The Eric Roberts Collection: Best of the Best (dir by Bob Radler)

Posted on April 19, 2025 by Lisa Marie Bowman

“No!” James Earl Jones says towards the end of 1989’s The Best of the Best, his already deep voice made even more imposing by the use of slow motion.

“No, Tommy, no!” Eric Roberts joins in as he watches martial artist Tommy Lee (Phillip Rhee) internally struggle with whether or not to strike a blow that will definitely kill his opponent and, if James Earl Jones is all gravitas and stern wisdom, Eric Roberts is all emotion and desperation.

The Best of the Best is a bit of an oddity, in that the script features just about every martial arts tournament cliche imaginable (right down to the other “bad” team having a history of killing people in the ring) but those cliches are all acted out by a surprisingly distinguished cast. I counted four Oscar nominees (and one winner) in the cast. James Earl Jones (nominated for The Great White Hope) plays Coach Couzo, who gets a team of Americans prepared to fight in an international tournament. Sally Kirkland (nominated for Anna) plays their trainer, who worries not just about the team’s physical health but also their mental burdens. Eric Roberts (nominated for Runaway Train) is Alex Grady, the former martial arts champion-turned-auto worker who makes the team despite having a bad shoulder. Louise Fletcher (who won for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest) plays Alex’s mother, who looks after his son while Alex is off getting ready to face the Korean team. And then there’s Chris Penn (who seems like, if not for his early death, he would have eventually been nominated for something) as the arrogant Travis, a cowboy who can throw a punch.

(The American team is filled out by John Dye as Virgil, an intellectual Buddhist, David Agresta as Sonny “I’m Italian” Grasso, and Phillip Rhee, who not only plays Tommy but also wrote the film’s script.)

Roberts gets top-billing in this and he does get a lot of important moments, including a scene where he breaks the Coach’s rules so that he can visit his son in the hospital. That said, the story centers around Phillip Rhee’s Tommy. Tommy’s older brother was killed in the ring by the one-eyed Dae Han Park (Simon Rhee) and — wow, what a coincidence! — that just happens to be who Tommy needs to beat for the Americans to win the big tournament. Both of the Rhee brothers actually are martial artists and they are very convincing in the fight scenes, which is good because neither Phillip nor Simon Rhee were particularly strong actors. Eric Roberts is not a particularly convincing martial artist but it doesn’t matter because he acts the Heck out of every scene in which he appears. What happens when you bring method intensity to the type of martial arts film that Jean-Claude Van Damme would later make his specialty? You get scenes of a heavily-bruised Eric Roberts crying but, because Roberts is a good actor, the tears feel earned. Still, whenever I saw Alex’s eyes starting to glisten, I imagined James Earl Jones saying, “Noooooooo!” How can you win the world’s greatest tournament when you’re constantly on the verge of tears? Well, maybe you don’t need to win. Maybe you just need to show that you have more honor than anyone else there.

Best of the Best is a classic of its kind. There’s nothing surprising about it but it’s entertaining in its own dumb way and, in the end, it reminds us that America doesn’t need medals to be the best. It just needs Eric Roberts.

Previous Eric Roberts Films That We Have Reviewed:

Horror on TV: One Step Beyond 2.7 “The Open Window” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on October 13, 2024 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond seems familiar, that’s because it’s a remake of a story that was originally filmed as an episode of The Veil.

This time, instead of witnessing a murder occurring in another apartment, it’s a suicide that is witnessed by artist Anthony March (Michael Higgins). Of course, when he investigates, he discovers that the apartment in empty. Is Anthony hallucinating or has he gone one step beyond and is he seeing the future? Watch to find out!

By the way, that’s future Oscar winner Louise Fletcher playing Anthony’s model.

This originally aired on November 3rd, 1959.

Enjoy!

Horror Scenes That I Love: Linda Blair In The Exorcist II: The Heretic

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Today’s horror scene that I love features Linda Blair in 1977’s The Exorcist II: The Heretic, the sequel to the film for which she received an Oscar nomination.

Linda Blair was only 13 when she was cast a Regan McNeil, the girl who is possessed by a demon in The Exorcist. She was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, only losing the award after it was revealed that Mercedes McCambridge had dubbed Blair for the scenes in which she was possessed. Blair has gone on to have a long career, appearing in movies that may not have been as honored by the Academy as The Exorcist was but which are still often very entertaining when taken on their own terms.

In The Exorcist II, Blair returned to the role of Regan. Now in her late teens, Regan says that she can’t remember anything about being possessed. Father Philip Lamont (Richard Burton) and Dr. Gene Tuskin (Louise Fletcher) think that Regan is repressing her memories and, in this scene …. well, I don’t really know how to describe this scene. Seriously, The Exorcist II is such a strange movie! Basically, Dr. Tuskin has a hypnosis machine while allows people to link minds. Dr. Tuskin links with Regan’s mind and then Lamont links with Tuskin’s mind. It’s all incredibly silly but it does allow for this scene in which “good Regan” shares the screen with “possessed Regan.”

Here is a weird scene from a weird movie, featuring a total of four Oscar-nominated performers. (For the record, Burton was nominated multiple times and, the same year he appeared in this film, he also appeared in Equus, for which he received his final nomination. Louise Fletcher won for One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. Max von Sydow would later be nominated for Pelle the Conqueror and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. And, of course, Linda Blair was nominated for The Exorcist.)

Guilty Pleasure No. 65: Invaders From Mars (dir by Tobe Hooper)

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

The 1986 film, Invaders from Mars, opens with a dark and stormy night.

12 year-old David Gardner (Hunter Carson, son of actress Karen Black and filmmaker L.T. Kit Carson), who dreams of growing up to become an astronaut, witnesses something strange happening outside of his bedroom window. He watches as a spaceship lands on a nearby hill and apparently drills itself into the ground. The next morning, David convinces his father (Timothy Bottoms) to go out to the hill and see what he can find. When his father returns, he says that he didn’t see anything strange at the hill. However, he is now acting strangely, no longer showing emotion.

Soon, everyone in the small town is also acting strangely, from David’s mother (Laraine Newman) to his teacher (Louise Fletcher). David notices that everyone has a mysterious mark on the back of their neck. Even more alarmingly, he walks in on his teacher eating a mouse. Investigating the hill himself, David discovers that his father was lying about nothing being there. Instead, there’s a cavernous spaceship that is patrolled by aliens! A creature with a giant brain has taken control of almost everyone in David’s life. David discovers that the hill right outside of his house is now the headquarters of an intergalactic invasion. It’s a war of the worlds and David is stuck right in the middle.

Fortunately, David does have a few allies. The aliens have not managed to take control of everyone. The school nurse (Karen Black) believes David and helps him explore the spaceship. The surprisingly nice General Wilson (James Karen) is not only willing to launch a military operation on the advice of a 12 year-old but he also doesn’t have any problem allowing that 12 year-old to take de facto command of his soldiers. Can David save his community from the Martians?

A remake of the 1953 sci-fi classic, Invaders from Mars was directed by Tobe Hooper, the Texas-born director who was best known for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Poltergeist. At first, the deliberately campy Invaders from Mars might seem like an unexpected film from Hooper but actually, it has quite a bit in common with Hooper’s other credits. Like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it plays out like an increasingly surreal dream, one with an emphasis on isolation. Like Poltergeist, it’s ultimately a satire of suburban and small town conformity. (Indeed, one could argue that Invaders From Mars is Poltergeist without the interference of Steven Spielberg.) If the original Invaders From Mars was about the dangers of communism, the remake is about the danger of losing your childhood imagination and just becoming a mindless drone.

Invaders From Mars is often a deliberately silly film. Sometimes, it’s definitely a bit too silly for its own good, hence the guilty in guilty pleasure. That said, whenever I see it, I can’t help but smile at how quickly General Wilson starts taking orders from David. (James Karen plays the role with such earnestness that General Wilson seems to be less concerned with David’s age but instead just happy that he has someone around who can tell him what he needs to do.) But it makes sense when you consider that the film is meant to be a child’s fantasy of what would happen if there was an alien invasion. Who wouldn’t want to be the one telling the adults how to save the planet? For all the aliens and the mind control, this is a rather innocent film. Featuring entertaining performances from Hunter Carson, Timothy Bottoms, Karen Black, and the great James Karen, Invaders From Mars is an entertaining daydream of interstellar conquest.

Previous Guilty Pleasures

Retro Television Reviews: Can Ellen Be Saved (dir by Harvey Hart)

Posted on July 16, 2023 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Welcome to Retro Television Reviews, a feature where we review some of our favorite and least favorite shows of the past! On Sundays, I will be reviewing the made-for-television movies that used to be a primetime mainstay. Today’s film is 1974’s Can Ellen Be Saved! It can be viewed on YouTube!

Ellen Lindsey (Katharine Cannon) is an intelligent but depressed teenager who feels that she just doesn’t belong anywhere in the world. She’s not interested in the money and class-obsessed lifestyle of her parents, Arnold (Leslie Nielsen, back in his serious actor days) and Bea (Louise Fletcher). At the same time, she’s also not interested in the silly lives of her friends, who spend all of their time chasing boys and talking about celebrities. Ellen is looking for something deeper and she thinks that she may have found it when she attends a religious retreat led by a charismatic man named Joseph (Michaele Parks).

Everyone at the retreat is very friendly and very dedicated and very concerned with finding more to life than just surface pleasures. They spend hours listening to sermons. They spend even longer singing hymns. The leaders of the retreat emphasize that anyone can leave whenever they want but, if they do, they’ll still be making the biggest mistake of their life. Ellen is happy because she’s finally found a group of friends who seem to feel the same way that she does about society and materialism. Joseph is happy because he’s brainwashed another member of his cult who he can now send out to panhandle for him and the compound.

Arnold and Bea are not happy when Ellen runs away to join Joseph’s commune. When Arnold visits the commune, he discovers a secretive world where outsiders are not welcome. He also discover that Ellen no longer seems to be capable of thinking for herself. With the police unwilling to help, Arnold and Bea turn to an enigmatic deprogrammer named James Hallbeck (John Saxon). Hallbeck specializes in grabbing kids that have joined cults and bringing them back to their parents. Of course, it’s hard not to notice that neither Joseph nor Arnold seems to be giving much thought to what Ellen actually wants from her life.

Can Ellen Be Saved? is a well-made TV movie that has a lot in common with later films like Split Image and Ticket To Heaven. As in both those movies, the first half of the film details how cults initially brainwash their members while the second half deals with the sometimes harsh process of reversing that brainwashing. And, just as in those two later films, Can Ellen Be Saved? features parents who mistakenly assume that their child can be returned to them exactly as she was before. Though all three of the films feature cults that are definitely sinister, they also feature main characters who were lost before they joined the cult and all three of them end on an ambiguous note, leaving us to wonder if the characters have regained their free will or if they’ve just traded one brainwashing for another.

Along with being a well-written and well-acted film, Can Ellen Be Saved features one of those once-in-a-lifetime casts. Popping up in small roles are familiar faces like William Katt, Rutanya Alda, and Kathleen Quinlan. Michael Parks and John Saxon are both convincing as two morally ambiguous characters whose own motives are left enigmatic. Katherine Cannon is sympathetic as Ellen, whose need to be a part of something leaves her vulnerable to manipulation. Finally, it must be said that Leslie Nielsen — despite his reputation for having been a dull dramatic actor — is actually very effective as Ellen’s confused but well-meaning father. Usually, when I watch Neilsen in a dramatic film, I find myself expecting him to wink at the camera or deliver a silly line in a deliberately flat and unemotional tone. But, in this film, I actually forgot I was watching Leslie Nielsen. Instead, he just become a suburban dad, trying to understand why his daughter was so dissatisfied with the life that he had worked so hard to give her.

I wasn’t expecting much from Can Ellen Be Saved? but it turned out to be surprisingly effective.

Lisa Reviews An Oscar Winner: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (dir by Milos Forman)

Posted on October 29, 2020 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Technically, the 1975 film One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is not a horror film.

Though it may take place in a creepy mental hospital, there are no ghosts or zombies. There’s no masked killer wandering the halls. The shadows do not leap off the walls and there are no ghostly voice in the night, unless you count the rarely heard voice of Will Sampson’s Chief Bromden.

Admittedly, the cast is full of horror and paranormal veterans. Michael Berryman, of the original Hills Have Eyes, plays a patient. Louise Fletcher, who won an Oscar for playing the role of Nurse Ratched, went on to play intimidating matriarchs in any number of low-budget horror movies. Vincent Schiavelli, a patient in this film, played the angry subway ghost in Ghost. Another patient, Sidney Lassick, played Carrie’s condescending English teacher in Carrie. Brad Dourif, who received an Oscar nomination for playing the meek Billy Bibbit, has become a horror mainstay. Will Sampson appeared in the Poltergeist sequel. Both Scatman Crothers and Jack Nicholson would go on to appear in The Shining.

Nicholson plays Randle Patrick McMurphy, a career criminal who, hoping to get out of prison early, pretends to be mentally ill. He ends up getting sent to an Oregon mental institution, where his rebellious ways upset the administrators while, at the same time, inspiring the patients to actually try to take some control over their lives. The film is, in many ways, a celebration of personal freedom and rebellion. The only catch here is that, in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, being a little bit too rebellious can lead to not only electroshock treatment but also a lobotomy. Those in charge have a way of making you permanently compliant.

And really, to me, that’s what makes One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest a horror film. It’s about the horror of conformity and bureaucracy. The film may start out as something of a comedy and Nicholson brings a devil-may-care attitude to the role of McMurphy but then, eventually, you reach the scene where McMurphy is tied down and given electrical shocks to make him compliant. You reach the scene where Ratched coldly informs Billy Bibbit that she will be telling his mother that Billy lost his virginity to a prostitute and Billy reacts by slicing open his wrists. Finally, you reach the scene where McMurphy returns to the ward having had a bit of his brain removed. In those scenes, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest becomes a horror movie. The monster is not a ghost or a demon or a serial killer. Instead, it’s a system that is determined to squash out any bit of rebellion or free thought.

What makes Nurse Ratched such a great villain is the fact that, as opposed to being some sort of a maniacal force of evil, she’s really just someone doing her job and refusing to question her methods. She’s the ultimate symbol of bland authoritarianism. Her job is to keep the patients from getting out of control and, if that means lobotomizing them and driving one of them to suicide …. well, that’s what she’s going to do. For all the time that Ratched spends talking about therapy, her concern is not “curing” the patients or even helping them reach a point where they can leave the hospital and go one with their lives. Ratched’s concern is keeping everyone in their place. As played by Fletcher, Ratched epitomizes the banality of evil. (That’s one reason why it was so silly for Ryan Murphy to devote his most recent Netflix series to giving her an over-the-top origin story. Ratched is a great villain because she doesn’t have any complex motivations. She’s just doing whatever she has to do to keep control of the people are on her ward. Part of keeping control is not to allow anyone to question her methods. Everyone has had to deal with a Nurse Ratched at some point in the life. With the elections coming up, we’re about to be introduced to whole new collection of Nurse Ratcheds.)

I like One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, even though it’s an undeniably dated film. That said, it’s not as dated as the novel on which it’s based, nor is it as appallingly misogynistic. Jack Nicholson’s rough but charismatic performance holds up wonderfully well. (I don’t know if an actor has ever matched a character as perfectly as Nicholson does with McMurphy.) Louise Fletcher brings a steely resolve to the role of Nurse Ratched. Fans of spotting character actors in early roles will probably get a kick out of spotting both Danny DeVito and Christopher Lloyd as patients. The movie skillfully combines drama with comedy and the ending manages to be both melancholy and hopeful.

When it comes to the 1975 Oscar race …. well, I don’t know if I would argue that One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest deserved to win Best Picture over Nashville, Dog Day Afternoon, or Barry Lyndon or Jaws. Dog Day Afternoon and Nashville feel as if they were ahead of their time, with their examination of the media and politics. Jaws set the template for almost every blockbuster that would follow and it’s certainly one of the most influential horror films ever made. Barry Lyndon is a stunning technical achievement. Compared to those films, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest seems rather simplistic. Watching it today, you’re very much aware of how much of the film’s power is due to Jack Nicholson’s magnetic screen presence. Nicholson definitely deserved his Oscar but it’s debatable whether or not the same can be said of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest as a whole.

So no, I wouldn’t necessary say that One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was the best of the films nominated that year. Still, it’s an entertaining film and a helluva ride. It’s a great film to watch whenever you’re sick of faceless bureaucrats trying to tell you what to do. And, in its own odd way, it’s a great film for Halloween season.

Horror on TV: One Step Beyond 2.7 “The Open Window” (dir by John Newland)

Posted on October 17, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

If tonight’s episode of One Step Beyond seems familiar, that’s because it’s a remake of a story that was originally filmed as an episode of The Veil.

By the way, that’s future Oscar winner Louise Fletcher playing Anthony’s model.

This originally aired on November 3rd, 1959.

Enjoy!

Horror Film Review: Firestarter (dir by Mark L. Lester)

Posted on October 5, 2019 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Adapted from Stephen King novel, 1984’s Firestarter is a film about a girl with a very special power.

Back in the day, a bunch of college students needed weed money so they took part in a government experiment. Half of them were told that they were being given a placebo. The other half were told that we would be given a low-grade hallucinogen.

Surprise! The government lied! It turns out that everyone was given the experimental drug! Some of the students ended up going crazy. One unfortunate hippie clawed his eyes out. Meanwhile, Vicky (Heather Locklear) gained the ability to read minds. She also fell in love with Andy McGee (David Keith), a goofy fellow who gained the ability to mentally control people’s actions. They married and had a daughter named Charlie (played by a very young Drew Barrymore). Charlie, it turns out, can set things on fire! She’s a firestarter!

Well, of course, the government can’t just leave the McGees out there, controlling minds and setting things on fire. Soon, the McGees are being pursued by the standard collection of men in dark suits. Vicky is killed off-screen, leaving Charlie and Andy to try to find some place where they’ll be safe.

Good luck with that! This is the government that we’re talking about. The thing with films like this is that the government can do practically anything but it never occurs to them to not all dress in dark suits. I mean, it just seems like it would be easier for all of these secret agents to operate if they weren’t automatically identifiable as being secret agents. Anyway, Andy and Charlie are eventually captured and taken to The Farm, a really nice country estate where Andy and Charlie are kept separate from each other and everyone keeps talking about national security.

Running the Farm is Capt. Hollister and we know that he’s a bad guy because he wears a suit and he’s played by Martin Sheen. Working with Hollister is John Rainbird (George C. Scott), a CIA assassin who kills people with a karate chop across the nose. When Charlie refuses to show off her firemaking abilities unless she’s allowed to talk to her father, Rainbird disguises himself as a custodial engineer and proceeds to befriend Charlie. Of course, Rainbird’s plan is to kill Charlie once she’s displayed the extent of her powers….

Stephen King has written that he considers this film to be one of the worst adaptations of one of his novels but, to be honest, I think the movie is actually a bit of an improvement on the source material. Firestarter is probably the least interesting of Stephen King’s early novels. Supposedly, Charlie was based on King’s youngest daughter and, reading the book, it’s obvious that everyone’s fear of Charlie is mostly a metaphor for a father trying to figure out how to raise a daughter. Unfortunately, instead of concentrating on those primal fears, the book gets bogged down in boomer paranoia about MK-ULTRA experiments.

The movie, however, is just silly enough to be kind of charming. For example, consider the way that Andy grabs his forehead and bugs out his eyes whenever he uses his powers. Andy’s powers may be slowly killing him but he just looks so goofy whenever he uses them that you just can’t help but be entertained. And then you’ve got Drew Barrymore sobbing while setting people on fire and George C. Scott growling through all of his dialogue and even Martin Sheen gets a scene where he gets excited and starts jumping up and down. (And don’t even get me started on Art Carney and Louise Fletcher as the salt-of-the-Earth farmers who try to protect Andy and Charlie….) Some of the special effects are a bit hokey, as you might expect from a film made in 1984 but occasionally, there’s a good shot of something (or someone) burning up. It’s all so over-the-top and relentlessly dumb that you can’t help but be entertained. You can even forgive the fact that basically nothing happens between the first 10 and the last 15 minutes of the movie.

Firestarter‘s silly but I liked it.

Horror Film Review: Strange Invaders (dir by Michael Laughlin)

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

In 1983, two years after the release of Strange Behavior, director Michael Laughlin and Bill Condon teamed up for another “strange” film. Like their previous collaboration, this film was a combination of horror, science fiction, and satire.

The title of their latest collaboration?

Strange Invaders.

Strange Invaders opens in the 1950s, in a small, all-American town in Illinois. Innocent children play in the street. Clean-cut men stop off at the local diner and talk to the waitress (Fiona Lewis, the scientist from Strange Behavior). Two teenagers (played by the stars of Strange Behavior, Dan Shor and Dey Young) sit in a car and listen to forbidden rock’n’roll music. A lengthy title crawl informs us that, in the 1950s, Americans were happy and they were only worried about three things: communists, Elvis, and UFOs. On schedule, a gigantic UFO suddenly appears over the town.

Twenty-five years later, mild-mannered Prof. Charles Bigelow (Paul Le Mat) teaches at a university and wonders just what exactly is going on with his ex-wife, Margaret (Diana Scarwid). In order to attend her mother’s funeral, Margaret returned to the small Illinois town where she grew up. When she doesn’t return, Charles decides to go to the town himself. However, once he arrives, he discovers that the town appears to still be stuck in the 50s. The townspeople are all polite but strangely unemotional and secretive. Charles immediately suspects that something strange is happening. When the towns people suddenly start shooting laser beams from their eyes, Charles realizes that they must be aliens!

Fleeing from the town, Charles checks all the newspapers for any reports of an alien invasion. The only story he finds is in a cheap tabloid, The National Informer. The author of the story, Betty Walker (Nancy Allen), claims that she just made the story up but Charles is convinced that she may have accidentally told the truth. At first, Betty dismisses Charles as being crazy. But then she’s visited by an Avon lady who looks just like the waitress from the small town and who can shoot laser beams.

Teaming up, Charles and Betty investigate the aliens and try to figure out just what exactly they’re doing on Earth. It’s an investigation that leads them to not only a shadowy government operative (Louise Fletcher) but also a man (Michael Lerner) who claims that, years ago, he helplessly watched as his family was destroyed by aliens.

Like Strange Behavior, Strange Invaders is a … well, a strange film. I have to admit that I prefer Behavior to Invaders. The satire in Strange Invaders is a bit too heavy-handed and Paul Le Mat is not as strong a lead as Michael Murphy was in the first film. I was a lot more impressed with Nancy Allen’s performance, if just because I related to both her skepticism and her sudden excitement to discover that her fake news might actually be real news. I also liked Micheal Lerner, so much so that I almost wish that he and Le Mat had switched roles. Finally, I have to say that Diana Scarwid’s performance was so bizarre that I’m not sure if she was brilliant or if she was terrible. For her character, that worked well.

Strange Invaders gets better as it goes along. At the start of the film, there are some parts that drag but the finale is genuinely exciting and clever. If the film starts as a parody of 1950s alien invasion films, it ends as a satire of Spielbergian positivity. It’s an uneven film but, ultimately, worth the time to watch.

Horror Film Review: Strange Behavior (a.k.a. Dead Kids) (dir by Michael Laughlin)

Posted on October 18, 2017 by Lisa Marie Bowman

I want to tell you about one of my favorite horror films. It’s a strange one and I think you might like it.

It’s a movie from 1981. It was filmed in New Zealand, even though it takes place in a small town in the American midwest. It was directed by Michael Laughlin and the screenplay was written by Bill Condon, who has since become a director of some note. This was Condon’s first screenplay. In Australia and Europe, this movie is known as Dead Kids. In America, the title was changed to Strange Behavior.

Here, watch the trailer:

It’s a pretty good trailer, actually. That said, as good as the trailer may be, it doesn’t even come close to revealing just what an odd film Strange Behavior actually is. If David Lynch had followed up The Elephant Man by directing a slasher movie, chances are the end result would have looked something like Strange Behavior.

Here’s another scene that I want you watch. It’s kind of a long scene, clocking in at 7 minutes. But I want you to watch it because, in many ways, this scene is the epitome of Strange Behavior:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0eAlUD93K4

Strange Behavior is perhaps the only 80s slasher film to feature a totally random and totally choreographed dance number. It comes out of nowhere but, in the world that this film creates, it somehow feels totally appropriate. Of course, the nun is going to announce that she’s not wearing any underwear and then pretend to stab a guy in the back. Of course, the cowboy’s going to throw up and then want to go out to his car with his date. And of course, a bunch of people in costume are going to end up dancing to Lightnin’ Strikes. In Strange Behavior, the strangest behavior is the only behavior that makes sense.

As for the film itself, it’s a mix of small town melodrama, slasher horror, and gentle satire. Teenagers are being murdered by other teenagers and no one is sure why. The chief of police, John Brady (played by character actor Michael Murphy, who gives a quietly authoritative performance that counters some of the weirdness of the rest of the movie), is trying to solve the crimes while trying to cope with the mysterious death of his wife. His son, Pete (Dan Shor), is going to the local college, where classes are taught by a professor (Arthur Dignam) who died years ago but who filmed a few lectures before passing. To make extra money, Pete does what many of the local teenagers do — he volunteers for medical experiments. Researcher Gwen Parkinson (Fiona Lewis) oversees the experiments, handing out pills and occasionally administering a hypodermic needle to the eyes of a test subject. Gwen is always cool, calm, and collected. When one irate father draws a gun on her, Gwen quips, “I can’t stop you. I don’t have a gun.”

But there’s more to this movie than just medical experiments and murder. Strange Behavior is full of wonderfully eccentric supporting characters. Other than John, there’s really nobody normal to be found in either the town or the movie. Pete’s best friend, Oliver (Marc McClure), is cute and dorky. Barbara (Louise Fletcher) just wants to marry John and live in a town where dead bodies don’t turn up in the middle of corn fields, propped up like scarecrows. John’s best friend and fellow cop, Donovan (Charles Lane), has been around forever and has a great, no-nonsense approach to even the strangest of things. When it becomes obvious that John is not going to be able to solve the murders on his own, big city cop Shea (Scott Brady) shows up and wanders ineffectually through the movie, spitting out hard-boiled dialogue like a refugee from a 1930s gangster flick. And finally, receptionist Caroline (Dey Young) sits at her desk in the clinic, gossiping about the patients and smoking cigarette after cigarette. Caroline is probably the smartest person in the movie. As an administrative assistant, I appreciated that.

It’s an odd little movie, which is why I love it. Laughlin, Condon, and the entire cast created a world where everything is just a little off-center. It makes for terrifically entertaining and weird movie, one that works as both satire and straight horror.

Strange Behavior is a film that deserves to much better known than it currently is so my advice is go watch it and then tell you friends to watch it too.