Strange Behavior (1981)

Directed by

Michael Laughlin

Genre

horror film

Country

New Zealand

Runtime

1h 39m

Rated

R

Rating

5.5 of 10 from 69 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

In a small Midwestern town, teenagers are being murdered in strange ways. At the same time, the local university is running secret mind control experiments on young people. The film feels like an old 1950s horror comic book come to life.

creepypulpishsuspensefulmoodyretrounsettlingmysteriousgory

What happens

Strange Behavior (also known as Dead Kids, Small Town Massacre, Shadowlands, Human Experiments) is a 1981 slasher film written, directed and co-produced by Michael Laughlin, co-written with Bill Condon, and starring Michael Murphy, Louise Fletcher and Dan Shor. Its plot follows a series of bizarre murders being perpetrated against teenagers in a small Midwestern town, at the same time that the local university is engaging in covert mind control experiments on the youth. An international co-production between United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia, the film was intended as the first instalment of the Strange Trilogy which was cancelled after the second instalment, Strange Invaders, failed to attract a large enough audience. It is a homage to the pulp horror films of the 1950s. The film is considered a seminal work of New Zealand cinema, being the first horror film produced in the country. It has since attracted a large cult following. While not prosecuted for obscenity, the film was seized and confiscated in the UK under Section 3 of the Obscene Publications Act 1959 during the video nasty panic. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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