Der tödliche Freund

A super intelligent teenage whiz revives the love of his life with a chip that used to belong to his robot pal BB. But things don't go all that smoothly as his creation proves to have homicidal tendencies.

Is the film weird? You bet. Is it silly? Yeah, kind of. Is it hokey? Definitely. Is it entertaining? Surprisingly Yes.

The film is probably as close as you can get to family oriented graphic horror. The characters are not only well acted but extremely likable and that takes the film a long way. Matthew L something brings warmth and charm to his role and his relationship with his mom is cute and wholly believable. Kristy Swanson is pure delight as his "girl next door love" and her robotic moves are surprisingly well executed. Like in A Nightmare on Elm Street, Wes Craven is able to create characters who you actually give a damn about and that's what makes this silly premise actually work.

The film is pretty funny at times and the graphic horror is sure to delight gore hounds. The basketball scene alone is outstanding. For the most part Deadly Friend is more actual fun than suspenseful, although it does have a few well timed shocks.

All in all; A nice effort from Craven. Pretty inventive and overcomes it's weaknesses by being just a plain old fun flick.

DEADLY FRIEND

This Wes Craven effort may seem a little dated in these post-Scream days, but watching it for the first time in years I realised it may have been an overlooked slice of mid-eighties teen-horror cinema. It's stylistically similar with the lesser cherished of Craven's films, such as Summer of Fear, Deadly Blessing and Chiller, but, like these mentioned titles is worth revisiting.

It has the usual Craven touches – kids in jeopardy, nightmares within-the-film that throw you off balance and dysfunctional relationships, but the film is basically about an intellectual who reanimates his girlfriend by placing the microchip brain of his home made android into her dead body leading murderous results. No one can deny the greatness, if extremely absurd, of that exploding head via basketball scene remains.

Bride of Frankenstein and Short Circuit combined may not suite a lot of pallets, but as Wes Craven films go Deadly Friend is definitely not half as bad as the critics claimed at the time of it's initial release.

A few people have said that it's an undiscovered treasure, more people have stated that it's possibly Wes Craven's worst movie (haven't they seen "Shocker"?); I simply found it to be an OK, average horror offering that merely helps you kill two hours. The first half plays almost like a well-observed drama, but after Swanson has been "resurrected" the film becomes just too silly to work. The "infamous" basketball scene, however, is undeniably great; you'll have to rewind the tape multiple times to get the full effect of it! (**1/2)

Deadly Friend, a Frankenstein inspired tale in which dead teenager Samantha (Kristy Swanson) is brought back to life by the insertion of an artificial intelligence microchip into her brain, must be one of the dumbest movies in Wes Craven's erratic career, but to be fair, it might not be ALL his fault: studio intervention apparently altered Craven's original vision—a twisted love story between Sam and the genius boy next door—by forcing the director to add in extra scenes of gore and pointless dream sequences.

The result is a real howler, a film that features a cute Johnny 5 style robot that makes stupid noises, includes one of the most ridiculous horror movie deaths ever (a super-splattery decapitation by basketball), suffers from a truly awful performance from attractive young star Swanson, and closes with the silliest shock ending since…well, since Wes Craven's A Nightmare On Elm Street, actually. The funny thing is that it all proves reasonably entertaining—albeit for all the wrong reasons.

5.5 out of 10, rounded up to 6 for IMDb.

Cheesy cool movie that I must say was a surprise. Has one of the coolest kills in horror. Funny at times too.