By 1986, Wes Craven had directed several hard-edged horror films (and a porn film under the name Abe Snake) and was coming off a big hit (A Nightmare on Elm Street), so he decided it was time to switch gears and make a PG movie for the whole family. (Technically, he'd already done this with his comic book adaptation Swamp Thing in 1982, but only because the R-rated version with sex, nudity, and more intense violence was sanitized to a PG version for American theaters. The unsanitized version was released internationally, and both versions got a home video release here.) Craven decided to take on Diana Henstell's novel Friend, a sci-fi/romance/Frankenstein homage, but was too busy directing episodes of the '80s Twilight Zone to adapt the screenplay himself. He hired Bruce Joel Rubin for the screenwriting job because he admired Rubin's then-unfilmed Jacob's Ladder screenplay. That movie finally came out in 1990, alongside another Rubin-written film, Ghost. Rubin made Henstell's characters a few years older but didn't veer from Craven's family-friendly instructions.
After Craven's initial family-movie cut was completed, the studio decided to hold a test screening for Wes Craven fans, who were anxiously anticipating the next movie from the guy who made The Last House on the Left, The Hills Have Eyes, Deadly Blessing, and A Nightmare on Elm Street. This was a stupid move. When the Craven fanatics saw Friend, they collectively expressed their extreme disappointment. The studio demanded that Craven turn the film into an R-rated horror movie and add some kills, some gore, and, because nightmares were a big part of Elm Street, some Krueger-esque nightmare sequences. The head of the studio even demanded the ridiculous ending. A pissed-off Craven and Rubin had little choice but to comply, and reshoots ensued. Friend became Deadly Friend.
Hilariously, when Craven presented his new, studio-mandated gore-filled cut to the MPAA, they flipped out and demanded he remove some of the gore to avoid an X rating. Craven had to return to the well for a third time and trim some splatter to get his formerly PG family film back down to an R. Then the damn thing flopped in theaters. The gore scenes were restored to their bloody glory for home video and streaming. So far, searches for Craven's original cut have been unsuccessful.
The version of Deadly Friend we ended up with is exactly the kind of movie that pleased no one at the time of release but had all the makings of a future cult film. Schizophrenic tone? Check. Sassy robot? Check. Cult actors? Check. Doomed teenage romance? Check. Comedic spit take? Check. Pat Benatar poster? Check. Someone getting their head crushed by a basketball? Check. I won't make any kind of case for Deadly Friend being a cinematic masterpiece, but it provides a lot of silly '80s time-capsule fun and the actors do a surprisingly good job of humanizing all the nonsense.
The film begins with Doogie Howser-esque teenage science prodigy Paul (Matthew Labyorteaux, child actor in Little House on the Prairie and A Woman under the Influence and one-time national Pac-Man champion), his single mom Jeannie (Anne Twomey), and the aforementioned sassy robot BB (voiced by Charles Fleischer, who makes all kinds of crazy, wacky robot sounds) moving to a classic '80s suburban neighborhood near the college where Paul will be a 16-year-old grad student and his mother will be working. Paul is a genius at robotics, AI, and brain science, and he built BB from scratch. Paul quickly befriends the 15-year-old neighborhood paperboy Tom (Michael Sharrett), who falls off his bike when he encounters the robot. Paul and Jeannie's next-door neighbor is a pretty and sweet girl-next-door type (she literally lives next door!), Samantha (a pre-MAGA Kristy Swanson). Samantha befriends Paul, Jeannie, and the robot (she already knew Tom), and soon, they're all hanging out at Paul's regularly. The robot joins them for basketball, lawnmowing, and teenage pranks. Everyone's having a good time.
Life would be perfect except for three problems, two relatively minor, one major. First, a gang of biker punk bullies give Paul and Tom the business and start smacking around the robot. BB retaliates by grabbing the leader of the gang's nuts and giving them a robot-strength squeeze. I give an automatic three stars to any movie where a robot grabs somebody's nuts. It's a tough but fair system. Anyway, the gang leader calls off his bros to save his family jewels but vows revenge on the robot. The second problem is neighborhood menace Elvira (the legendary Anne Ramsey). Elvira hates everyone, constantly calls the police, brandishes her shotgun at anyone who gets near her property, and steals our heroes' basketball when it lands in her yard. You best believe she becomes enraged when she takes a gander at the robot. Elvira hates robots just as much as she hates other people.
The final and most serious problem is Samantha's single dad Harry (Richard Marcus). What seems like a live-action Disney movie up to this point gets a lot darker with the introduction of Harry. Harry is an abusive drunk who hits his daughter, won't let her have any friends or boyfriends, and is possibly sexually abusive, too, which is hinted at in the first nightmare sequence. This nightmare is particularly jarring. Up to this point, Deadly Friend has been a light and breezy Disneyfied romp. If the father character was toned way down and turned from an abuser into simply an overly strict dad, this whole cast would've been perfect for a terrible '80s sitcom that would have lasted at least two seasons. Teen prodigy, loving mom, blonde girl next door, goofy friend, sassy robot, crazy neighbor, biker bullies, strict dad. It cries out for a laugh track and a catchy but godawful theme song. The nightmare sequence, however, cranks the tone from family sitcom to menacing psychosexual gorefest without any transition in between.
The silliness and darkness continue to fight it out. After a Halloween prank goes awry, our lovable robot BB gets his ass blasted to smithereens by Elvira's shotgun. Shortly thereafter, Samantha suffers a terrible brain injury when her father shoves her down the stairs and she hits her head. The next day, she's declared brain dead, and her life support will be pulled that night. This sitcom is fucked, son!
Unable to handle Samantha's impending death, Paul concocts a scheme to steal her body and implant BB's microchip in her brain to reanimate her. This kinda works, but it also kinda doesn't. Let's just say a teenage girl with the brain of a sassy robot causes problems for everyone.
This is a ridiculous movie that I can't help but enjoy. I've never been a huge Wes Craven fan, and he's definitely my least favorite among the pantheon of '70s and '80s horror filmmaking greats he's often mentioned with (I'm more of a George Romero, John Carpenter, Joe Dante guy), but he has his moments. The finest moment here is the death-by-basketball scene, which is one of the greatest beheadings/head-squashings I've ever had the pleasure to witness. There's something about decapitations, head smashings, and head explosions that make my heart sing, and a really great one can make my whole week. Between the robot and the basketball death scene, I can forgive this movie's flaws. As I mentioned earlier, the cast does a great job, too. They make you believe these characters are people, which is pretty hard to do with this subject matter. Check this one out. It's a weird time at the movies.
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