Deadly Friend (1986)

Directed by Wes Craven [Other horror films: The Last House on the Left (1972), The Hills Have Eyes (1977), Stranger in Our House (1978), Deadly Blessing (1981), Swamp Thing (1982), Invitation to Hell (1984), The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Chiller (1985), The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Shocker (1989), The People Under the Stairs (1991), New Nightmare (1994), Vampire in Brooklyn (1995), Scream (1996), Scream 2 (1997), Scream 3 (2000), Cursed (2005), My Soul to Take (2010), Scream 4 (2011)]

Deadly Friend is a Wes Craven movie I’ve not really heard much about, and after seeing it, I can’t say I’m surprised. It’s not an awful film, though – I just think it’s largely mediocre and will end up a pretty forgettable affair.

Based on a 1985 novel by Diana Henstell titled Friend, the story here deals with an intelligent young man who uses his knowledge in much the same way Frankenstein did back in 1931. Of course, it takes something like forty minutes to get to that point, and I can honestly say I wasn’t sure where the movie was going based off the first third, so there’s that.

Even so, I think I enjoyed the first third more than the rest of the movie – once a character dies and is essentially resurrected, I have to admit that I lost a lot of interest. Part of this is I was sort of hoping the antagonist force would have been the robot BB (in a horror version of Short Circuit), which I thought could have been decent, but the Frankenstein-esque route they took didn’t really do much for me at all.

It’s also worth mentioning that, based on a little reading, that the final product isn’t one that Craven is happy with – he wanted more a supernatural love story, whereas the studio wanted blood, as to match Craven’s previous work (such a A Nightmare on Elm Street), which naturally messed up Craven’s hopes for the film.

That said, I can’t say that I’d have enjoyed a more PG version much more than this one, and in fact, the scene in which a basketball is launched at someone’s head, and said head explodes, is the stand-out scene in the movie to me, especially in the latter portions, when I didn’t care for much that was going on.

To delve into this a little, the main character (Matthew Labyorteaux) brings back to life a friend and potential love interest. He’s depressed, and tries to fix her, and so he does what he can, re-animating her. However, he didn’t seem to have a plan past that point – unless he moves off on his own with his corpse bride locked away in the basement, there was zero chance that others, such as his mother, wouldn’t find out about it. It’s that lack of forward-thinking, especially from what we see as a very intelligent character, that bothered me quite a bit.

Grief hits people differently, to be sure. But if you’re going to bring back someone from the dead, try to have an actual plan to follow if it actually works. Just Jiggy’s advice.

Otherwise, Matthew Labyorteaux (Little House on the Prairie) made for a fine lead. I didn’t care where his story went, but he had a solid performance. Kristy Swanson’s (Swamp Shark, Mimesis Nosferatu, Killer Under the Bed) performance was captivating, at least while she actually had character. Others, such as Michael Sharrett, Russ Marin, and Anne Twomey, failed to make much of an impact.

Really, I think the biggest issue here is that, as decent as I found the beginning (save the annoying robot in the form of BB), I just don’t care where the story goes. There are some okay scenes (such as that basketball one), but it’s just not a movie I found overly enjoyable, nor do I think it’ll really stand out much in my memory.

5.5/10