Strange Behavior
UW Cinematheque 821 University Ave., UW Vilas Hall, Room 4070, Madison, Wisconsin
press release: New Zealand | 1981 | DCP | 98 min.
Director: Michael Laughlin; Cast: Michael Murphy, Louise Fletcher, Fiona Lewis
Investigating several brutal killings, police captain John Brady (Murphy) discovers evil goings-on at a local college’s psychology lab and eventually learns that his own son is being programmed to murder him! This genuinely bizarre cult item was co-written by soon-to-be-director Bill Condon (Gods and Monsters, Beauty and the Beast). Set in the American Midwest heartland, Strange Behavior was filmed entirely in New Zealand! “Full of wondrous scene-by-scene oddities” (Scott Tobias, The Dissolve).
Our numerous and diverse Fall 2018 special presentations include a screening of an excellent vintage print of Roger Corman’s low-budget The Little Shop of Horrors; Douglas Sirk’s masterful melodrama All That Heaven Allows and Todd Hayne’s reworking of Sirk, Far from Heaven; rare 35mm prints of Antonioni’s counter-culture classic Zabriskie Point and Claire Denis sibling saga Nenette and Boni; a screening of the popular recent documentary The Eagle Huntress with producer Stacey Reiss in person; plus new digital restorations of two cult horror comedies from the early 1980s: Basket Case and Strange Behavior, as well as George Sluizer’s great thriller The Vanishing, Powell and Pressburger’s repressed nuns classic Black Narcissus, and the landmark independent Buddies, the first movie to depict the AIDS crisis.
All Cinematheque screenings are free and open to the public.