Deadly Friend
Paul Conway has a life full of possibility, moving into a nice neighbourhood in the town of Welling and swiftly making friends with Tom Toomey and Samantha Pringle, about to begin his scholarship at Polytech studying robotics and the human brain who has already built his own autonomous best friend, the robot called BB, a hit with his friends but less so with the local bullying biker gang or grumpy recluse Elvira Parker who lives opposite.
Sam’s life is not so full of opportunities, however, her father an abusive, controlling alcoholic who regularly leaves his daughter with bruises, jealous of her friendships and intolerant of her increasing attempts at independence; pushed down the stairs, Sam is declared brain dead at the hospital, her life support due to be turned off, but teenage prodigy Paul is determined that using control chips from BB he has a way to revive her.
Based on the 1985 science fiction horror novel Friend by Diana Henstall, Deadly Friend was adapted by Bruce Joel Rubin who had previously scripted Brainstorm and would later be one of the co-writers on Deep Impact, directed by A Nightmare on Elm Street’s Wes Craven who hoped to demonstrate that he was capable of making a more sensitive and thoughtful film than the overt horror of his most famous creation.
Elm Street made for the independent New Line, Deadly Friend was made for a major studio, Warners, who initially supported the vision until a test screening largely made of Craven fans rejected the teen-friendly character drama, necessitating significant rewrites and reshoots to up the gore, including a basketball termination to rival the “death by corncob” of Sleepwalkers for infamy and preposterous excess, the result then outraging censors who forced the new edit to be vigorously cut back.
The end result an uneven dog’s dinner of family friendly cutesy robots, teen love and decapitation, experienced former child actor Matthew Laborteux is as good as can be expected as Paul and Michael Sharrett is likeable as Tom, though future original Buffy the Vampire Slayer Kristy Swanson struggles, the script treating Sam as an imbecile and she doing nothing to fight against it, though possibly the missing footage, now lost, might have given her more form, though Throw Momma from the Train’s Anne Ramsey plays satisfyingly to type with gleeful spite.
A lobotomised version of Frankenstein originally released in 1986, the same year as House, Vamp and Short Circuit, Deadly Friend does not stand up to the competition, inconsistent and thoughtless as it unravels, Harrison (Richard Marcus) immediately sober after the death of Sam indicating that it was she who drove him to drink, the police failing to investigate her sudden despite evidence of long term abuse then taking no action after two more violent deaths on the same street, while Paul himself seems to have no plan for his surly cyborg girlfriend other than locking her in the attic.
Deadly Friend will be available on Blu-ray from Arrow Films from Monday 17th November
