{"id":8195,"date":"2024-11-12T00:11:47","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:11:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=8195"},"modified":"2024-11-12T00:11:47","modified_gmt":"2024-11-12T05:11:47","slug":"strange-behavior","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/11\/12\/strange-behavior\/","title":{"rendered":"Strange Behavior"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Strange Behavior <\/strong>(1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 World Northal\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, gore, language, brief rear nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Michael Laughlin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bill Condon and Michael Laughlin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tangerine Dream\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Louis Horvath\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 13, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Michael Murphy, Louise Fletcher, Dan Shor, Fiona Lewis, Arthur Dignam, Dey Young, Marc McClure, Scott Brady, Charles Lane, Elizabeth Cheshire, Beryl Te Wiata, Jim Boelsen.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: N\/A<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ***<\/p>\n

\u00a0I never knew the horror movie Strange Behavior<\/strong> is regarded as Ozploitation. Although it takes place in a small Midwestern town in Illinois, it was filmed in New Zealand for its authentic looking locations. Director Michael Laughlin, in creating a homage to 50s-era horror-sci-fi, wanted it to look like a movie from that era. It was the first in a proposed trilogy that continued with Strange Invaders two years later. Laughlin never completed the trilogy, but there\u2019s always hope the third movie will finally materialize at some point.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Also known as Dead Kids, Strange Behavior<\/strong> is a few different types of horror movie rolled into one. It\u2019s a mad doctor movie in which the antagonist uses science against humanity, namely the residents of a small town. It\u2019s a slasher flick in which the slasher isn\u2019t an unkillable being powered by some unknown supernatural force. It\u2019s a Killer Kid movie because the slashers are normal everyday teens who made the unfortunate mistake of volunteering to participate in weird experiments being conducted by the mad doctor, Dr. Parkinson (Lewis, The Fury). She does things to them to make them kill. It\u2019s really pretty clever what Laughlin does here.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The story focuses on John Brady (Murphy, Manhattan), the town sheriff tasked with investigating the disappearance of the mayor\u2019s teenage son (played by co-writer Condon). He\u2019s later found dead. Not long after that, another kid buys the farm at a party attended by Brady\u2019s son Pete (Shor, TRON). Things aren\u2019t great between father and son at the moment. They disagree over where Pete should go to college. The boy wants to go to the local university while his father wants him to go anywhere else.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In need of money for college applications, Pete signs up with Parkinson on the advice of his best friend Oliver (McClure, Jimmy Olsen from the Superman movies). He doesn\u2019t mind the first round (it\u2019s just a pill); he\u2019s less enthused about the second as it involves injecting a hypodermic needle into his eye, a trend in \u201981 with the same act going down in Halloween II and Dead & Buried.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Sherriff John\u2019s investigation ultimately leads him to the college and Parkinson\u2019s experiments. It also brings back a tragedy from his past involving Parkinson\u2019s late mentor Dr. Le Sange. He has good reason to hate the guy and distrust any experiments he\u2019s even posthumously involved with. I\u2019ll leave it at that.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I wasn\u2019t bowled over by Strange Behavior<\/strong> when I first saw it in \u201987. I was going through a horror movie kick in the early months of the year catching up on all the scary movies I wasn\u2019t allowed to see circa 1979-82. I was looking for gory movies like Maniac and Pieces. Although it has a couple of cool bloody moments (e.g. a boy has his hand cut off), Strange Behavior<\/strong> isn\u2019t a bloodbath. It\u2019s more suspenseful than anything else with a nifty little plot twist or two. I love how it relies on the tropes of the Mad Scientist genre. In a way, it\u2019s reminiscent of the paranoid horror movies that stoked the public\u2019s fear of atomic energy in the Eisenhower decade. In the 80s, it\u2019s mind control through drugs, still a concern today with Big Pharma pushing pills as a cure-all for all psychological maladies.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The cast, which also includes Louise Fletcher (One Flew Over the Cuckoo\u2019s Nest) as John\u2019s concerned girlfriend and Dey Young (Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll High School) as Pete\u2019s concerned new girlfriend, does a respectable job. Shor is especially good as a young man trying to assert independence only to fall victim to submission by chemical means. Lewis is suitably menacing as the mad doctor experimenting with mind control. Elizabeth Cheshire, the injured little girl from Airport \u201977, shows up as Lucy Brown, a 13YO girl with a reputation. Quoting Oliver, \u201cLucy Brown gets around.\u201d She gets chased by a killer at the same party where the second victim meets his grisly fate. BTW, the party is one for the books. I don\u2019t know what\u2019s weirder, the 60s TV-themed costumes or the teens line-dancing to Lou Christie\u2019s \u201cLightning Strikes\u201d. It\u2019s totally surreal.<\/p>\n

\u00a0As I mentioned earlier, Bill Condon co-wrote Strange Behavior<\/strong> with Laughlin. I didn\u2019t realize it until I wrote the header for this review the night before I watched it. He would go on to direct Gods and Monsters, Dreamgirls and the final two Twilight installments. It\u2019s damn good for a first screenplay even with the occasional lapse into dopey dialogue. The pacing is uneven but it never actually drags. We get a few neat \u201cBOO!\u201d scenes. It\u2019s a decent horror movie, one that deserves a little more recognition.<\/p>\n

\"\"
??????????????????????????????????????<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Strange Behavior (1981)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 World Northal\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 101 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (violence, gore, language, brief rear nudity)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Michael Laughlin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Bill Condon and Michael Laughlin\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Tangerine Dream\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Louis Horvath\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: November 13, 1981 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Michael Murphy, Louise Fletcher, Dan Shor, Fiona Lewis, Arthur Dignam, Dey Young, Marc McClure, Scott Brady, Charles […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8391,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-horror"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/Strange-Behavior-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8195"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8393,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8195\/revisions\/8393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}