The truth behind Deadly Friend: What went wrong?

Deadly Friend came about as a direct consequence of Wes’s agent saying to him, “you should do a studio film, because otherwise you’ll be stuck doing small films for the rest of your life”,’ remembers Craven.

When Craven started on the project it was called Artificial intelligence then A.I ., before settling on Deadly Friend

There were seven or eight producers and they all had their own idea of what the film should be,’ recalls Craven Sadly. ‘Then the marketing department came in at the very end and did a study and found out that Wes Craven had this enormous horror following , so they immediately rewrote the script and had Wes do more horror in it.

It was censored heavily by the MPAA. The film was submitted 13 times to MPAA . So for instance, the Anne Ramsey scene, with her getting killed by the basketball, was completely decimated.

Deadly friend features much of Craven’s trademark iconography, particularly the dream sequence: “they were mine (Wes’s) but they came very late. It was after the film was shot and the producers said “let’s put dream sequences in” Frankly Wes didn’t want to do those. The things that were added later were a nightmare sequence between Sam and her father and the basketball scene.

Originally it was a straight sort of macabre love story between this boy and girl.
Wes craven originally wanted it much quieter, but he was overruled. Writer Bruce Joel Rubin worked closely with Craven. He really tried hard to write a deep and heartfelt movie out of it. Then Wes and Joel showed the picture to a bunch of Wes’s fans, who hated it. All they wanted was guts, so the studio demanded six more scenes, each bloodier than the last. That killed the love story.

That robot coming out of the girls head belongs solely to the studio.

Kristy Swanson was sixteen at the time making this her feature film debut. It was a challenge playing a vibrant teenager turned into a zombie. Kristy Swanson was proud of her work in Deadly friend. She told Fangoria she found herself caught up in the studio’s attempts to strong-arm Craven into making the film more visceral than he’d intended. Script changes were being made, a title change was being discussed and there was a lot of discussions about just how violent and bloody the movie would ultimately be. The effect of the basketball hitting the face was added after the fact. Kristy Swanson remembers she must have thrown that ball at least a hundred times. “Wes kept at me to throw it as hard as I could to indicate great speed.’

Wes wasn’t convinced Kristy could handle the role of Samantha admitted Swanson. ‘Eventually he changed his mind. He always encouraging me, prodding me in subtle ways to get me to give a scene everything I could. There were days when we were behind schedule, or a particular scene was not working, were he would get a little upset, but I found Wes Craven to be a very patient man.’

For the scenes chronicling the transplant of the robot brain in Paul’s girlfriend body, Craven called on the advice of retired neurosurgeon William H. Faethe. “He was very helpful on all the anatomical details,’ explains Craven. Wes Craven studied anatomy a great deal.

The suburban setting of deadly friend echoed A Nightmare on Elm st. and was a deliberate choice by Craven.

Wes Craven wasn’t attracted to the story of Deadly friend because Samantha goes on a killing spree when she’s revived as an undead monster. Wes was much more interested in exploring the adults around her, all of whom seem to be monsters in human skin : ‘the scares don’t come from her, but from the ordinary people, who are actually much more frightening – A father who beats a child is a terrifying figure. That’s the one person you’re afraid of in the movie…the idea is along the lines that adults can be horrible, without being outside what society says is acceptable.

Deadly Friend ended up being a flop at the box office.

~Screams and nightmares the films of Wes Craven by Brian J. Robb