 The mayor's son is found dead posed as a scarecrow. Welcome to another edition of Frightfully Forgotten's Trash or Treasure, and today we have another Patreon request. Today we are tackling 1981's Dead Kids, aka Strange Behavior. But before we get started, what are we drinking? We're drinking Fire in the Sky Rye. Dead Kids or Strange Behavior was directed by Michael Loughlin. Loughlin. Loughlin. Loughlin. And he also did Strange Invaders, which was kind of a companion movie to this one. There's supposed to be a third one, but these ones just didn't do that well, so they canned the project. Louise Fletcher is in this, and she is famously in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest as Nurse Ratchet. NURSE RACHET! I want my cigarettes. She's also in our favorite Star Trek series, DS9. Fiona Lewis is in this. She's also in The Fury, which we covered. One of our first Trash or Treasure episodes. That's right. She's also in Inner Space. Dan Shor is in this. He's in Tron. Did he want to see in the movie Tron? No. No. No. And the very acclaimed movie Goolies 3. Mark McClure is in this, and us 80's kids will always remember him as being Marty McFly's brother and back to the future. He was also Jimmy Olson in the original Superman movies. So the movie starts off, these parents getting ready to go out for the night. As soon as they close the door, there's the kid in his room and he starts smoking right away, but he hears a noise in the basement and he goes downstairs to start checking things out. There's a shadow down there, there's somebody down there that just starts killing him, starts stabbing him all up in the back and in the head and everything, and you just hear him, and it goes on forever, dude. I guess you wouldn't be if you were stabbing the head, you'd feel brain damage and everything. You wouldn't be making normal noises after this short. We then get introduced to John and Pete, and they're a father-son duo. They're a little, how do you say it, a little dysfunctional, I guess? Pete just walks by his dad all naked, he doesn't bat an eye. The dad is all at breakfast, cutting his nails at the table and everything, like toenails in the kitchen, like, what the fuck, do that somewhere else for Christ's sake. There's people at my work that do that. Me too. Like, fuck, do that shit at home. I got a guy at work, he cuts his fingernails in the lunchroom, and he cuts them into his lunchbox. What? What the fuck is the matter? Like, he was the garbage. The dad gets called away about a missing kid, and it turns out that it's the mayor's kid that was attacked in the house. The dad is the cop for the town, too, so he goes out to investigate. Pete and his friend Oliver are talking, and Oliver is taking these experimental tests, increases brain power and everything, and he takes Pete to the university to show him some demonstrations. A guy on a TV, and they have a chicken on the table, and they strap some thing to a tent. Some little antenna thing into his brain, turn to the audience, and they show the chicken all turning, and lift your right leg, his little chicken leg, his feet. So Pete right away gets really interested, and also they give money for these tests, right? So Pete wants to make money, he wants to make big bucks. Make the big bucks. Want to make some big bucks. So there's a party going on, looks like a Halloween party, even though it doesn't feel like Halloween at all. It's just a costume party. Yeah. Doing that whole dance routine. Dance routine. What the hell? Waldo, he's getting ready to drive his girl home, and he puts the car in gear, and the car just spins, like the tires are stuck, and when he gets out to go push, he gets attacked by somebody in this weird ghoul-type mask. Keep trying to put my finger on what is that supposed to be? I don't know. I'm not sure. But I've seen that mask around before. I think it's this one of those masks you always see in movies, like on the shelf somewhere. The killer goes around to get the girl, chases her into the pool. There's a big struggle, and you think that she's going to drown in the pool, but they actually come out and rescue her, and the killer takes off. The killer's running away, and he stops, and kind of looks back, and unmasks, and you find out it's Oliver. So Pete's dad the next day is questioning all the kids to see what happened at this party. And Oliver, what did you see? And Oliver's like, oh, I must have blacked out from booze. I don't remember anything. I don't remember none of this happening. Dad gets a phone call, and he's got to leave because they found the mayor's son, and the mayor's son is found dead, posed as his scarecrow, and it looks really creepy. His eyes are like missing and everything. Pete goes for his first round of tests, sees all these other experiments happening, like this kid riding this bike and everything. He's rewarded by playing pinball and having a coke. He's about to go in this one room, and he gets stuck with this weird old guy, and he's like, oh, we even were not allowed to go in there. So, you know, something's kind of funny happening behind the scenes. The head doctor of this experiment just simply gives him a pill, tells him to swallow it, and that's it. Yeah. And here's your check. Yeah. Yeah. Easy peasy, right? Easy money. He goes out for a date with the receptionist that night, and suddenly he's all smarty speaking French. In the meantime, more of these murders start happening. Pete goes back for a second round of tests, and it's a little different this time. He goes to the strange soundproof room, and there's this chair there, and she straps him in all hard, and pulls out this big fucking needle about to put it like into his eye. Yeah. He's like, no, no, I didn't sign up for this. What are you doing? What are you doing? In the meantime, the dad's investigating these murders, and he's kind of being led to the university in these weird experiments, because something like this has actually happened before in the town. And that's where we're going to end the plot. If you want to see how dead kids, a.k.a. strange behavior ends, watch the movie. That'll bring us to the treasure of the movie, and one of the treasures is the story of the movie, actually. It's quite good. They take their time to really get you invested in what's happening in this town. The way they play it out, too, it starts off, you just think it's going to be some slasher killer kids movie. But then it ends up being like a lot more than that. There's way more below the surface on this movie than just dead kids. Underlying plot with the dad, having a vendetta against this doctor who he thinks killed his wife how many years earlier. And then he doesn't believe the doctor's actually dead. And then there's this whole convoluted story behind all this stuff, which makes it a very interesting watch. You don't feel like it's too much, though. The way that the story unfolds, it doesn't seem like too much is being thrown at you at once. The town being used, too, as sort of ground zero for these experiments. The whole idea of this crazy doctor wanting to perfect humanity and using this town as a guinea pig, it kind of almost harks back to the superhuman that the Nazis wanted to create makes for a good story. The characters are really good, too, actually. They're pretty well-defined. You get a real sense of the dynamic between all the characters as well, like Pete and Oliver. Pete and his dad. It's kind of weird dynamic. Then you have the girlfriend, the dad's girlfriend, which you kind of have a sense that she's not really loved by the dad. They're not just kind of throwaway characters. They're there for a reason. The main antagonists in this movie are great, great villains, especially the main female doctor. She's just the way she plays it is great because she's almost too nice. I was kind of thinking that she was going to be like a robot or something. Oh, really? The way she plays it out is perfect. The actress really plays a two-faced person very well. The main, main antagonist, the kind of the puppet master behind all this, Dr. Lassange. He's a great bad guy, too. Of course, he's in the wheelchair, naturally. There's a bit of a reveal there, too. The villain fails his diabolical plan. It's just so classic and the way the actor delivers it is great. The kills in this movie are really good, too. They're all kind of different and they're all stylistically different. First kill is just shadows. All you see is the shadow of the knife stabbing the kid. Then the next kill is a bit more gory, right? You actually see stabbing and you see the blood and then the third kill is even gory or so. It keeps escalating in the gore, which is neat. They give you just enough for it to be effective without going over the top, right? It keeps its poignancy because they don't oversaturate the movie with all that shit. That one kill with the old woman is just fantastic. Not just the kill itself, it's the whole scene. The way the whole scene plays out is so good. It's slow. You know, the old woman looking through the house quietly, looks into the bathroom and the kid's all diced up and missing a hand and everything. Then she gets killed in this glorious, bloody way. Then the music for this is done by Tandream Dream. It's pretty good music, actually. It fits the movie perfectly, really. The small town setting works perfectly for the story of this movie, right? It just makes sense. This scientist guy isn't going to conduct all these experiments in a huge city with this huge population. He'll get found out right away. You're kind of stuck in this small town. That's right. You can't really escape it. Comedy in this movie is good, too. It's slow-key and it's not shoved in your face. It's a little underlying, subtle things. Like the cop's fridge there in his office. They open it up and it's just filled top to bottom with beer, nothing but beer. That'll bring us to the trash of this movie. I thought the pacing was a little off, a little slow. Not so slow or it's boring, but it's just like a little bit like, ah, okay, let's kind of get on with it here. The acting for this movie is, you know, subpar, I guess. Some of it's okay, some of it's subpar, and some of it is god-awful. See the distinct line drawn in the sand there, like that corner guy is just awful. He's all missing lines. Would you like to look at the wounds on Waldo? Sort of skipping things. You can tell that he's kind of thinking about his next line and everything. That's what appears to be surgical. And that awful mayor, like when the dad runs into the mayor at the supermarket. Look, there was something a bit strange, I thought. Jesus Christ, could have they gotten a worse actor for this guy supposed to be distraught to the son is missing and all this stuff? It's just like any other day at the supermarket. He was just doing his homework when we left. Well, I'll call you about six. And the dialogue too in this movie, as good as the story is. The dialogue doesn't really do the story justice, it's a little bad. Be back down the drive last night, there was a car parked in front. Is anybody in it? I don't think so, guess I should have looked. Maybe that's why some of the acting isn't great, because they have to deliver such poor dialogue at times. The actor who plays the dad's kind of weird, because at times he's good, and at times I'm like, fuck, why'd they hire this guy? So some performances in the same movie by the same actor go from good to bad even. The budget for this movie too seems a little low, right? It's on the low end. Shows too, right? The costumes, like man, I had no clue that this kid's dad was like a cop until like halfway through the movie, because like, well where's the guy's uniform? Like he's just wearing plain clothes all the time, like where's your badge and your hat and like your outfit? Like I've never seen a movie before where like the sheriff of the town doesn't have an outfit. It almost seems like everybody on the force is just wearing their clothes. Yeah, like even his friend there, that old guy, he's kind of in a uniform, but not quite enough to even show that he's a cop. So like, and then the coroner too, it's like the coroner looks like he's just about to go cut his grass, go fishing or something. What kind of costume is that? He kind of plays in with the settings a little bit too, because like for example, that coroner's office, it just looks like the back of like a fucking bait shop or, you know, something like... It doesn't look like it's in a hospital or anything. Even the police station. You can't tell that it's a police station. Looks like they just rented a hotel room and like took all the furniture out or something like the end where you're kind of in the main layer of the scientists, and it just seems like some warehouse where they kind of put a couple of computers here or there or something to make it look like it's like this big laboratory, but it's like it's just some fucking loading dock. It's a low budget movie, but it's always better when you can't tell. Yeah, in this movie, you can tell. Yeah, it's like, man, buy these guys some costumes or rent them at least, you know. Yeah, you have a little more imagination about the settings. Yeah, like, Christ, if we're going to shoot a sketch or something, we'll at least go down to the party store and spend a couple of bucks on a hat or something. Like, these guys even bother with that. And the last thing we'll have to mention about this movie is the last part about the movie. And that's the ending. It's kind of anti-climactic. Like, it really builds up to, like, what you think is going to be a big showdown between the dad and this mad scientist. When they finally meet face to face, it's kind of a little, then suddenly it's just over. Well, where was the showdown? Where was the big, you know, big epic fight or something, you know? But it just kind of ends and then there's like a wedding and then the movie's over. Like, what the fuck kind of weird way to end this movie, you know? Yeah, it was disappointing. Yeah, you know, yeah, you don't get the payoff that the movie deserved. And it would have been nice if it was a bit of a cliffhanger. Like, it was like a happy ending. And then there's like that hint that, oh, there's still something going on in the kid's brain or something is still there to be triggered later. So, dead kids, a.k.a. strange behavior, trash or treasure? It is a treasure. It's a definite treasure. I'll have to say treasure too, for sure. There are some things we've picked on, but overall, it's a pretty unique original movie. Yeah, and it's really not that bad. No. It is done really well. And it's a good horror movie. It's got great kills. And it really kind of leans kind of towards sci-fi too. It's like a sci-fi horror pseudo slasher. It does make me want to watch its sister movie, Strange Invaders. Mm-hmm, just to see what it's like. With a lot of the same cast, actually, reminding me a lot of disturbing behavior, which came out in the 90s. I'm sure disturbing behavior was inspired by this movie to some degree. Even the title, Strange Behavior, Disturbing Behavior, is very similar, right? I got a little bit of a sense of dead and buried in this movie, too. That small town kind of mind-control puppeteering mad scientist. So if you're looking for a neat little low-budget gem sci-fi slasher, definitely check out Strange Behavior, aka Dead Kids. Yeah, and until next time, keep drinking.