31 Days Of Horror #5: Deadly Friend

The original Lady Ga Ga

  Wes Craven is a fabulous director and a horror icon, creating some of the best horror films in our lifetime. But sometimes he can also bring us disasters such as My Soul To Keep and of course Deadly Friend.

  Deadly Friend is just awful, dark, depressing, and just unpleasant to boot. It also inexplicably is home to one of the best kill scenes in recent horror history, but more on that later.

   We meet uber geek Paul who has just moved to town with his mother. Paul is owner of a robot named BB who looks like the product of a one night stand between Johnny 5 and the yellow Power Ranger.

  Matt soon befriends Samantha, the typical girl next door. Samantha's father is an abusive alcoholic who is getting worse every day. One night Samantha and Paul play a prank on a crotchety old neighbor woman played by Anne Ramsay of the Goonies fame. She winds up shooting BB and essentially destroying it.

  Tragedy strikes again when Samantha is killed by her father. Paul realizes the odds of finding another hot blond who thinks robots are sexy are slim to none. So he takes the BB's AI, steals Sam's body and implants said chip right into her brain.

 Sam 2.0 stumbles around expressionless and talking in a monotone. Not too different from pretty much every role Kristy Swanson ever played. Sam's true self keeps flashing through and eventually she takes our her revenge on her father and the evil neighbor. This is where the awesome kill scene happens, she decapitates the neighbor with a basketball. The reason I think this scenes is so badass is how uncovential and unpredictable the weapon was. Check out the scene here if you are interested.

   Eventually Sam 2.0 gathers the attention of the police and Paul tries to hide her in a woodshed. Cops find her, she finally becomes the old Sam, cops shoot her, Paul cries, it's a feel good film for the whole family. Now the end scene confuses me as I have no idea whether it was a dream sequence of the stupidest scare ending ever created.

  Paul just hasn't learned his lesson and goes off to steal Sam's body. All of a sudden she comes to life, tears off her skin to reveal an evil BB who then apparently strangles him to death as the credit roll.

   Avoid this movie, there is only one good aspect and you can find that on Youtube. Attempting to view the rest of this film will just result in 91 minutes being cruelly stolen from your life.