After hitting his stride and finding commercial success with A Nightmare On Elm Street, Wes Craven was a busy guy making a string of movies any self-respecting horror fan would go out of their way to see. There were the decent ones like The Serpent And The Rainbow, the mediocrity of Vampire In Brooklyn, and the badness that is our subject today: Deadly Friend.

The opening scene has a thief breaking into a vehicle in order to get some easy cash from the purse sitting on the seat. His efforts are thwarted though by a robotic guardian that ends-up to be the creation of whiz-kid teenager Paul (Matthew Laborteaux). Dubbed “BB” by Paul, it’s been programmed to learn and adapt to its environment, which may come in handy since Paul and his mother are moving to a new town so he can take a scholarship studying the human brain at the local University.

Not long after arriving Paul has befriended Tom (Michael Sharrett), is bullied by the local “greaser” type (and saved by the ball-grabbing BB), and gets a quick crush on neighbouring girl Sam (Kristy Swanson). Things seem to be going pretty good for him in his new locale even though it’s obvious Sam is being abused by her alcoholic father and the fact the paranoid, crotchety old lady across the street really dislikes kids.

He gets a taste of regular teenage life as the group of friends hangout, have fun, and decide to play a prank on their elderly neighbour on Halloween night. Of course, this prank happens to backfire which leads to the first on many unintentionally funny moments as BB is shot-gunned multiple times while Paul looks on in horror from some nearby bushes. As if that wasn’t bad enough for Paul, not too long after Sam ends-up going into a brain dead coma after her father knocks her down the stairs during one of his drunken beatings.

Seeing as he IS a genius and HAS been researching the brain he hits upon an idea to steal a comatose Sam (who’s about to have her life support cut) and plant a microchip in her brain in order to bring her back. Things, of course, backfire and the movie becomes a 80’s teenage version of Frankenstein when Sam does return, looking awful with blank stares and dark circles around her eyes, and is soon dishing out punishment to those that one harmed them – which leads to the famously junky death involving a basketball and a finale that’s generally just a series of poorly staged fight scenes, Swanson uttering “BB” over and over again (which elicits even more unintended chuckles), and a slow-motion finish – not to mention one of the shittiest shock endings you’re likely to see.

Based on a novel entitled “Friend” by Diana Henstell, the reason that this movie just never seems to work is the fact the Craven just seems to be bored with the entire thing. It’s like he just couldn’t be bothered much with the movie (it is one of his “for hire” projects, after all) and that the producers forced him to throw-in a few out-of-place nightmare sequences (Sam’s dream where she stabs her father with a vase and he sprays blood out the spout on her and Paul’s where her now burnt-up dead crawls under his bed sheets) in order to draw in fans of his nightmare-based Elm Street hit. This feeling of general “who cares?” rubs off on the viewer and Bruce Joel Rubin’s ho-hum screenplay doesn’t help.

It’s almost like Rubin wanted to make the story into some sort of demented tragic love story and it just doesn’t work because we never quite get a sense of any feelings between Laborteaux and Swanson’s characters other than being close friends. This theme of “after death love” that Rubin tries to bring to the script would serve him well four years later on his next project; the Demi Moore-Patrick Swayze smash hit Ghost.

While Laborteaux doesn’t really fit the image of teenage genius most people will have in their mind and Anne Ramsey is just doing the same shtick she did a year prior in The Goonies (and would also do in Danny DeVito’s Throw Momma From The Train) the rest of the cast does reasonably well. Swanson comes across as a cute and likeable girl prior being brought back and unfortunately has to act like a retarded zombie for the second half of the movie while Anne Twomey brings a caring and likeable vibe to her role as Paul’s supportive mother. Also, it’s worth noting that comedian Charles Fleischer, who would find success as the voice of our title cartoon hare in 1988’s Who Framed Roger Rabbit, supplies the voice of BB. (Chris Hartley, 10/29/07)

Directed By: Wes Craven.
Written By: Bruce Joel Rubin.

Starring: Matthew Laborteaux, Kristy Swanson, Michael Sharrett, Anne Twomey.

Picture Ratio: 1.66:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: The transfer here is pretty passable as it comes across as a bit too soft on DVD and does have a few moments where the clarity is pretty fuzzy. It still looks better than VHS and cable television would and the transfer is clean, it's just nothing special.

Extras: All we get here is a trailer, which is perfectly fine in my eyes. However, it should be noted that the print included on this disc is the uncut version which expands the basketball scene by a few seconds.

This is available either by itself or as part of the "Twisted Terror Collection" that includes five other Warner horror titles. If you'll recall I riffed on this movie in my Eyes Of A Stranger review but from the looks of things this might be the weakest title included in the set.