Shudder Saturday: Strange Behavior (1981)

Filmed in New Zealand, but set in Illinois, and considered by many to be an Ozploitation flick, Strange Behavior is a very odd experience. And it's not a very satisfying one, which is a shame when you consider how well the premise could have worked.

A number of teens are turned into killers. A local police officer (John Brady, played by Michael Murphy) believes it may be the work of Dr. Le Sange (Arthur Dignam), who happens to be deceased. Perhaps his work is being continued by a loyal assistant, Gwen Parkinson (Fiona Lewis). Whatever is really going on, Brady needs to get to the bottom of it, even before he realises that his son (Pete, played by Dan Shor) has been dragged in to the plan.

Directed by Michael Laughlin, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Bill Condon, Strange Behavior is almost an entirely flat and unexciting time for the duration (and it runs at just over 100 minutes). Very few of the supporting characters are memorable, occasional set-pieces just appear and then end, without any feeling of being properly framed for maximum impact, and even the third act lacks any decent scares or tension. I suppose it is also structured in a way that is supposed to have viewers looking forward to the central mystery being solved. If anybody else watched this and cared about the resolution of the mystery then please let me know.

As well as lacking any decent thrills, Laughlin also wastes almost his entire cast. Okay, Murphy and Shor are okay as the older and younger Brady men, mainly because they get the most screentime, but Lewis doesn't have half as much fun in her role as she should have been allowed to have, Dignam is used to have a sly bit of fun that just doesn't work, and Louise Fletcher, perhaps worst of all, is just sidelined for much of the film. Louise Fletcher. If you get her to take a role in your movie then, dammit, you should make that role as good as she deserves it to be.

There may be some people reading this who think I missed the entire point of the film, which is a homage to certain films of the 1950s. Unfortunately, I don't think it works in that regard either. Those making the film had a choice to either make a straight horror, make a homage, or make something that landed somewhere between the two. This works as none of those things, and one sequence featuring a character wearing a Tor Johnson mask isn't enough to convince me otherwise.

I know there are some people out there who seem to enjoy this one. I just struggle to think of anything that would appeal to most film fans.

3/10

You can get a pack of discs here (R1).