so. Just finished watching “Strange Behavior” all the way.
Took me some time because horror movies aren’t my thing, I’m here for the Dan Shor cuteness… had to take the gory parts in small, spaced-out doses.
Also, I make no secret of having the hots for Dan Shor as Ram… but I’m mainly into aliens and machines, so Dan Shor as this particular human character doesn’t set off quite the same responses for me. (Though I did of course still find him sweet and pretty, and did occasionally feel the urge to take clips and adjust hues into an Encom-glowy color scheme so I could pretend he was Ram.)
Anyway, I’m gonna ramble on about scenes from this movie in no particular order, from the viewpoint of being a Fan of Dan, Especially as Ram, and not a horror movie person at all.
I’m still gonna warn you, there’s references to horror-movie-type things in here… but I won’t go into TOO much detail or post gifs of the very worst bits.
Still, there’s gonna be SOME gifs and discussions of some creepy-ass scenes, so viewer discretion is advised. For both some disturbing horror movie plot elements, and spoilers about said plot elements.
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The character of Pete is a young man finishing up high school… for his age I’d guess 18 since he says at one point that he’ll be going to college next year. In true Hollywood tradition he was played by Dan Shor at age (I think) 25.
(side note. apparently Dan Shor’s first major role was in “Equus,” which… HOLY FUCK. Only read the wikipedia for that if you are prepared for some WEIRD SHIT. Storyline is… strangely in tune with my view of Encom Programs as having a sexual connection with their gods? but takes it off on the most utterly fucked-up tangent. I’m sorta almost glad this was a stage play and there isn’t a film readily available for me to watch.)
(also, random little side note that his character in Equus was named Alan. Which probably means nothing. And is NOT AT ALL connected to Alan Bradley’s actor and how he feels about horses.)
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Anyway.
Pete’s mother died long ago and he’s like, really sweetly close with his dad– to a degree that I suppose some pervs might interpret as weird (like, the one time he gets, uh, just naked enough that I wouldn’t put the gif on tumblr? is when he’s hangin out alone with his dad.) Initial sorta-conflict of the story is that he wants to stay in town where dad is, and dad wants him to go to college somewhere else and see more of the world (which is influenced, we find out later, by stuff his dad knows about fucked-up shit going on at the local college Pete wants to attend).
(Dad’s name is John Brady. Brady, not Bradley. Pattern recognizer has to strain again to see connections there. Also there is an Alan in this movie, but he’s a bartender who appears for a couple seconds in the last scene. Moving on.)
Pete’s dad has a girlfriend– played, interestingly, by Louise Fletcher, at a time when I guess she wasn’t yet typecast as whatever the heck was going on with Nurse Ratched and Kai Winn, so she got to leave the creepy doctor role to Fiona Lewis and just be the sweet lady that Pete’s dad is dating.
Whom Pete really likes, and is super happy for his dad– none of the conflict that I’ve seen this sorta relationship bring up sometimes in other movies.
Pete has a friend, Oliver, who’s just ridiculous and idk what Pete sees in him, but I guess in a small town you find friendship where you can.
They go to a weird-as-hell costume party, where everyone dances to “Lightning Striking Again,” a song that I only recognized because I loved the Klaus Nomi version of it. Sadly, this movie was made 1 year too early for that version to exist.
The party ends in a murder, but I won’t go into that now. Who gets murdered and why is only tangential to the plot.
Needing money for college, Pete volunteers to get experimented on by Creepy Doctor Parkinson (the one who I initially assumed would’ve been played by Louise Fletcher but nope). First it’s just taking a pill, which makes him act weird but in an energetic, confident way.
This leads him to start dating a clerk from the lab… after asking her out in an extremely frightening way… and then on the date saying things to her like 1. that he’s gonna go to college on a basketball scholarship, and 2. that his tiny size is no obstacle to playing basketball because he is “135 pounds of twisted iron and steel” and “a gourmet shrimp.”
(Despite the utter bizarreness of this whole conversation, I somehow absolutely loved seeing this little guy so confident and proud about his height. Reminds me of Ram, a program who definitely knows that the compact efficiency of his filesize is part of his awesomeness.)
Then there’s another murder, but whatever. Only relevant because we become aware that the murders are being committed by different people, all of whom have been experimented on by Parkinson.
Next time Pete goes in for an experimentation session, he gets tied down and there’s some… body horror involving his eye. I am not gonna show the worst of it, because UGH.
Afterwards he falls asleep, and… somehow wakes up with his hand down his pants. O…kay.
And then, amongst various disturbing scenes… we find out a whole lot of things.
Not going into too much detail, but the gifs definitely will be spoilery.
Involving how the creepy doctor’s experiments are… basically programming people…
and how Dad Brady has a vendetta against this lab from long ago, which he now revives with a vengeance, breaking into their secret headquarters (which has lots of Big Doors)…
and how poor Pete– now reduced to a program, with only the directive to kill–
…faces his dad under the judging eye of Creepy Doctor and her boss…
…and how he manages to overcome his programming??
through a loophole– a technicality in the syntax of the command???
