Wes Craven disowned "Deadly Friend", and in some ways it is like a child nobody wanted: it's dull, listless, uninspired and uninspiring, but can occasionally be quite nasty. It's also hard to follow, and hard to bear with.
The main character is a teenage genius who has an irritating robot following him around called BB. BB constantly mutters unintelligibly like a resentful Jawa. We are introduced to him when he grabs a would-be thief by the throat and almost kills him.
So I guess we're supposed to be scared of BB. I wasn't scared at all. Not only does he not look scary, he doesn't even look capable of harming anyone. "Deadly Friend" came out in the decade that gave us "Terminator" and "Robocop", so evidently they knew how to make robots look scary. The producers allegedly spent $20,000 on this robot. Why didn't they make it scarier?
If the movie had just been about this robot gradually going evil, it would have been ridiculous but it might have at least been entertaining.
Instead, the movie adds a totally ill-advised plot twist where a character dies, and the genius protagonist takes the chip from BB's brain and inserts it into the character's, reviving her.
Let's not waste time pondering how a square piece of plastic jammed into a person's brain matter can do anything other than cause a subdural haemorrhage. You might not be surprised to find, given the logic of stupid movies we've all seen, that this causes the person to be revived... with BB's aggressive personality.
It's rare that I lose engagement with a movie due to how stupid the plot is. Generally screenwriters and actors are skilled enough to cover up ridiculous plot points. Here, they were not, perhaps due to the interference from the studio that caused Craven to disown his film.
The actress who plays the girl, Kristy Swanson, is a skilled actress and you kind of feel bad for her, because no performer on the planet could have made much of such a ridiculous role.
I think all "Deadly Friend" must be remembered for, aside from its ridiculous premise perhaps, is the scene in which Anne Ramsey (the only actress I remembered, and who could forget that face) has her head exploded when the girl-with-the-robot-brain (and robot-strength, apparently) throws a basketball at her so hard that it decimates her skull. That's what I meant about the shocking bit: it's gory enough to give the famous scene from "Scanners" a run for its money, and it seems to come out of nowhere and you don't know what to make of it because it's so bizarrely stupid.
The same can be said for the whole movie.
The main character is a teenage genius who has an irritating robot following him around called BB. BB constantly mutters unintelligibly like a resentful Jawa. We are introduced to him when he grabs a would-be thief by the throat and almost kills him.
So I guess we're supposed to be scared of BB. I wasn't scared at all. Not only does he not look scary, he doesn't even look capable of harming anyone. "Deadly Friend" came out in the decade that gave us "Terminator" and "Robocop", so evidently they knew how to make robots look scary. The producers allegedly spent $20,000 on this robot. Why didn't they make it scarier?
If the movie had just been about this robot gradually going evil, it would have been ridiculous but it might have at least been entertaining.
Instead, the movie adds a totally ill-advised plot twist where a character dies, and the genius protagonist takes the chip from BB's brain and inserts it into the character's, reviving her.
Let's not waste time pondering how a square piece of plastic jammed into a person's brain matter can do anything other than cause a subdural haemorrhage. You might not be surprised to find, given the logic of stupid movies we've all seen, that this causes the person to be revived... with BB's aggressive personality.
It's rare that I lose engagement with a movie due to how stupid the plot is. Generally screenwriters and actors are skilled enough to cover up ridiculous plot points. Here, they were not, perhaps due to the interference from the studio that caused Craven to disown his film.
The actress who plays the girl, Kristy Swanson, is a skilled actress and you kind of feel bad for her, because no performer on the planet could have made much of such a ridiculous role.
I think all "Deadly Friend" must be remembered for, aside from its ridiculous premise perhaps, is the scene in which Anne Ramsey (the only actress I remembered, and who could forget that face) has her head exploded when the girl-with-the-robot-brain (and robot-strength, apparently) throws a basketball at her so hard that it decimates her skull. That's what I meant about the shocking bit: it's gory enough to give the famous scene from "Scanners" a run for its money, and it seems to come out of nowhere and you don't know what to make of it because it's so bizarrely stupid.
The same can be said for the whole movie.