DEADLY FRIEND (1986)
Collector's Edition Blu-ray
Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: R
Duration: 90 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA Stereo 2.0 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.85:1)
Director: Wes Craven
Cast: Matthew Labyorteaux, Kristy Swanson, Michael Sharrett, Anne Twomey, Richard Marcus, Russ Marin, Jim Ishida, Lee Paul
Wes Craven (Last House on the Left), had made some outstanding terror films, but he was a prolific director but not everything he made was on par with A Nightmare On Elm Street or Scream, and Deadly Friend is one of those lesser entries that you will find peppered throughout his filmography. That's not to say I don't love Deadly Friend though, because like so many other "bad" movies I saw when I young it has that certain magical junk food cinema quality that makes it rewatchable, and thanks to it appearing on cable TV quite a lot in the late-80s early-90s that's exactly what I did, I watched it a ton.
To me this has always felt like a TV movie, it feels sort of cheap and stilted, the acting is spotty, and the special effects are not up to snuff, particularly when you think about this coming directly off the huge success of ANOES - though that Anne Ramsey exploding head gag is a highlight for sure - that's the one thing people always remember about it, 'thats the one with the Goonies lady's head exploding exploding, right?'
At it's heart this is a science gone wrongcaitionary tale along the lines of Bride of Frankenstein with teenage genius Paul Conway (Matthew Laborteaux, Albert from Little House on the Prairie) as the young Dr. Frankenstein of the story. Paul, who has just moved along with his single mom Jeannie (Anne Twomey, Last Rites) into ta new house in a new town, where the teen prodigy has accepted a student-teaching position at the local college under Prof. Dr. Johanson (Russ Marin, The Dark). He makes fast friends with neighborhood paperboy Tom Toomey (Michael Sharrett, Savage Dawn) and his next door neighbor, Samantha Pringle (Kristy Swanson, Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Samantha's abusive alcoholic father Harry (Richard Marcus, The Being), who it is hinted at is also sexually abusing her, keeps her on a short leash, but there are sparks from the start between her and Paul, much to her father's dismay. .
The teen-genius has built a robot named BB (voiced by Charles Fleischer, A Nightmare on Elm Street), which occasionally misbehaves and goes against it's programming, foreshadowing things to come later in the film. The clunky looking robot attracts plenty of attention, both good and bad, with the bad coming by way of a gang of dirt bike riding hooligans and paranoid old lady with a shotgun named Elvira Parker (Anne Ramsey, The Goonies) who loathes trespassers onto her property. Later a Halloween prank on old Elvira goes wrong ending with BB being shotgunned to death. Paul is devastated by it, and it gets worse when Samantha's abusive father shoves her down a flight of stairs resulting in her "accidental" death. Paul in a moment of deep grief steals Samantha's corpse from the morgue and crams BB's CPU into Samantha's cranium, which mad science re-animates her, which of course leads to monstrous unintended consequences, with the BB/Samantha hybrid exacting it's revenge on those who did it/her wrong. I also love that all they did to mark her transformation is to slap some blue eyeshadow around he eyes, light her a bit more moodily, and have her do a few corny robotic gestures!
Craven's film plays things a bit too straight, but the logic is a silly and the science of it all is about as believable as what we saw in Weird Science. Not helping is a wildly shifting tone and an internal logic that is kid-friendly to be kind about it, and it's pretty fucking stupid to be a bit more unkind. It's always felt like a TV movie to me, maybe because I only saw it on TV only for so many years, but it's full of storytelling short cuts and leaps in logic and feels very kid oriented, but then you have murders mixed into it. While it's a hot mess all the way around I do have a bit of a fondness for it that has be coming back to it every few years.
The acting is very stiff and weird, with Swanson's character having these bizarre robotic motions uses her hands like their robotic clamps, it's so dang goofy, and there's a totally cringe moments when Paul and Tom have a brief exchange about the quality of Samantha's tits that always catches me off-guard, it's so out of place in this movie. It's so weird in fact I could easily be convinced that it's why neither actor appears in the extras, they're probably still ashamed! That said I do like the three teen character together onscreen, they're having fun with it, but it's just not a good movie, not even in an 80's weird sort of way.
Having grown up watching Little House on the Prairie I lived that a few of the kids from the series went onto do some horror flicks. Aside from Matthew Labyorteaux doing this dud we had Melissa Sue Anderson in Happy Birthday to Me, a superior film for sure, and I love to imagine that Michael Landin was disappointed in them, though he himself starred in I Was A Teenage Werewolf (1957).
Audio/Video: Deadly Friend (1986) arrives on Blu-ray from Scream Factory with a brand new 2K scan from the interpositive. The grain is nicely resolved for the most part, looking rough in spots, and colors look accurate and well-saturated. Some of the black levels are not as deep as they could be but I think a lot of this goes back to the original cinematography by Philip H. Lathrop (Class Reunion) who mostly worked on TV productions at this time, which might explain the workman like look of the production.
Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 stereo with optional English subtitles. The mix is fine, nothing of note, with well-balanced dialogue and score.
Onto extras, we start off with Hey Sam, Nice Shot – an interview with actress Kristy Swanson, for 9-minutes she discusses her time making the film, including the audition and how the script changed during filming, changing the name from Friend to Deadly Friend and making it more horror than originally intended. She tears up a little bit while remembering Craven who she describes as lovely, incredible and wickedly funny. She also gets into her character and how she could understand the character, working with a mime to do the mechanical robot movements, and acting alongside Labyorteaux and Anne Ramsey, and reshooting Ramsey's iconic death scene, recalling that the special effects guts stuffed the exploding head with cow brains. She even shows off her head cast that they made for the final shot in the film.
The 8-minute Written in Blood – an interview with screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin who talks about getting the call to adapt the Friend novel, obe of his first gigs in Hollywood, and how he was originally gonna turn it down but he received a message from beyond from his late meditation teacher encouraging him to do it. He also talks about what a great guy Craven was and the original script versus the finished film, and how the studio demanded more violence's after a so-so test screening, then demanded they cut it back after seeing it again, to which he says Craven replied that "every frame that we cut is another million dollars lost at the box office".
The 5-min Robots, Ramsey and Revenge – an interview with special makeup effects artist Lance Anderson who talks about the special effects in the film, stating up from there were only about two gags in the film, and how he thought the robot sucked, it was too silly looking. He gets into how they achieved the shocker ending nightmare scene and the Anne Ramsey and what they stuffed the exploding head with, which he says were pig parts which went all over the place and stunk up the set.
The last of the new interviews is the 8-min Samantha’s Symphony – an interview with composer Charles Bernstein who has collaborated with Craven on several films beginning with A Nightmare on Elm Street, with Deadly Friend being their second team-up. He gets into his process and creating the themes, blending acoustic and electronic to strike a balance between the human elements and the robotic, and addressing the crazy ending at the morgue and the end title credits song he created for it.
The disc is buttoned-up with 5-minutes of Trailers in English, Spanish and German, some of which have a nice grindhouse feel to them, plus two minutes worth of TV spots.
The single-disc release arrives in a standard keepcase with a reversible sleeve of artwork featuring the original movie poster and a new illustration from artist Colin Murdoch, which is also featured on the first-run limited edition slipcover.
Special Features:
- NEW! 2K scan of the interpositive
- NEW! Hey Sam, Nice Shot – an interview with actress Kristy Swanson (9 min)
- NEW! Written in Blood – an interview with screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin (8 min)
- NEW! Robots, Ramsey and Revenge – an interview with special makeup effects artist Lance Anderson (5 min)
- NEW! Samantha’s Symphony – an interview with composer Charles Bernstein (8 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (in English, Spanish and German) (5 min)
- TV Spots (1 min)
Deadly Friend (1986) may not be the best of Craven's 80s horror output, but I love it a bunch and find myself revisiting it every couple of years. There's some interesting ideas onscreen, but none of it is particularly fleshed out and it feels a bit slipshod in it's execution, but its got an 80s charm that still hits me in the sweet spot. Kudos to Scream Factory for bringing this to Blu-ray with some cool extras that will appeal to fans of it, if you're a fan this is worth the HD upgrade.
Screenshots from the Scream Factory Blu-ray:
