DEADLY FRIEND
Goofily interesting
I've always wanted to see this flick, because the tragic story at its core appealed to me. You know, where a loved one dies and you can bring her back...but not...quite. It's been done before, but it's a great story, and I'm always game for a new take on it. But I've known for years that it sucked, having yet to read a good review or hear a recommendation. So I picked it up after all these years.
What this film's about is a teenage cyber-genius who has a pet robot named BB. He moves into a new neighborhood and befriends Sam, the abused girl next door, played by young superbabe Kristy Swanson. Soon enough, the girl's killed by her father, and BB is shot to hell by a crazy lady. So the genius kid plants BB's microchip brain into Sam's head, and...guess what.
On the surface, this is a dumb-as-shit effort from Wes Craven which fails to benefit from his strengths, apparently because he chose not to implement them, for some reason. But there's a lot of goofy, fascinating stuff in this movie which made it appeal to me on some silly, Double Team kind of level.
Firstoff, we've got the whole "Afterschool Special" atmosphere of the film. It even looks like one. Hell, if it weren't for a couple of moments of grue (including one of the more memorable exploding heads I've seen) and a gratuitous "Fuck you", this could have been one.
Then there's the notion that this guy has a remote control for RoboSam. Yes, he can shut her off, turn her on, the whole nine yards. If she gets to be trouble, he just clicks her off. And then there's Swanson's performance as the hapless, undead teenager. She's really all over the map here, providing us with some excellent, interesting moments (like her reaction when the guy leaves her in a room, closing the door behind him...she keeps moving her head to keep him in sight as long as she can), and some awfully silly ones (when she's taking revenge against her father, she walks in this hilariously awful jerk that reminds one of a particularly numbskulled Frankenstein parody). And even though she dies, gets zipped up in a bag, has her head cut into, and goes around the neighborhood having her, uh, adventures, not once does a single hair fall out of place.
Also fun is something that seems more appropriate to be aimed at kids than at the teenagers this film is targeted at - the crazy lady with the shotgun. Come on guys, don't you remember the one person on your street where if you lost your frisbee/basketball/little sister in her yard, you'd just cut your losses and call it a day? This movie's got that lady, and she's used marvelously. She's also the crazy lady on the block with the shotgun. (on my street, they were two different people) You can almost say the "GET OFF MY PROPERTY!!!"'s as they're being said.
This isn't a frightening, suspenseful, smart or even particularly well-made movie, but it's an interesting one with a number of good moments. Not to be seen with expectations of any kind.