Strange Behavior (1981)

While the premise certainly showed some promise and they were on the right track with a few decent scenes of violence, "Strange Behavior" ends up falling short of being anything all that gripping or memorable. 

Some mysterious and gruesome murders taking place in a small Illinois town. It turns outs (and this is revealed WAY early on so I hardly consider it a 'spoiler'...) that  a local lab is conducting mind control experiments on the resident young people who volunteer for pay. The police chief - whose son starts wittingly lending his cognizance to the immoral scientific studies for college tuition scratch - begins suspecting a known - and presumably dead - mad doctor is behind the maniacal conspiracy.

I feel like this movie came so close to finding its stride but never succeeds. Like, the characters are almost likeable, but never quite. The kill scenes are decent, but manage to come nowhere near 'stand-out' compared to countless other horror films of the '80s. The main element of the story - being the teenagers used as human guinea pigs dosed into mindless killers as a tool for a mad scientist's revenge - is strong, concept-wise, though just doesn't happen hit its mark at any point in the film. The 'flow' of the film just feels clumsy and confused in the administering of this idea up until the equally poor and underwhelming end reveal. "Strange Behavior" is just a movie that's ALMOST good and actually DOES have a fun, kinda Halloween-y 'feel' to it, I thought (probably because of the goofy costume party scene). I dug the Tor Johnson mask and a fairly effective scene involving a bathtub mutilation. Also, Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched) is in this, which was cool and the one old guy's line about "fat ones" was funny. In all, it might've been the first but it's definitely NOT the best horror flick to come out of New Zealand.