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Deadly Friend (1986) More at IMDbPro »

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20 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
Odd, but good horror from Wes Craven, 24 June 2004
Author: (eddy-28) from Lake Isabella, CA

Deadly Friend should probably be good for fans of cult horror films, and this is nothing like some of Wes Craven's past and present films such as "Nightmare on Elm Street" or "Scream", but it does have a good combination of both the horror classics "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein". However, the script is rather weak and seemed poorly adapted from Diana Henstall's more effect short novel "Friend". Deadly Friend does have some good scares and above all gore and a good solid cast from teen stars Matthew Laborteaux, Michael Sharrett and a young beautiful Kristy Swanson in the title role. Both Russ Marin and Anne Twomey provide a warm feeling to the younger cast and the audiences, while Richard Marcus and Anne Ramsey both, as usual, looking wickedly evil in their roles. Above all, Ramsey's classic decapitation by basketball scene is the highlight of the film. One year before she was seen in Steven Spielberg's "The Goonies", and a year after this she got an Oscar nomination for "Throw Momma from the Train", before dying in 1988. I whould say Deadly Friend gets 8/10, for a classic cult horror favorite.

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14 out of 17 people found the following comment useful :-
The basketball makes the movie, 13 March 2000

Author: obiwan-27 (lckrause@gmail.com) from New England

I love Wes Craven, and will watch anything he writes or directs even if everyone else says it's total crap. Well, DEADLY FRIEND is not total crap, but it might be if it wasn't so damn funny. Starring Kristy Swanson (the original BUFFY) as a girl brought back to life as an android, this film was obviously not meant to be taken too seriously. At least, I hope it wasn't.

The acting and directing here are really not too bad, considering the material they have to work with. The premise is silly, of course, and suffers from the fact that the main character is a child. It's not that children in horror movies are always bad... it's just that if you don't get the mix just right, the movie is going to be either laughable (like DEADLY FRIEND) or really, truly awful.

However, we can forgive the movie its faults for one reason: The Basketball Scene. This one is worth seeing just for that one scene, perhaps the single most creative use of a basketball ever captured on film. I applaud Wes Craven wildly for such an imaginative bit of cinematic violence. If you like cheesy horror movies, you really have to see this.

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10 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
An artificial Kristy Swanson!? Where can I get on of those???, 25 May 2004

Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls

Okay, one of my fellow reviewers here on this site described this film in one marvelous – rather sarcastic – sentence. In fact, it's so well stated that I'm going to steal it for my own review. The premise of Deadly Friend, ladies and gentlemen: `Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy creates lethal cyber-Barbie...'. Deadly Friend introduces Paul, an ultra-intelligent adolescent who build a robot that thinks and handles completely for itself. The robot – B.B – is the purest, most advanced piece of technology ever yet it talks with a peppy, blurry voice. Along with his mother, Paul moves to a new town where he continues his Pointdexter studies and falls in love with his sweet neighbor girl (the yummy Kristy Swanson). The girl is terrorized and eventually killed by her monstrous father, a crazy old woman blows B.B to pieces and Paul snaps. He steals her corpse from the hospital and implants her with B.B's artificial brain. Right from the start, this goes wrong as Kristy avenges her death (and how!). Although the undertone of Deadly Friend is downright comic, there are quite a lot gruesome moments and bloody sequences. The plot is highly unoriginal (actually, some sort of lame Frankenstein-variant), the characters are far from believable and the entire production is perfect to claim Wes Craven is an overrated director. Below average, silly film but with – it has to be said – one of the coolest killings ever! The basketball-decapitation alone is worth at least one viewing of this film.

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6 out of 7 people found the following comment useful :-
A Friend indeed, 4 September 2004

Author: boselecta from england

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

***SPOILERS***

Deadly Friend has received a lot of bad press over the years. It's far from accomplished I agree, but then so are a lot of todays contemporary offerings, which have budgets the size of Mars.

Much was expected from Craven after the success of A Nightmare On Elm Street, it was by no means an easy time for Craven. When you're faced with a $30,000,000 law suit and a marriage on the verge of total disintegration I would imagine it's quite a task to commit yourself 100% to a film which had also adopted a dozen or so wannabe producers, all with their own 'unique' ideas of where Craven should take his next 'blockbuster'. *Sighs heavily*

Despite these interferences Craven, and screenplay writer Bruce Joel Rubin, manage to inject a certain amount of genuine heart and humour in to an otherwise troubled project. Casting was spot on in my opinion, particularly Kristy Swanson, my first ever movie crush!!. Anne (Throw Momma From The Train) Ramsay makes an appearance doing what she does best, looking mean and evil! And Matthew Laborteaux is absolutely perfect as the boy genius. Michael Sharrat lends support as Tom, Pauls friend and partner in crime. Richard Marcus plays the part of Samanthas abusive alcoholic father.

I won't go too much in to the plot but suffice to say DEADLY FRIEND is quite an emotional journey, particularly when Samantha appears as herself for a brief moment, we take her POV during the final moments of the film, where her vision returns to normal and the old Samantha appears to be alive and well, of course BB overrides her, and the final act was a bit of a tear jerker for me, well when I was a kid !!!!

Bottom line; DEADLY FRIEND had it's moments good and bad, it just goes to show what happens when studio bosses think they're film makers, if you can get past these minor discrepancies you'll find a half decent tale of love trying to survive beyond the grave.....

(Whatever happened to Matthew Laborteaux?, highly underrated actor!)

6/10

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10 out of 15 people found the following comment useful :-
An overlooked horror movie from the 80's., 28 January 2003
Author: (craiglappe@accessus.net)

Deadly Friend is not a bad movie. Looks like alot of critics did not like this movie. But why like a movie like scream? Those movies did not make any sense. Deadly friend had some great scenes. The best I would say is when Sam jumps out the window to attack Paul's friend. This movie had some scary moments. I feel it was overlooked by alot of people. Wes Craven makes good horror movies. He did a great job with this movie. It's really worth watching.

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
Mixed Feelings, 9 May 2006

Author: Rochus Meijer from Netherlands

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

My girlfriend told me of a movie she saw when she was little, about a robot who starts killing people. She couldn't remember much of it, but as I searched for it, she kept telling me how much it impressed her... Obviously this is, as with a lot of child's movie memories, a film which is over-romanticized but in actuality less good then you remember... Though after seeing it I was not really impressed, it left me with some mixed feelings..

GOOD FEELINGS: Positive aspects of the film are in my opinion the idea behind it, Kristy Swanson, Wes Craven and the sometimes eerie music score by Charles Bernstein. Not really knowing what to expect, the film's opening of a car thief being stopped by BB (the robot) made me laugh immediately. The movie made me sad in a way, especially when BB gets blown to bits and the scenes with Kristy Swanson in her zombie form, desperately longing for Matthew Laborteaux' love. Wes Craven's signature is all over the film. With some scary dream sequences (I WAS scared when the father squirted blood all over the place while laughing like a madman) and some sets which looked extremely familiar to me (the cellar in which the father dies for instance, did anyone else got flashbacks of A Nightmare on Elmstreet?)

BAD FEELINGS: On the other hand, there were numerous things which I found annoying. A at times very laughable plot, a basketball as a murder weapon and most of all an extremely lousy ending... I've read that Wes Craven wasn't particularly happy with this, wanting another ending and less mindless gore for gore, but the President of Warner Bros. thought differently. Too bad, as it doesn't do ANY good to the movie, which could have been so much more...

CONCLUDING: Mixed feelings... Deadly Friend could have been a real cult classic, but doesn't reach for it in my opinion. Though there are some memorable moments (though the basketball-murder is absolutely ridiculous, I'll probably remember it for the rest of my life) and some good emotional moments (how did I feel for poor Kristy Swanson.) The BB robot is cute and you really feel sorry for Matthew Laborteaux when it gets destroyed, but all this barely saves the movie. Though I do not blame Wes Craven, who probably did everything he could to make the best of it, Deadly Friend is JUST good enough... The ending is a real downer, as it left me with disbelief and almost made me forget all the positive aspects of the film and I think the added gore doesn't add much to it as well... 5,5/10!

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4 out of 4 people found the following comment useful :-
A clever, if dated take on Frankenstein, 21 June 2002
Author: moveefrk from Brooklyn, N.Y.

"Deadly Friend" is one of those horror films that came and went without a trace; but for a die hard horror fanatic like myself, it certainly had it's share of scares, humor, and yes, a surprising human touch.

Matthew Laborteaux (a "Little House on the Prairie" alum) plays Paul; an egghead teen with a robot pal named BB. In the course of the plot, he meets Samantha or "Sam" (Kristy Swanson), an abused, lonely girl who catches the eye of young Paul. Needlessly killed, by her drunk father, Paul vows to make wrongs right, by implanting BB's superchip into Sam's brain....and that my friends, is where the fun (or nightmares) begin.

Sam is confused about her new identity, and is naturally seen as a freak. She proceeds to take it out on the locals (including Anne Ramsey, of "Goonies" fame, with above all things; a basketball!!), who want this abomination to cease from existing. Wes Craven didn't quite score with this outing, even after the phenomenal success of "A Nightmare on Elm Street", but even a flop has it's own merits. Find this little gem, and be sure the lights aren't off!!

Grade: C+

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6 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Better than I thought, 11 June 2003
Author: Krug Stillo (nhargii@hotmail.com) from Wales

DEADLY FRIEND

This Wes Craven effort may seem a little dated in these post-Scream days, but watching it for the first time in years I realised it may have been an overlooked slice of mid-eighties teen-horror cinema. It's stylistically similar with the lesser cherished of Craven's films, such as Summer of Fear, Deadly Blessing and Chiller, but, like these mentioned titles is worth revisiting.

It has the usual Craven touches – kids in jeopardy, nightmares within-the-film that throw you off balance and dysfunctional relationships, but the film is basically about an intellectual who reanimates his girlfriend by placing the microchip brain of his home made android into her dead body leading murderous results. No one can deny the greatness, if extremely absurd, of that exploding head via basketball scene remains.

Bride of Frankenstein and Short Circuit combined may not suite a lot of pallets, but as Wes Craven films go Deadly Friend is definitely not half as bad as the critics claimed at the time of it's initial release.

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7 out of 10 people found the following comment useful :-
In One Word - Outstanding!!, 21 August 2000
Author: ary luiz dalazen jr. (ajr@fortalnet.com.br) from Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil

Deadly Friend is a largely unknown film from acclaimed director Wes Craven, who became famous for movies like The Hills Have Eyes and The Last House on the Left. But if you give a chance to this thriller you will find something very original and scary...very scary!Deadly Friend is a genuinely frightening experience, it has such a great story that catches you from the beginning to the end. First of all, the plot is original and interesting - Deadly Friend isn't just another horror film, it's in parts a love story and in others it works as an old-fashioned gripping thriller that would make Hitchcock or De Palma proud of. Paul is a new kid in town, and he is a genius in computers and robots. He falls in love with the kind, sweet and vulnerable girl next door, Samantha, but everything ends up bad when Samantha's abusive father kills her. The guy freaks out and steals Samantha's body. He uses all his knowledge in machines and computer chips, and achieves to bring her back...as a killer robot!he takes her to his attic but she soon starts to kill the persons who used to humiliate her.

The Cast: the cast is great, terrific performances are delivered by the main actors. Kirsty Swanson is outstanding as Samantha, in the first hour of the film she is so sweet you may fall in love with her, in the last hour she is scary as hell. She is an excellent young star, and in certain ways, she reminds a lot another great young actress, Reese Witherspoon, she has that quality of delivering true-to-life, real performances, and like Reese she has an innocent beauty.Mathew Laborteaux makes a believable character, Paul is a guy who isn't a bad kid, he just is desperate to help the girl he loves but doesn't know how to deal with the consequences of his acts.

The Director: Wes Craven once again hits big time!this is one of his greatest films, but it will be a surprise for his fans because, instead of what they saw in The Hills Have Eyes and in most of Craven's films, Deadly Friend isn't so violent. Of course, you get some blood and guts here, but the deaths are relative low. If you want to see a body count, go rent Hellbound Hellraiser 2. Craven's goal here is that he sustains some kind of genuine suspense during the whole film with mastery, something that just Alfred Hitchcok used to do well.

The Story: in just one word - OUTSTANDING!this is a different, compelling story, it's a gripping tale that mixes such elements like love and horror, it's an appealing and charming material.

If you want to watch something really good, rent this great movie!here you will find suspense, humor, horror and love. It's a great job from great professionals!

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3 out of 3 people found the following comment useful :-
Silly but fun., 16 September 2005
Author: Prolox from Canada

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

WES CRAVEN directed this silly, but somewhat creepy science fiction horror movie, about a love struck teen & genius, who falls for the girl next door, whom unfortunately has an abusive stepfather. When the girl is killed by her step dad, The teen uses the electronic brain that came from his now dead robot friend named Bebe, to bring her back, but as such films in this genre, that deal with dead people coming back to life, the girl is stiff, unemotional & has a nasty tendency to kill people, the best of whom are her abusive father & the miserable old lady who killed the teens robot, that has to be the only person in history of horror movies to have been beheaded by a basketball! I taped this one off TV & have wanted to see it for a while now, none of the reviews in movie reference books seemed to like it, but that's probably because it wasn't some over-hyped, WB casted, CGI filled horror flick. Although this isn't one of Craven's best, it still manages to keep you interested & somewhat creep-ed out about the events happening on screen, the film is a bit slow in the first half, but if you stay with it it gets better. The acting & direction were really good & the characters were well drawn out & interesting, it's only the awful ending that lets this film down, still it's fun for all horror fans & if you're a WES CRAVEN fan. Supposedly however, in the original cut of the film, there was no gore, tests audiences were none to happy with it, so Craven had to go back & re-shoot additional gore footage to keep them satisfied & it is rumored that Wes decided to do the film after being replaced by Director JEFFERY BLOOM for the film FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC, a film Wes was going to direct, but none of the scripts he wrote satisfied studio heads, plus he was short of money at the time.

*** stars

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