General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Deadly Friend

Deadly Friend is a 1986 American science fiction horror film directed by Wes Craven, in which a teenage robotics genius implants his robot's brain into a girl killed by her abusive father. It was released by Warner Bros. on October 10, 1986, and is based on the 1985 novel Friend by Diana Henstell, adapted by screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Wes Craven; screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin, from the novel Friend by Diana Henstell¹
Release	October 10, 1986, Los Angeles and New York openings; distributed by Warner Bros.¹
Runtime / rating	91 minutes; rated R by the MPAA²^•¹
Principal cast	Matthew Laborteaux (Paul), Kristy Swanson (Samantha), Michael Sharrett (Tom), Anne Twomey (Jeannie), Richard Marcus (Harry), Anne Ramsey (Elvira); Charles Fleischer voices the robot BB¹
Production	Principal photography began January 6, 1986, in Los Angeles¹
Box office	About $8.9 million gross in the United States³
Reception	19% on the Tomatometer (36 reviews); Metascore 44, mixed or average³^•⁴

Spoilers

Plot

Paul Conway (Matthew Laborteaux), a gifted teenager with a university scholarship in neurology and artificial intelligence, moves to the town of Welling Proper with his mother Jeannie (Anne Twomey), bringing the robot BB, which Paul built and which is voiced by Charles Fleischer.² Paul befriends the newspaper delivery boy Tom Toomey (Michael Sharrett) and his next-door neighbor Samantha Pringle (Kristy Swanson), whose home life is marked by an abusive, alcoholic father, Harry (Richard Marcus).²

After BB is destroyed by the reclusive neighbor Elvira Parker (Anne Ramsey), Samantha is thrown down stairs by her father and killed.² Paul revives her by implanting BB's brain technology, and the reanimated Samantha, moving and behaving like the robot, kills her father and then takes revenge on Elvira, in the film's best-known sequence, by throwing a basketball at her head with lethal force.²^•⁵

Production and studio interference

Craven and producer Robert M. Sherman originally conceived the film as a tragic teenage love story with science fiction and horror elements, in the vein of films like Starman, and Craven intended a PG rating.⁶^•⁷ Principal photography, described in accounts as smooth and harmonious, began on January 6, 1986, in Los Angeles.¹^•⁶

The reshoots. When the film was screened for Warner Bros. executives during production, the lack of gore or nightmare sequences, coming right after the success of A Nightmare on Elm Street, led to demands that Rubin write six new scenes, including a nightmare sequence involving Samantha's father, a shock ending set in a morgue, and the basketball sequence with Anne Ramsey.⁶ This reshoot brought changes to both principal murder sequences plus no fewer than four entirely fresh scare scenes: an opening and a closing that were new, along with two additional nightmares.⁸ Rubin later said of the changes, "They really destroyed our love story," and attributed the much-criticized robot-emerging-from-the-head ending to a studio executive's idea.⁶

The added gore then created the opposite problem at the ratings board: the film was submitted to the MPAA 13 times before it received an R rating, with cuts made to avoid an X.⁵ Craven was deeply disappointed with the final film, saying in a later interview that the studio forced him to cut gore he had intended to keep, including more of the head-explosion scene.⁹ A 2007 Warner Bros. DVD in the Twisted Terror Collection restored the cut gore scenes.⁵

Cast and craft details

Kristy Swanson, shortly before her later role as the first screen Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played both Samantha and her robotic form, preparing with the professional mime Richmond Shepard; she spoke fondly of the shoot and remained proud of the role.⁶ A former neurosurgeon, Dr. William H. Faeth, was brought on set as medical adviser for the surgery scenes.¹^•⁶ The BB robot was built by the effects firm Robotics 21, and the score was composed by Charles Bernstein, who had also scored A Nightmare on Elm Street; the original soundtrack LP contained electronic demos rather than the actual film score.¹^•⁶

Reception and afterlife

The film was a commercial and critical failure on release, grossing about $8.9 million in the United States and drawing largely negative reviews.³ On Metacritic it holds a Metascore of 44, with critics split between a few positive notices, such as Caryn James's New York Times review calling it "stylish and sardonic," and negative ones, including Paul Attanasio's Washington Post verdict of a "routine horror movie."⁴ Rotten Tomatoes' critics consensus calls it "an uninspired departure for Wes Craven, mired by an uneven premise."³

Cult standing. The film later found an audience on television and home video, and its score earned a following of its own.⁶ A 2023 scholarly chapter in ReFocus: The Films of Wes Craven treats it as a document of 1980s thinking about robotics, cyborgs, and what would now be called transhumanism, retaining the novel's Frankenstein-meets-early-cyberpunk premise.⁷ Craven's original cut has never been released; it was seen only by the 1986 test audiences whose negative reaction prompted the overhaul.¹⁰ In 2025 the British Board of Film Classification classified a 90-minute home entertainment version for Arrow Film Distributors, carrying content advisories for strong violence, gore, domestic abuse, and surgical detail.¹¹

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Horror films (individual works) › Science fiction horror films

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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