Strange Behavior (Dead Kids), 1981, Michael Laughlin. Watched at home on the Criterion Channel on Wednesday, October 5.

The Criterion Channel’s 1980s Horror series apparently intends to showcase
little-seen works like this one, though it does leave one wondering why they
didn’t get better fare. Strange Behavior is rich with character and
background detail—the opening scenes between Michael Murphy’s John Brady and
Dan Shor’s Pete, John’s son, is a study in communicating character. Two men
living together, the place a mess but not disastrously so, is perfect and
perfectly strange. The town looks real and lived in, as do most of the homes
and restaurants and stores.

All of which clouds the fact that it contains an awful B-movie plot,
something about a secret study at the local University that is never really
explained, outrageously dull backstory, and a surprise conclusion that owes a
lot to The Empire Strikes Back. The problem is, B-movies tend to be
models of efficiency, which is important because you don’t want to stop to
think. Strange Behavior spends so much time laboring over its small
details—the Sheriff’s office, a teen age party—you can’t help but go “wait, why
did this—?” At one point, John Brady has to open a crypt, and the filmmakers
thought we should see this happen in what appears to be real time—this dumbass chips away at the grout, scraping, scraping, scraping, pulling, pushing, working to get the brick out of the way… and at one point I wanted to scream  “open the fucking thing already!” It also stops being fun pretty quickly. From the producer of Two-Lane Blacktop, so I don’t know if the slow cinema was his own idea, or others.