Deadly Friend

One of director Wes Craven's lesser-known films, 1986's Deadly Friend is the story of Paul Conway (Matthew Laborteaux), a teenager who moves to a new town with his mother Jeannie.  He's studying brain surgery at a local college and seems to know more than the professor, teaching the class at one point.  He's also built BB, a talking, artificially intelligent robot.  When he's not busy doing genius stuff, Paul is making new friends in neighborhood kids Tom and Sam (Kristy Swanson).  Paul and Sam like each other, but their romance never really gets started thanks to Sam's abusive alcoholic father.  When Sam shows up on the Conways' doorstep, bloodied after taking a punch to the nose, both Jeannie and Paul do nothing to stop the abuse. 

Eventually, Sam ends up dead at her father's hands, and BB ends up blown to bits after a Halloween prank goes wrong.  Tom blames himself for BB's demise, as he was the one who handed BB the basketball, which the poor robot then tossed into the yard of the shotgun-wielding neighborhood crazy Elvira Parker (Anne Ramsey).  To redeem himself, he agrees to assist Paul in drugging his mother (apparently saying they were hanging out at Tom's house wasn't a good enough excuse), stealing Sam's body, and implanting BB's microchip into her brain in order to bring her back to life.  Tom is perhaps the truest friend in the history of cinema.  After the surgery is completed, and the zombie/robot Frankenstein monster has been unleashed, Tom actually asks Paul if they're even now.  Paul confirms that they are.

The potential for a good story is there, but it fails for a number of reasons.  First of all, there's really no sense of romance between Paul and Sam, just a feeling that they're good friends.  In fact, Paul seems more upset about BB's "death," hysterically sobbing and wailing, than he does about Sam's demise.  The makeup is laughable, with Swanson sporting blue eye shadow around her eyes to show the audience that she's dead.  Interestingly, she still has a full head of hair following the brain surgery.  Even though he's a marvel of modern science, BB knows only one word - his name; the rest of the time, he splurts gibberish, sounding like a robotic Tasmanian Devil.  Naturally, he speaks almost the entire time he's on screen.

Furthermore, and reportedly due to studio interference, the tone is all over the place; it's a tragic love story with a few Nightmare on Elm Street-lite dream sequences, random comical murders (including a basketball which shatters a woman's head as if it were a bloody piñata), and a baffling final shot which seems to set up a (thankfully, never-realized) sequel.  The tacked-on finale is doubly disappointing because, had it ended a scene earlier, it would have been predictable, but effective.

Ultimately, Deadly Friend's biggest flaw is that it just can't decide what it wants to be.  Is it a warning against the dangers of technology, a sad tale about child abuse, or a hilariously campy cheesefest?  Um... yes?