Deadly Friend (1986)

Director: Wes Craven

Writers: Diana Henstell, Bruce Joel Rubin

Composer: Charles Bernstein

Starring: Matthew Labyorteaux, Kristy Swanson, Michael Sharrett, Anne Twomey, Anne Ramsey, Richard Marcus, Russ Martin, Lee Paul, Andrew Poperto

More info: IMDb

Tagline: She can't live without you.

Plot: Paul is a new kid in town with a robot named "BB". He befriends Samantha and the three of them have a lot of good times together. That is, until Samantha's abusive father throws her down some stairs and kills her. In an effort to save her life, Paul implants BB's computer brain into Samantha's human brain.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again? No.

At first I'm watching this and dreading it.  A fucking robot ala SHORT CIRCUIT (1986)?  Are you kidding me?  And it makes lots of annoying cute robot noises.  I'm about ready to take my attention elsewhere when all of the sudden the robot's out of the picture and the girl next door gets all dead and shit.  Then it's a Frankenstein-esque picture where Paul (Labyorteaux) decides to bring her back to life and the body count starts to rise.  Once robochick is loose, that's when it starts to get fun.  But there came a point where even that couldn't sustain my satisfaction.  It's an unusual film coming from Craven and if you take the cornball robot out of it and Charles Bernstein's synthesizer score, you might not know this was made in the mid-80s.  It's at least a different kind of horror movie than what you'd expect from that time.