DEAD KIDS

DEAD KIDS

(A.k.a. STRANGE BEHAVIOUR; SMALL TOWN MASSACRE)

Ah, let the Ozploitation love-in begin!

Remember this little gem from years back? The pre-cert video on Iver Film Services, under the title DEAD KIDS? Or the butchered 18-rated re-release which was retitled as SMALL TOWN MASSACRE? Or Vipco's hideous retail video, HUMAN EXPERIMENTS? And more recently, DVDs from Synapse in America and Hardgore in the UK, both of which opted for the title STRANGE BEHAVIOUR?

For those who have only vague recollections, let me jog your memory …

The film opens with a stylish scene of sustained tension, as a teenaged lad creeps around his parent's darkened house to fix the power-cut that has just occurred. As he begins making shadowed bird impressions with his hands on the wall, another silhouette comes into frame - and stabs him in the head several times. No gore, but a nicely effective introduction.

Next we meet Pete (Dan Shor, GHOULIES 3; STRANGE INVADERS), a young student anxious about getting accepted into a decent college after school finishes. He is the son of Sheriff Brady (Michael Murphy, SHOCKER) and is sick and tired of people comparing him to his father. Hence, he is determined to make a success of himself.

Pete's friend Oliver (Marc McClure, Jimmy Olsen from the SUPERMAN movies - he was also in both versions of FREAKY FRIDAY, and played 'Boris' on both occasions … just a bit of trivia!!) introduces him to a science teacher, Mrs Haskell (Beryl Te Wiata), who is keen for hard-up teenagers to take part in a few simple after-school experiments on human behaviour. The details are vague, but what initially seems important is the pay: $100 a day.

Pete is keen for the extra income and agrees to sign up as a guinea pig for the experiments. Bad move - as we learn at a frat party that goes horribly wrong for a canoodling couple who fall foul of a knife-wielding maniac in a Tor Johnson mask (nice touch). As the rest of the party-goers scare the killer off before he has the chance to finish off the girl, we see the madman remove his mask to reveal himself as … Oliver. Strange behaviour, indeed. The cops later quiz the teens who were present at the party about the murder - including Pete and Oliver. But no-one has any idea who the killer could be, or why they would wish to kill one of their sect.

Clearly not too concerned by the previous night's events, Pete keeps his appointment with Mrs Haskell later that day and commences his experiments. Meanwhile his father gets busy at the morgue looking over the recent murder victims and trying to get to the bottom of a convoluted, implausible, yet thoroughly entertaining and fast-moving plot.

DEAD KIDS is graced with a great script (by director Michael Laughlin and Bill Condon) that is chock-full of interesting, quirky but well-rounded characters and unexpected events taking place. Wrongly labelled as a slasher film in the 80s, instead what we have here is an enjoyably original and sometimes silly mish-mash of several horror and sci-fi themes, remarkably gelling together superbly as a whole.

The scare set-pieces are masterfully crafted by Laughlin, and while they don't skimp on the gore they rely more heavily on excellent performances, genuine tension and nice slow-building escalations into full-on terror. The music by Tangerine Dream helps immensely on these occasions too, being very reminiscent at times of Rick Wakeman's electronic score for THE BURNING.

Most of the cast are American (including the excellent Louise Fletcher, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST), and the film is set in the States. Despite this, this is a New Zealand production. Knowing this titbit of insight does make you realise that the script at times is contrived and overly Americanised in order to add commercial weight to the production … but it hardly matters when the onscreen shenanigans are so enjoyable. It's wonderful to see DEAD KIDS make the leap to blu-ray. I for one wasn't expecting this to get a HD makeover any time soon. But here it is, in a dual format package no less, courtesy of our friends at Severin Films.

The region-free blu-ray presents the uncut film as an MPEG4-AVC file with a thriving average bit rate of around 28. The original 2.40:1 aspect ratio is correctly conveyed, and is 16x9 enhanced. Benefitting from full 1080p HD resolution, DEAD KIDS looks very nice indeed. Detail is often fine and there's a nice, previously unseen depth to many wider scenes. Colours are bolder than before. There is admittedly some softness in the image here and there, but I assume this true to how it was shot back in 1981. Blacks are mostly deep and stable in this extremely clean print, but there is on occasion the presence of faded, greenish blacks. These instances are few and far between.

All in all this is a clear step up from previous presentations. It's also nice to see the film open with the title DEAD KIDS. Also note, this is the longest version of the film yet seen on domestic release, as it reinstates two brief scenes (of little narrative consequence) that were previously deleted.

English mono audio is given the DTS HD treatment and sounds very clean for the duration of playback. The disc opens to an animated main menu page. From there, a pop-up scene-selection menu allows access to the film via 12 chapters.

Extras begin with two audio commentary tracks.

The first is a new recorded one from Laughlin. This was conducted via Skype and has a tinny, rather synthetic sound to it as a result. Still, aside from a couple of muffled moments, it's all perfectly audible and the director soon makes you forget the channel through which he's providing his interesting detail.

Shor and his gorgeous co-star Dey Young are also on hand along with Condon to provide a more cohesive, equally informative but more entertaining commentary track. If you own the Synapse DVD, however, you'll already have this nice little bonus in your collection.

The aforementioned Tangerine Dream is also included in isolation. Nice.

FX artist Craig Reardon makes for a good interviewee in the new 20-minute featurette "The Effects of Strange Behaviour". He tells of how he squeezed this gig in-between his work on the Tobe Hooper films THE FUNHOUSE and POLTERGEIST, goes on to discuss the problematic effects and reveals his thoughts on the final article.

The original American and International theatrical trailers round off proceedings.

Over on the DVD, which is also region-free, we get the same as the above albeit in standard definition. DEAD KIDS stands the test of time as a highly original, enjoyable and thought-provoking slice of 80s horror. Severin Films have done a great job of bringing it to HD, and this dual format set comes highly recommended.

By Stuart Willis


 
Released by Severin Films
Region All
Not Rated
Extras :
see main review
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