By now slasher movies had been around in the mainstream since Halloween in 1978 but director Michael Laughlin decides to mix things up a little and comes at the 80's slasher from a 1950's B-movie sensibility, so what we end up with is explicit gore alongside schlocky sci-fi, and it's all the more refreshing for it.
Originally titles Dead Kids, Strange Behaviour was to be the first of a trilogy to homage 1950's genre movies but Laughlin only got this and the follow up Strange Invaders (1983) made. Shot in New Zealand but featuring a mainly American cast this also benefits from having a more superior crop of actors in it such as Louise Fletcher, Michael Murphy, Fiona Lewis and Marc McClure than a cast of unknowns that usually permeates these kinds of low budget horrors.
A sleepy University town in Illinois is awakened by a series of brutal killings which the Police suspect are somehow related. However rather than being a suspected serial killer the link could be coming from the University itself as someone is conducting experiments using a mind control drug among the local teenage population.
Co-written by Laughlin, the author and producer of the critically acclaimed road movie Two Lane Blacktop (1971), and Bill Condon who is most notable for writing Gods and Monsters (1997) and Dreamgirls (2006), Strange Behaviour is an odd, intriguing and different 80's horror movie that does get rather ponderous at times but gets an extra star from me for including the classic pop hit Lightning Strikes by Lou Christie, an earworm you won't be able to get out of your head, and a score by electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream.
Originally titles Dead Kids, Strange Behaviour was to be the first of a trilogy to homage 1950's genre movies but Laughlin only got this and the follow up Strange Invaders (1983) made. Shot in New Zealand but featuring a mainly American cast this also benefits from having a more superior crop of actors in it such as Louise Fletcher, Michael Murphy, Fiona Lewis and Marc McClure than a cast of unknowns that usually permeates these kinds of low budget horrors.
A sleepy University town in Illinois is awakened by a series of brutal killings which the Police suspect are somehow related. However rather than being a suspected serial killer the link could be coming from the University itself as someone is conducting experiments using a mind control drug among the local teenage population.
Co-written by Laughlin, the author and producer of the critically acclaimed road movie Two Lane Blacktop (1971), and Bill Condon who is most notable for writing Gods and Monsters (1997) and Dreamgirls (2006), Strange Behaviour is an odd, intriguing and different 80's horror movie that does get rather ponderous at times but gets an extra star from me for including the classic pop hit Lightning Strikes by Lou Christie, an earworm you won't be able to get out of your head, and a score by electronic pioneers Tangerine Dream.