Scott Brady | Through the Shattered Lens

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.

This last Christmas, along with several other wonderful and sexy gifts, I received The Fabulous Forties DVD box set. Released by the good people at Mill Creek (who have yet to come across a single public domain film that they couldn’t repackage as being a classic), this box set contained 50 films from that wonderful decade.

Since my proclivity for serial reviewing is well-known, you’re probably not surprised that I’ve decided to watch and review all fifty of the films to be found in the Fabulous Forties box set. And, once I’ve finished with the Fabulous Forties, I will move on to the Nifty Fifties, the Sensational Sixties, the Swinging Seventies, and the Excellent Eighties! Since each box set contains 50 films, I will have watched and reviewed 250 films by the time this is all finished. It might take a while but that’s okay. Arleigh keeps us well-supplied with energy drinks here at the Shattered Lens bunker and I am determined to keep going until the job is done.

(And, if need be, there’s always Dexedrine…)

Let’s get things started with the first film in the box set, 1949’s Port of New York!

This low-budget, black-and-white film opens with a series of shots of cargo ships sailing into New York Harbor. A narrator, speaking in the type of tone that one would usually associate with an old educational film, informs us that, every day, thousands of ships sail into New York Harbor. Most of those ships are delivering important supplies and conducting important business. However, occasionally, the harbor is used by drug smugglers. (GASP!) Fortunately, both the federal and the state government employ brave and honest men who will stop at nothing to battle the scourge of opium.

(And, fortunately, since this film was made in 1949, they can do whatever they want without having to worry about the Supreme Court getting in the way.)

If it’s not already apparent, Port of New York is a bit of a time capsule. The drug smugglers are unambiguous in their villainy and the decency and honesty of law enforcement is taken for granted. Port of New York was filmed on location in New York and I enjoyed getting a chance to see what New York looked like in 1949.

As for the film’s plot — well, it’s nothing surprising. The port authority discovers that a shipment of morphine, which was meant to be delivered to a pharmaceutical company, has instead been stolen. A million dollars worth of narcotics is missing and the U.S. Government is going to find it! Meanwhile, Toni Cardell (K.T. Stevens) approaches a narcotics agent and says that she has information that could take down one of New York’s biggest gangster. However, before she can tell all the she knows, Toni is murdered.

(The detective who failed to keep Toni from leaving his office and going off to get killed looks down at her body, shrugs, and says, “This one’s on me.”)

Who killed her? That’s what Mickey Waters (Scott Brady) and Jim Flannery (Richard Rober) spend the movie figuring out. However, we already know that Toni was murdered by her boyfriend, a suave gangster named Paul Vicola. Paul is played, in his film debut, by Yul Brynner and he gives a charismatic performance, turning Paul into a memorable monster. Brynner still had a full head of hair when he did this movie, though his hairline was definitely moving backwards.

Over the course of their investigation, Waters and Flannery discover that a second-rate comedian named Dolly Carney (Arthur Blake) is being supplied by Vicrola. The scenes where they interrogate Dolly, who is going through withdraw, are some of the best in the film and are distinguished by Blake’s empathetic performance. However, beyond those scenes, there’s really nothing surprising to be found in Port of New York. It’s a thoroughly predictable police procedural that’s distinguished by the presence of Yul Brynner and not much else. That said, the action in this 82-minute film moves quickly and I enjoyed it as a historical artifact.