DEADLY FRIEND (1986)

Movie Review- `Deadly Friend' milder than most horror flicks

The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution - October 15, 1986

Author: RINGEL, ELEANOR, Eleanor Ringel Film Editor: STAFF

Movie review on "Deadly Friend," a horror spoof starring Matthew Laborteaux and Kristy Swanson, and directed by Wes Craven.

When a horror specialist like Wes ("Nightmare on Elm Street") Craven decides to bury the hatchet and go for cheap laughs, one doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

In the case of "Deadly Friend," a sort of "I Was a Teenage Dr. Frankenstein," disappointment wins out.

In a sense, "Deadly Friend" is a droll inversion of the typical teen slice-and-dice formula. This time, the busty blond cheerleader-type is not the shrieking victim-to-be but the killer. Her name is Samantha (Kristy Swanson) and she could almost be the typical girl-next-door. Only, most girls-next-door aren't quite so pretty and most don't have a drunkenly abusive daddy who, the script hints, isn't blind to his little girl's grown-up charms.

Her charms certainly aren't lost on her new neighbor, Paul (Matthew Laborteaux), who isn't exactly your typical-boy-next-door, either. He's a teenaged scientific genius whose best friend is a robot named BeeBee that he built himself. BeeBee may look like something the Jetsons would own and he may talk in guttural semi-coherent "Gremlins" babble, but he's as super-intelligent as his inventor and a good deal more physical (as in super-strong).

"I developed the basic program and he makes up his mind after that," Paul tells his refreshingly average pal, Tom (Michael Sharrett). "No telling what he's going to do next."

Unfortunately, BeeBee doesn't get the chance to do much of anything next. He's blown to smithereens by the neighborhood crackpot - a cranky old lady with a creaky but effective shotgun. Shortly thereafter, Sam is pushed down the stairs by her dad and ends up on a life-support system, with Daddy ready to pull the plug.

However, Paul has a plan - he'll steal Sam and put BeeBee's brain or microchip or whatever in her skull. The only hitch is, Dad pulls the plug a few minutes early, so there's an eight or nine hour stretch when Sam is flat-out dead. Those few hours beyond the pale wreak havoc on her complexion and her personality. When she comes to, her skin has a greenish glow and she's developed a fetish for purple eye-shadow. More crucially, she's developed a fetish for settling old scores, which isn't goo d news for drunken dads or daffy old ladies.

A few years back, Craven made a really good horror spoof called "Swamp Thing," based on the comic book. "Deadly Friend" is cast in somewhat the same mold, but while "Swamp Thing" was affectionate and unassuming, this film is slickly manipulative and a bit condescending.

It's almost as if Craven were out to prove he can do more with teens than mop up the screen with them. But his good intentions - if that is, indeed, the case - aren't backed by a good script. "Deadly Friend" simply isn't very clever.

Worse, it's backed by a misleading ad campaign that wrongly emphasizes its few scary moments. "Deadly Friend" isn't deadly viewing, but it's nothing that'll give anyone nightmares, on Elm Street or anywhere else. Nor does it intend to. But pulling an audience in with a "Carrie"-ish come-on and handing them some weak jokes about killer-blondes isn't my idea of a good way to build a word-of-mouth audience. It makes about as much sense as trying to pass "Blue Velvet" off as "Still the Beaver."
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WES CRAVEN'S 'DEADLY FRIEND' A CRUSHING BORE IN HORROR GENRE

Times Union, The (Albany, NY) - October 15, 1986

Author: Martin Moynihan, Staff writer

After making the clever horror - movie hit "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and some good television thrillers, director Wes Craven has returned to his roots.

His new movie "Deadly Friend" has some interesting pretensions, but basically it relies on whatever shock value it can find in crushing heads, necks and other human body parts. Not much.

Doing the crushing is a teenage girl named Samantha (Kristy Swnason). She has blonde hair, a nice figure, a pleasant demeanor and a menacing father, but the outstanding thing about her is that she's dead.

The Dr. Frankenstein of this tale is a familiar figure, the teenage scientific genius named Paul (Matthew Laborteaux). Midway through the film, the girl is pronounced brain-dead from a fall down a stairway. Her friend Paul takes an "artificial intelligence" microchip from his broken robot, performs some quick brain surgery on the girl and brings her back to life - sort of.

For a short time, Paul finds himself with a girl he can turn on and off with a remote-control switch. Some science project. You can imagine what this guy scored on his SATs.

But to show he's just a normal teenage kid, Paul spends the rest of the movie in a panic as Samantha starts killing people in the neighborhood who have been unkind to her or Paul. For better or worse, this is the first horror film on record in which a victim is decapitated by a thrown basketball.

One of the ironies is that while Samantha's advanced artificial intelligence keeps getting "smarter," the movie keeps getting dumber. The last shock sequence makes no sense at all, and Craven goes twice to that very shallow well of showing something grotesque, only to reveal that it was "only a dream."

"Deadly Friend" has a far-fetched but workable premise (although, does the genius have to be a teenager?), which director Craven fails to bring to life.

"Deadly Friend" is rated R for extreme violence and vulgar language. * 1/2
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TAKE ONE DEADLY HORROR FILM AND TWO JIGGLE MOVIES AND STAY HOME

Seattle Post-Intelligencer - October 14, 1986

Author: William Arnold P-I Film Critic

It used to be that movie distributors saved their lowest exploitation films for the summer audience. But with the vast number of hungry multiplex screens and an overall glut in exploitation production, the dogs of August now pop up all year long.

This week, for instance, a vacuum in the release schedule has invited a trio of summer-style exploitation pictures to hit town - a horror film, the long-delayed ''Deadly Friend''; and two beach pictures, ''Malibu Bikini Shop'' and ''Hardbodies 2.''

The first of these, Wes Craven's ''Deadly Friend,'' is a fairly routine ''teen-age Frankenstein'' movie reportedly bumped from the summer's schedule because of last-minute exhibitor anxiety over the failure of the previous summer's cycle of teen-age Frankenstein movies.

Based on a book by Diana Henstell, the film is about a teen-age genius (Matthew Laborteaux, of TV's ''Little House on the Prairie'') who implants an artificial-intelligence chip into the cortex of his brain-dead girlfriend.

In true Frankenstein tradition, the girl-monster soon runs amok and, faster than you can say Boris Karloff, is twisting off the head of her abusive, sicko father and doing in the grouchy neighbor who had earlier stolen her basketball.

Under the direction of horror veteran Wes Craven, this film treads the narrow line between satire and playing it straight rather well, and is always technically a cut or two above the level of the average exploitation horror vehicle.

But the film is so predictable and so unremarkable in every way that anyone who thought Craven's ''Nightmare on Elm Street'' heralded the advent of a daring new horror -movie talent will find ''Deadly Friend'' a considerable disappointment.

Over in the next auditorium we have something called ''Malibu Bikini Shop,'' which was filmed in Santa Monica and Venice, and has nothing at all to do with Malibu (the title on the print I saw did not even mention Malibu - it was called ''The Bikini Shop'').

In any case, the film is a jiggle comedy about two odd-couple brothers who inherit a bikini specialty shop that is in rather (you should pardon the word) shaky financial condition, and have to mount a massive bikini promotion to save the place from extinction.

In its heart of hearts, this movie is an old-fashioned late '50s ''nudie'' and exists as an excuse to show topless and scantily clad women in a variety of peekaboo, teasing poses and situations.

But the young cast is surprisingly appealing; the script is never really vulgar. Director David Wechter has worked in a couple of very stylish video- style fantasy sequences. And a good supporting cast of Hollywood veterans (among them Frank Nelson, Kathleen Freeman and Jay Robinson) all help make this innocuous little movie a lot more tolerable than its title and premise might imply.

There are, however, no such redeeming features to ''Hardbodies 2,'' a sequel to last year's ''Hardbodies'' and the second summer T&A movie of the week.

Loosely a comedy about an American movie company filming on location in the Mediterranean, this one is straight, soft-core pornography that goes out of its way to be crude and vulgar every chance it gets.

Like ''Malibu,'' the dominant visual motif is the bare breast, but instead of teasing his audience, director Mark Griffiths absolutely overwhelms it with breast montages.

Indeed, his movie is virtually a documentary on the mammary organ - and one that is so overdone and thoroughly unimaginative that even the most dedicated connoisseurs of skin will probably be bored by it.
Memo: MOVIE REVIEW (1) ** Deadly Friend, directed by Wes Craven. Written by Bruce Joel Rubin. Cast: Matthew Laborteaux, Kristy Swanson, Michael Sharrett. Warner Bros. Several theaters. Rated R. (2) ** Malibu Bikini Beach, directed and written by David Wechter. Cast: Michael David Wright, Bruce Greenwood, Barbra Horan, Jay Robinson, Frank Nelson. International Cinema. Several theaters. Rated R. (3) * Hardbodies 2, directed by Mark Griffiths. Written by Mark Griffiths and Curtis Scott Wilmot. Cast: Brad Zutaut, James Karen, Alba Francesca, Roberta Collins. Cinetel Films. Several theaters. Rated R.
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Disneyesque `Deadly Friend' Craven's latest effort in horror

Houston Chronicle - October 13, 1986

Author: BRUCE WESTBROOK, Staff

Let's see. Director Wes Craven's "Deadly Friend" is "his most terrifying creation" - even counting "A Nightmare on Elm Street." It says so right here in the newspaper ads.

And that is a lot like saying "The Color Purple" is "Steven Spielberg's most spectacular film since "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." It's called misrepresentation based on reputation.

Don't be fooled. Granted, "Deadly Friend" hovers in the horror genre for which Craven is best known (and for which "The Hills Have Eyes" should be his standard, not "Elm Street)." But for "Deadly Friend's" first hour, it isn't a horror film at all.

Instead of shocks and jolts, or even the development of a foreboding mood, Craven tells a low-key, Disneyesque story about clean-cut Paul - an impossibly brainy type played by Matthew Laborteaux - who moves with his single mom into a quaint, handsome neighborhood of two-story houses and white picket fences.

He quickly makes friends with the paper-route boy and with Samantha, the girl next door. She's a sweet but scared blonde (played by Kristy Swanson) who is violently victimized by her crazily possessive father.

Sam sneaks out enough to pal around with Paul and his pet robot, BB, a corny rip-off of the humanized machines in "Short Circuit" and "Star Wars." BB's mechanical mutterings sound like a cross between the latter film's Jawas and R2-D2, and its appearance has the uncomfortably cartoonish anthropomorphism of Disney's dopey droids in "The Black Hole."

Starting with the film's first scene, BB steals the show and actually becomes the focus, even though the robot has no role to play in the story's latter half. By then, the only thing haunting this picture is the promise with which its ads primed the audience. Like the ghost of box-office past, it moans in our minds: "His most ter-ri-fy-ing creation."

Wooooooooo.

Say what?

Except for one sudden, nightmarish nightmare sequence (which has become Craven's forte), there isn't a scare until the latter half. Then, the catalyst is Samantha's brain-dead beating by her dad and a Frankensteinian revival by boy-genius Paul and his magic microchips.

Yes, Sam is alive again - but hardly well. She's also superstrong and remembers enough about her tormentors to wreak gory retribution.

That's a lot of plot to be giving, but the film's selling and buildup demanded some kind of clarification.

So, there you have it: "Deadly Friend" does, in fact, finally turn horrific. And when it does, it delivers a fair dose of the title's deadliness. But the real shock is reconciling that change in tone and style with all that came before.

Craven certainly shows an affinity for Disney - note that he directed the TV film "Crimebusters" for Disney's Sunday series. Perhaps with "Deadly Friend" he simply craved some rare softness and sweetness and wanted to tell a tale with more to it than a body count.

If so, that is a commendable enough ambition, but it's a goal he hasn't achieved yet in a workable whole.
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FILM: SCI-FI, HORROR IN 'DEADLY FRIEND'

Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA) - October 13, 1986

Author: Desmond Ryan, Inquirer Movie Critic

Among the many pleasures afforded by Francis Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married is the way in which a master director takes battered old cliches and time-travel formulas and turns them into something refreshingly original and surprisingly deep.

Wes Craven's muddled Deadly Friend reminds us that such feats of filmmaking are rare indeed. Craven has amassed a considerable following among horror fans, beginning with the repulsive cult favorite The Hills Have Eyes and culminating with the hit A Nightmare on Elm Street. Craven, a veteran of the gore wars that have seen the genre degenerate into a competition to create ever more gruesome death scenes, clearly did some thinking before he chose to make Deadly Friend. That, in itself, is a highly unusual departure for a director in the field.

In the event, he chose to graft a variation on the Frankenstein theme and some standard horror ingredients onto a tried formula from another field - bright kids versus the scientists and authority and an experiment gone wrong. The idea has yielded movies as entertaining and provocative as WarGames and The Manhattan Project - pictures that worked because they were about some pressing technological issue.

The first part of Deadly Friend plays like a halfhearted reprise of Short Circuit with Matthew Laborteaux as a super-bright 15-year-old who is fascinated with artificial intelligence. He has developed his own robot, and his precocity has won him a place beyond his years in a graduate school. Craven's film is a modest pleasantry until he remembers who he is.

His movie promptly turns into I Was a Teenage Brain Surgeon with a clinically specific operation that brought a nauseated groan from many in the audience. Restoring a dead girl to life in this league merely entails shoving what looks like a cheap digital watch into her cranium and sewing up the scalp. Beneath all this is a rather shrewd fantasy for teenage boys about taking absolute control of a girl's body.

Developments thereafter are predictable and of the sort the customers expect from a director who clearly doesn't wish to depart too drastically from his Craven image.

DEADLY FRIEND *

Produced by Robert M. Sherman, directed by Wes Craven, written by Bruce Joel Rubin, photography by Philip Lathrop, music by Charles Bernstein, distributed by Warner Brothers.

Running time: 1 hour, 29 mins.

Paul Conway - Matthew Laborteaux

Samantha - Kristy Swanson

Jeanne Conway - Anne Twomey

Tom - Michael Sharrett

Parent's guide: R (violence)

Showing: At area theaters
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HORROR AND HILARITY

The Record (New Jersey) - October 13, 1986

Author: By Will Joyner, Staff Writer: The Record

MOVIE REVIEW @@ DEADLY FRIEND: Directed by Wes Craven. Written by Bruce Rubin. Photography, Philip Lathrop. With Matthew Laborteaux (Paul Conway), Kristy Swanson (Samantha), Michael Sharrett (Tom), Anne Twomey (Jeanne Conway), and others. Produced by Robert M. Sherman. Released by Warner Bros. Opened Friday locally. Running time: 92 minutes. Rated R: explicit violence, gore.

"Deadly Friend" is a horror movie all right, but the scary stuff's so entwined with nasty, nostalgic humor that even the skittish can have fun watching it.

Director Wes Craven, who made the gore classic "A Nightmare on Elm Street," has eased up a bit to poke fun at the old-time Hardy Boys brand of small-town hijinks and at two contemporary genres computer-whiz adventure and social-issue docudrama.

When 15-year-old Paul Conway (Matthew Laborteaux of "Little House on the Prairie") and his mom (Anne Twomey) move into town, they at first find a Norman Rockwell tableau: leafy streets, quaint houses, a spunky paperboy named Tom (Michael Sharrett).

But Samantha (Kristy Swanson), the girl next door, has bruises all over her body. It doesn't take long to learn that her bug-eyed, beer-besotted father (Richard Marcus) beats her, and that she refuses to squeal. ("Sometimes I want to roll a truck over his face, but he's still my father," she explains.)

The real weirdo in "Deadly Friend," though, turns out to be Paul himself, a genius doing artificial-intelligence research at the local university. When, in quick succession, his pet robot Bee Bee gets blown away by an eccentric old lady (Anne Ramsey) and Samantha is killed by her dad, the geek goes haywire.

With the incredulous (and hilarious) help of Tom, he steals Samantha's body and brings her back to life by implanting Bee Bee's old circuitry in her brain. Needless to say, she has revenge on her modified mind, and Paul can't keep her in the attic.

There's a tawdry, TV-land feel to "Deadly Friend," but it works to the movie's advantage. Paul's mother is a latter-day Donna Reed, the houses are straight out of "Ozzie and Harriet," and there are intentional references to "Bewitched" (like Elizabeth Montgomery, this Samantha is called "Sam"). We're suckered into thinking that we're watching one of those comfortable old sitcoms and then arrrgghh!! see this cheerleader of a Frankenstein do her ghastly routine.

The ghastly part does draw too much blood, but Craven almost always cleans up his act with a humorous touch including death by basketball. The straight scenes are poorly edited, but it's all patched together by the fact that the entire cast strikes the right note of innocence gone awry.

For all its exploitative trappings, "Deadly Friend" somehow turns so many tables so quickly the most appealing characters take turns being plenty unappealing that you're left feeling sympathy for just about everybody. These days, that's not such a horrible thing to say about a horror movie.