student prodigy at Polytech with a genius knowledge of the brain and robotics, sees the charred face under his covers of the abusive father killed by his zombie daughter (Kristy Swanson).

I love films that pattern their plots after two of the great horror films, Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). The mad scientist genre has had a long rich history, with lots of science fiction and horror (of variable quality) resulting. In Deadly Friend, mad science produces quite the anomaly. A robot named B.B. created by the whiz, Paul, is blown to smithereens by nutty Anne’s shotgun-blasting Elvira (great name!). It’s “A.I. brain chip” is installed into the dead brain of Paul’s crush, Samantha (Swanson, pushed down the stairs by her scumbag pops when he considers her visit to Paul an act of indecency!) after she’s pronounced and taken off life support. Paul thinks this will restore Sam as the chip re-coordinates her brain and reawakens her…yeah, maybe not the greatest of ideas. She kills those who have wronged her (well, B.B does). Elvira, for what she did to B.B, the dad for what he did to Sam, and a biker bully who caused some strife to Paul: all get the rage of B.B. in the undead form of 16-year-old Swanson! Seeing Swanson with pale skin and raccoon eyes, her arms stretched outward in Frankenstein walk, is just another treat to me. It is all quite absurd.

It is done straight. Yes, Craven amazingly directs this with a face so serious and what happens (including the insane ending where a robot emerges from the dead corpse of Swanson!) throughout couldn’t be more zany. That is part of what I find charming about it. Paul drugs his mom, at one point, and coerces his neighbor (the mail boy) to take his security guard (of the local hospital) father’s keys so he can try and return Swanson to life! Yes, you read that right! When you really start to think of what you are watching, it just grows increasingly shocking. Again, part of the charm.

Swanson would go on to Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, and her career has went up and down, but I will always equate her with Deadly Friend. This is the film I grew up with and hold dear to my heart. There's a vulnerability and disorientation to her performance I enjoy. This inability to adapt properly, and all the killing, there's plenty of tragedy Craven gleans from the better mad scientist movies of long ago. Craven's struggle with the production company who made demands and wanted cuts that gutted his vision is heartbreaking if you look at an artist trying to provide his own baby for a viewing audience, but the final product, I have to admit, never fails to entertain me.