Okay, one of my fellow reviewers here on this site described this film in one marvelous – rather sarcastic – sentence. In fact, it's so well stated that I'm going to steal it for my own review. The premise of Deadly Friend, ladies and gentlemen: `Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy creates lethal cyber-Barbie...'. Deadly Friend introduces Paul, an ultra-intelligent adolescent who build a robot that thinks and handles completely for itself. The robot – B.B – is the purest, most advanced piece of technology ever yet it talks with a peppy, blurry voice. Along with his mother, Paul moves to a new town where he continues his Pointdexter studies and falls in love with his sweet neighbor girl (the yummy Kristy Swanson). The girl is terrorized and eventually killed by her monstrous father, a crazy old woman blows B.B to pieces and Paul snaps. He steals her corpse from the hospital and implants her with B.B's artificial brain. Right from the start, this goes wrong as Kristy avenges her death (and how!). Although the undertone of Deadly Friend is downright comic, there are quite a lot gruesome moments and bloody sequences. The plot is highly unoriginal (actually, some sort of lame Frankenstein-variant), the characters are far from believable and the entire production is perfect to claim Wes Craven is an overrated director. Below average, silly film but with – it has to be said – one of the coolest killings ever! The basketball-decapitation alone is worth at least one viewing of this film.

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

My girlfriend told me of a movie she saw when she was little, about a robot who starts killing people. She couldn't remember much of it, but as I searched for it, she kept telling me how much it impressed her... Obviously this is, as with a lot of child's movie memories, a film which is over-romanticized but in actuality less good then you remember... Though after seeing it I was not really impressed, it left me with some mixed feelings..

GOOD FEELINGS: Positive aspects of the film are in my opinion the idea behind it, Kristy Swanson, Wes Craven and the sometimes eerie music score by Charles Bernstein. Not really knowing what to expect, the film's opening of a car thief being stopped by BB (the robot) made me laugh immediately. The movie made me sad in a way, especially when BB gets blown to bits and the scenes with Kristy Swanson in her zombie form, desperately longing for Matthew Laborteaux' love. Wes Craven's signature is all over the film. With some scary dream sequences (I WAS scared when the father squirted blood all over the place while laughing like a madman) and some sets which looked extremely familiar to me (the cellar in which the father dies for instance, did anyone else got flashbacks of A Nightmare on Elmstreet?)

BAD FEELINGS: On the other hand, there were numerous things which I found annoying. A at times very laughable plot, a basketball as a murder weapon and most of all an extremely lousy ending... I've read that Wes Craven wasn't particularly happy with this, wanting another ending and less mindless gore for gore, but the President of Warner Bros. thought differently. Too bad, as it doesn't do ANY good to the movie, which could have been so much more...

CONCLUDING: Mixed feelings... Deadly Friend could have been a real cult classic, but doesn't reach for it in my opinion. Though there are some memorable moments (though the basketball-murder is absolutely ridiculous, I'll probably remember it for the rest of my life) and some good emotional moments (how did I feel for poor Kristy Swanson.) The BB robot is cute and you really feel sorry for Matthew Laborteaux when it gets destroyed, but all this barely saves the movie. Though I do not blame Wes Craven, who probably did everything he could to make the best of it, Deadly Friend is JUST good enough... The ending is a real downer, as it left me with disbelief and almost made me forget all the positive aspects of the film and I think the added gore doesn't add much to it as well... 5,5/10!