Deadly Friend (1986)

(On Cable TV, May 2022) I don’t think I would have believed in Deadly Friend’s existence had I not actually seen it myself. It’s as if a few 1980s movie genres had been thrown in a blender as a dare, and the most remarkable thing about it is that it’s not an ironic retrospective film. This was put together in the mid-1980s, and it would work as a satire… had it been any better. Consider a film that begins as a typical teen science comedy in which a newly-moved protagonist has a robot pal that does silly things. But then (wait for it) the protagonist’s girlfriend is killed by her abusive father and he transplants his robot buddy’s microchip in her head and she revives and turns murderously evil. I’m not sure you saw that coming, right? Suffice to say that Deadly Friend doesn’t work. A look at its production history reveals numerous changes to the film in post-production, an attempt to capitalize on director Wes Craven’s reputation for gory horror, and how the film was shifted from dark SF thriller to outright gory horror – completely ignoring Craven’s attempt to branch outside the genre he’s best known for. Kristy Swanson does just fine as the killer robot girl, but the film itself is a jumbled mess. An object of contemplation more than entertainment, Deadly Friend has largely been forgotten by history… and it’s not hard to understand why.