#319: Strange Behavior

Release Date: October 16th, 1981

Format: 16mm (The Frida Cinema in Santa Ana, CA)

Written by: Bill Condon and Michael Laughlin

Directed by: Michael Laughlin

3.5 Stars

The second movie in the Frida’s secret slasher triple-feature was hardly a slasher really. Directed by first-timer Michael Laughlin (who produced Monte Hellman’s Two-Lane Blacktop), Strange Behavior is an international co-production shot in New Zealand with a mostly American cast (it was released abroad under the title, Dead Kids; I like the Dead Kids title more). It’s a strange movie - I say that fondly - that owes more to 1950s mad scientist B-movies than it does contemporary (at the time) slashers. If Laughlin was making this 30 years earlier, you give Bela the scientist role, cut down on the blood and stabbings, switch out the experimental Tangerine Dream-led score, and pair Strange Behavior with a kooky monster movie in a fun double-feature. 

The movie is set in Galesburg, Illinois (despite being shot halfway around the world), and is about the town Sheriff (Michael Murphy) trying to get to the bottom of a series of murders. One of the victims is even the mayor’s son (played by screenwriter Bill Condon), who we see killed in the film’s opening scene. Do the murders have anything to do with the mysterious Dr. Le Sange (Arthur Dignam, hamming it up) and his unusual experiments at the local university? The Sheriff thinks so, despite the fact that Le Sange has been dead for years. Or has he?              

Strange Behavior is an excellent example of a movie you want to root for. Despite Laughlin’s inexperience as a director - he can’t shoot dialogue to save his life, and his actors’ performances are all over the map - the filmmaker occasionally ventures into a scene that is totally inspired. Check out the house party set piece, with a choreographed dance number in the living room set to Lou Christie’s hit song, “Lightin’ Strikes,” all while a teenage girl is being attacked in the backyard. Laughlin effectively crosscuts between the two sequences, and even gets the camera into the swimming pool with the girl as she tries to avoid being stabbed to death.

Holy shit! What a great scene! 

And check out the film’s twist ending. Pretty good!               

These jarring shifts in quality and tone - the movie is also quite funny - make for a dream-like viewing experience (watching it on a grindhouse 16mm print, that’s well on its way to turning a red-vinegar hue, doubled the effect). Laughlin even gives us a warm and lovable montage at the end of the film, featuring our heroes, our villains, and minor side characters that we’ve mostly forgotten at this point. What a strange artistic choice for the story’s resolution. 

Strange Behavior’s lasting effect is like that of a lucid dream, with vivid moments spliced into confused sequences, where it all works better in your dark subconscious than it does in the waking light. 

Postscript: The third movie in the Frida’s secret slasher triple-feature was Friday the 13th Part II (#258). I’m pretty sure the last time I saw it, I watched this exact print. My opinion of the film remains more or less the same.