"Strange Behaviour" is a lot better than I'd expected it to be. It has some startling imagery, some genuinely frightening scenes, and finally manages a sense of atmosphere.

It is also an original twist on the slasher formula that was probably stale even in 1981 - at least if the parody film "Student Bodies", made that same year, is anything to go by. Seasoned horror junkies have seen hundreds of slashers at least. We all know the trope of the killer wearing a distinctive mask, which is often removed in the final moments to reveal the killer's identity. But in "Strange Behaviour", the movie has more than one killer, and in fact deals with the question of mind control. In this movie, any of the younger characters can kill at any time, so it's not a question of whodunit. It's more like who's going to go crazy next.

For its cool ideas, occasionally shocking imagery and at least one frightening scene, "Strange Behaviour" is a winner. Unfortunately it is held back by some narrative incoherence and charisma-less lead performances. I still say check it out.

Lastly, I want to say something about the movie's unusual pedigree. It's an American production that was meant to be filmed in Australia, but when the filmmakers couldn't find any cities in Aus that resembled the screenplay's setting in Illinois, they moved the production to New Zealand! How is NZ any more or less Midwestern USA than Australia? And, to top it all off, the movie is considered an "Ozploitation" flick?

No wonder the plotting is a little confusing. The cast and crew probably didn't know where the hell they were, or were supposed to be, or what they were actually making.

Experiments at a local lab are connected to a series of brutal murders in a small midwestern town. Confusing but effective chiller, made on a low budget, has a cast of mostly unknowns, but it all comes together. It does leave some uneasiness, and does offer some shocking scenes that, while not elaborate, are still pretty gory. It is a very disturbing, surreal experience, with solid suspense and a good ending. It feels like you're having a bad dream: a nightmarish place, faceless persons, creepy enough to want to get out of, but intriguing enough to want to stay and see what happens. Strange indeed.

Inventive horror yarn that transcends the usual slasher fare by mixing in an imaginative, sometimes scarily plausible plot with the usual nasty in-your-face violence that goes with the period. Filmed in New Zealand but set in America, the photography in this film is ruined by a hideous print and poor pan-and-scan job on the video version I saw, but that doesn't stop it being a tense and grisly exercise in terror that proves to be a lot stronger than other '80s horror fare. I know I always use it as a whipping boy, but the Friday the 13 series in comparison is sterile, comic book stuff.

I really liked this film's plot of a science lab being the front of a brainwashing cult, which I believe hadn't been done elsewhere. Some scenes are packed with tension and the film as a whole is very suspenseful. The gore isn't overdone, but is still pretty strong stuff and used in a way to make you squirm (for example, in one scene a boy slashes open his own wrists - ouch!). The scene in which the maid discovers a girl sawing the arm off a corpse is particularly grisly. At the same time, there's a great final twist in the plot (the "kill your father" scene) which I have to say I didn't see coming, although some other moments are predictable.

The acting as a whole is impressive, especially when you consider most of the cast are unknowns. Particularly affecting are Dan Shor as the brainwashed teen, Fiona Lewis as a despicably evil nurse and, most of all, Arthur Dignam (for trivia fans, he went on to play Ernest Thesiger in GODS AND MONSTERS) as the weird-looking, immortal scientist. Great stuff. While the film does have some lulls and seems overlong at even a fairly shot running time, it still manages to be quirky, unpredictable and on the occasion, intensely gripping.