Masterful Cinema

Tells a fascinating and unsettling true story, and does so well, without pretending to have all the answers.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Teenage boy, just relocated to a new town with his single mom to attend the university on scholarship, immediately attracts attention: he's a science genius who has built his own robot, a combination best friend/bodyguard named BB. But there's trouble in the neighborhood: the old lady across the street wields a shotgun, while the scary man next door abuses his daughter. Perplexing thriller from director Wes Craven begins promisingly--sort of like a '70s Disney movie with an attitude--but the tone of the picture starts to falter right about the time the beaten girl has a nightmare in which she stabs her father and his blood squirts her in the face. The second-half of the movie--which, fatally, does not include BB--follows in this schlocky vein (apparently dictated by the studio after the original cut was met with negative test screenings). Genre buffs might enjoy the descent into murder and mayhem and reanimation (it is a horror movie, after all), but the film's early strengths are eventually lost. Talented screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin, adapting Diana Henstell's novel "Friend", must have been heartsick to see this project get away from both himself and Craven. The solid cast gives it a noble try but can't salvage the wreckage. *1/2 from ****

Campy low point for writer/director Wes Craven with this teenage version of Frankenstein. I do respect Craven, but when a teenage boy genius decides to resurrect his neighborhood friend, Kristy Swanson, after she's killed by her abusive father using his knowledge of robotics, the film is amazingly silly. I'm really not sure how a decapitation scene by a roughly thrown basketball can be taken seriously. The casting of Anne Ramsey in a pre-Throw Momma From the Train role makes me wonder if this was intentionally campy, but I'm still not so sure. Craven later found a perfect balance of horror, camp, and black humor with "The People Under the Stairs," but if that was the intent here, it didn't quite come off. Still, I was never bored watching this film and was certainly entertained, which is more than can be said for most horror films.

Wes Craven directed a lot of films in his storied career, and "Deadly Friend" was definitely one of them. Hot on the heels of Craven's previous success with "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "Deadly Friend" was originally intended to be the seasoned horror director's break away from genre conventions. Conceived as a teen coming-of-age story with a sci-fi twist, the film quickly spun out of control when it was decided by the studio that it needed more scenes of graphic violence and surreal dream sequences in the same vein as "Elm Street," culminating in an ending so stupid, it could only have been dreamed up by a braindead studio exec (spoiler alert: it was).Paul (Matthew Laborteaux), a young genius with a penchant for neural science, is the new kid in town. Together with his single mother (Anne Twomey) and his robot companion (the scene stealing, anti-R2- D2, BB), he adapts quickly to life in his new town, drawing the ire of some really dull bullies, making friends with a spaz (Michael Sharrett) and sparking up a potential romance with the lovely girl next door, (Kristy Swanson). His luck soon takes a turn for the worse as his best friend is terminated at the hands of Mama Fratelli from "The Goonies," while an unfortunate accident similarly leaves his prospects for love in dire straits. When one door closes, another opens, and before long, his young love is resurrected and not quite acting herself, lashing out at her abusive father and playing pickup games of basketball that go a little too far (culminating in the most memorable and laugh-out-loud moment of the entire film).Packed with an oddball sense of humor and some pretty gnarly if not somewhat out of place gore effects, "Deadly Friend" is a film any '80s horror fan should see at least once. While not a high point in Wes Craven's career (the director all but disowned it), it moves with a fine pace and is underlined by a gorgeous score from "Elm Street" composer Charles Bernstein. The leads are likable, the plot is silly and the basketball scene is worth the price of admission alone. It's a heavily compromised film and it shows in the final product, but the seeds of what could have been (and what Joe Bob Briggs sells as "A 'Breakfast Club' version of 'The Bride of Frankenstein' on the back of the DVD) are definitely there. "Deadly Friend" is worth catching up with if only for sheer entertainment value alone.

I remember seeing this on what I think was the Sci-Fi channel a number of years ago. And I couldn't remember the name of the film for the life of me. It wasn't until a number of years later that i did find the film on a site (and this was without the help of IMDb!) Also I was going to get it online but it was too expensive, however when I was looking through DVDs at a pawn store i was desperately looking for this film and i look up and what was staring back at me in the front row? Yup this movie! :D I bought it immediately. Anyway onto the actual film lol...Deadly Friend is originally based on a 1985 novel written by Diana Henstell and was turned in a feature film directed by Wes Craven. It tells the story of a teen boy named Paul who has a friend named BB (he is a yellow robot who talks (sorta). He meets his next door neighbor Samantha who he has a crush on. When Samantha falls down the stairs from her drunk father and dies, Paul decides to put BB's microchip into her brain. Samantha is back alive again but is she still the same? If you like Horror and Science Fiction with interesting story lines, you will like this, and it has one of the most bloodiest deaths with a basketball. lol I give Deadly Friend a 7/10.