Deadly Friend (1986)

Deadly Friend

Release Date: 1986

Rating: * * *

By John Engell November 28, 2012
   
There have been more than a few famous robots featured prominently in film. There was R2-D2, Johnny Five, Optimus Prime…
One mechanical man you may not be familiar with is DD (voiced by Charles Fleischer, who is also responsible for giving life to Roger Rabbit), the brainchild of boy genius Paul Conway in Wes Craven’s little seen dramatic horror movie “Deadly Friend.”

Paul (Matthew Labyorteaux), his single mother, and his yellow marvel of artificial intelligence, move to small town USA so Paul can study at the local college.

Paul befriends the paperboy Tom (Michael Sharrett) and falls for Samantha (Kristy Swanson), the pretty, repressed girl next door who is abused by her alcoholic, sexually predatory father Harry.
On the night of October thirty-first, the trio with BB in tow, decide to pull an ill-fated prank on the shotgun carrying crazy across the street (played by Anne Ramsey of “The Goonies”). And after the lamest attempt at mischief in Halloween night history, (Samantha shaving cremes a car in the deserted street and the three juvenile delinquents trespass on said neighbor’s property apparently just to trick or treat), BB is blown to bits by the angry, bullish woman.

As grief stricken Paul attempts to cope with the loss of his best friend, Sam’s dear dad kills her in a drunken, jealous, fit of rage.
Catastrophes come in threes and Paul uses that big brain of his and resolves to steal Sam’s body from the hospital in hopes of reanimating it. After smuggling his love’s lifeless corpse to his garage, he goes all Frankenstein and implants the dead girl with the central computing chip from his destroyed robot. Sam is indeed resurrected, but she has become an abomination, an unnatural hybrid of woman and machine, intent on getting revenge on any who have wronged her or her metallic alter ego.

Long time Craven collaborator Tony Cecere coordinated the film’s stunts, which include a particularly gruesome, if not altogether impossible decapitation (or more appropriately, full on cranial explosion) by basketball. Charles Bernstein reunited with Craven to compose the film’s score.

“Deadly Friend,” like “Deadly Blessing” (see review here on Favorite Scary Movie Reviews) released five years prior, has an over-the-top “shock” ending that characterizes Craven’s early work. By all accounts, Craven loathed the ending of ANOES that the studio allegedly forced upon him, so I would be curious to know whether “Deadly Friend’s” ending was his work or some big-wig’s back-seat directing. 

In 2007 Warner Brothers released a handful of cult classics to dvd for the first time, and packaged them as part of their ‘Twister Terror Collection.’ The set included amongst other titles, “Eyes of a Stranger” featuring the special effects of a young Tom Savini, “Someone’s Watching Me,” John Carpenter’s segue to “Halloween,” and Wes Craven’s “Deadly Friend.”
 
A must see and own for all Craven completists, "Deadly Friend" is a fun and campy example of the master’s low-to-no budget brand of film-making that began with “Last House On the Left” and died with “New Nightmare.”