First movie of 2012 (for some reason). I remember seeing this on television when I was a kid and of course, the basketball scene has haunted me ever since. Wes Craven's "Deadly Friend" is about Paul, a new kid in town and his home made robot, BB.
Paul & BB quickly make friends with Samantha (Kristy Swanson), a cute next door neighbor who has a violent and controlling father. They also quickly make an enemy in Elvira, a crazy neighborhood old woman (Ann Ramsey from "Goonies" & "Throw Mama From the Train").
The first half of the movie was pretty fun, especially the silliness that is Bebe, the robot. The scares are pretty good as well, especially Sam's nightmare about her father's bedroom invasion. Overall the acting was pretty over the top throughout, which wasn't really that bad until the second half required the actors to be taken seriously.
When Sam's father accidentally kills her while roughing her up, Paul can't bare the idea of her dying. He steals her body from the hospital and performs "experimental" surgery on her, implanting BB's "brain" into her's. He creates a Frankenstein-style version Kristy Swanson, I mean Sam, which results in the wild and violent deaths of all of the villains in the film, including yes, the infamous "basketball scene," which was much sillier than I remembered.
The "Silly-Meter" is off the charts in the second half of the film and you just can't take any of it seriously anymore. The ending in particular really comes out of left-field, but really it doesn't matter. Overall, "Deadly Friend" is pretty average, but it does have some fun sequences here and there, and even a couple moments of sweetness.
--Popkoff
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