Disturbing Behavior

Summary

“Toxic jock syndrome.”

The MVD Rewind label has recently released the 1998 teenage horror-thriller Disturbing Behavior on Blu-ray. The film was originally released on Blu-ray by Shout! Factory a few years back, but that release has been out of print for a couple years. Disturbing Behavior was released during the wave of teenage horror films that came in response to the astonishing success of Scream. Films like Urban Legend, I Know What You Did Last Summer, and Disturbing Behavior all aimed to appeal to Generation X teenagers with money to spend at the theater. In order to help aid that crossover appeal, Disturbing Behavior chose some popular songs for the soundtrack and cast Katie Holmes in one of the lead roles in the film with hopes of luring in fans of Dawson’s Creek. Out of the films listed above, Disturbing Behavior is one of the most entertaining, even though it is the film least concerned with realism. I remember that I was interested in seeing the movie when I saw previews for it on television, but this last week was actually my first time to view the film. I had a lot of fun watching the movie, while also  occasionally laughing at some of its sillier plot points.

In Cradle Bay, at a lookout point, high school jock Andy (Tobias Mehler) sits in a car with a promiscuous high schooler named Mary Jo Copeland. Andy is judgmental about the tattoos on Mary Jo. He also resists the urge to have sex with her, despite her overtures. He says something about saving his fluids and football. On a hill, Gavin (Nick Stahl) looks down at the car trying to see what they are doing. When Mary Jo tries to perform oral sex on Andy, his eyes turn red and he snaps her neck while calling her a slut. A police car pulls up behind Andy’s car and he is asked to step out of his vehicle. When an officer notices the body of the girl in the car, Andy steals his gun and shoots the officer. Officer Cox (Steve Railsback) calms down Andy and helps Andy to dispose of the bodies. Gavin, shocked by what he has witnessed, escapes with his dog through the woods without being seen. High schooler Steve Clark (James Marsden) rides the ferry into Cradle Bay with his mother, father, and younger sister Lindsay (Katharine Isabelle.) They have packed up all their belongings and moved from Chicago because of the lingering traumatic feelings caused by the suicide of Steve’s older brother Allen (Ethan Embry.) Steve starts school and sees firsthand that the jocks in the school – “blue ribboners” – seemingly rule the school with impunity from the adults. At lunch Steve meets Gavin and his albino stoner friend U.V. (Chad Donella.) Gavin and U.V. are outcasts and potheads. The blue ribboners are straight edge kids who focus on sports and academics. They are almost robotic in their clean practices. Gavin and U.V. befriend Steve and after school they introduce Steve to their friend Rachel (Katie Holmes.) Rachel has been dubbed “trash” or “slutty” by the blue ribboners, so she fits in with Gavin and UV. Steve is immediately romantically interested in Rachel, and rides with the gang in her truck to drink a couple beers. One of the blue ribboners – Chug (A.J. Buckley) – approaches Rachel to see if she would like to go with him sometime to get ice cream. When she declines, he walks into a grocery store, his eyes flash red, and he violently attacks some outsider kids. He is calmed down by an adult. Eventually, the Blue Ribboners approach Steve about joining their group at the ice cream parlor, but Gavin interrupts the meeting. Steve refuses to join their group and leaves with Gavin. Gavin explains that something really wrong is happening to the kids and that half of the blue ribboners used to be his hard-partying friends. Once they became blue ribboners, their personalities had warped completely into G-rated sanitized versions that were in no way like themselves. From a hiding place, Gavin shows Steve a meeting about the Blue Ribbon club held by school official Dr. Edgar Caldicott (Bruce Greenwood.) In the meeting, they see some parents expressing worries about their kids’ more callous actions after joining the Blue Ribbon club, but their worries are shrugged off. Gavin watches as his parents nominate him to join the club. Gavin freaks out. On the shoreline, Gavin spills the secret about the murders he witnessed to Steve and tells Steve that he plans to kill the blue ribboners if they try to come for him that night. Steve wrestles a gun away from Gavin, and they head different directions. The next day, Gavin comes to school completely changed. In response, Steve and Rachel work together to get to the bottom of what is happening at the school.

Disturbing Behavior is a lot of fun as long as you can take the storyline at face value, turn your brain off, and avoid focusing on how ridiculous the film actually is. Every now and then, I want to watch a movie that does not tax my mind. Disturbing Behavior is just such a film. I did not need to exercise any muscles in my brain too heavily to enjoy the movie. 

What the film does not have in realism, it makes up for in atmosphere and entertainment value. I love horror films that take place in little seaside towns, and Cradle Bay is a great creation. The plot borrows liberally from The Stepford Wives, key atmospheric aspects from The Fog, high school drama from any number of horror films, and blends them all together in a fun way that is never  boring. The film never dives into excessive violence and is not frightening at all really, so this is a horror film that can be enjoyed by people turned off by most horror films. It is a movie that exists to appeal to a young fan base that wanted to hear The Fly’s “Got You (Where I Want You),” and Harvey Danger’s “Flagpole Sitta” in a teenage horror film while those songs were also blasting on their car speakers in the summer of 1998. It is a popcorn movie. That said, the film’s script was smart enough to exploit toxic masculinity as the true villain in the picture. By highlighting the worst aspects of jock culture from sexual aggressiveness, to slut shaming and attempted rape, Disturbing Behavior was pretty forward thinking for 1998.

The cast is made up of likable actors. James Marsden might win the award as one of the oldest looking high schoolers since Sleepaway Camp (he was 24 at the time of filming,) but he is still a likable leading man. Katie Holmes was at the peak of her powers. Every teenage male in America had a crush on Katie Holmes. Given that all of these late Nineties horror films were trying to cash in on the success of Scream, Holmes was also the only aspect of the film that tied back into Kevin Williamson’s output, because he had created Dawson’s Creek and Scream. William Sadler has a fun role in the film as the Vonnegut-reading rat killing janitor at the school. Bruce Greenwood is perfectly cast as Dr. Caldicott. He has the perfect voice and look to play an authority figure. Nick Stahl does the best that he can to channel Christian Slater from Heathers in the role of Gavin. A.J. Buckley is memorable as the persistent creep Chug. I also really enjoyed the small but memorable performance by Crystal Cass as the sexually repressed blonde bombshell Lorna Longley. Her career fizzled out a little after this movie, but she steals the screen in her few moments. All of the performances work toward realizing the script and none of the performances are embarrassingly bad, although some are ham fisted. In a film like this, I am not sure if that is a good or bad thing.

In my opinion, one of the reasons the film feels so enjoyable and breezy is its relatively brief runtime. The entire film is packed into 84 quick minutes. That said, director David Nutter would argue that this is not to the film’s benefit. His original cut of the picture was over thirty minutes longer before producers hacked away at it in the editing room. I am not sure that the increased exposition would have overcome some of the sillier aspects of the movie’s plot, but I would love to see the original vision for the film for comparison’s sake. Unfortunately, the work print has seemingly vanished, so this version is the definitive version until it is found.

Overall – Disturbing Behavior is a lot of nostalgic fun for those of us that grew up in the latter part of the Nineties. 

Video

MVD Rewind have provided a decent-looking transfer of Disturbing Behavior using an MPEG-4 AVC codec in 1.85:1 aspect ratio in 1080p. From what I have read, this transfer is sourced from the same transfer that Shout! Factory used on their release of the film a few years back. I would imagine that by virtue of being a standalone release this film probably looks the same or slightly better here than that release, but I can not verify this. It’s an older master and shows some of its age. The film actually looks nice in its daytime sequences, but the nighttime sequences have trouble resolving grain. I honestly think that as a budget release of this title which has gone for high prices in its out-of-print state, this transfer is definitely adequate if nothing to write home about.

Audio

MVD Rewind has provided the same DTS-HD MA 5.1 surround track as the prior Shout! release. The surround track sounds good overall, even if it won’t blow anyone away. It is not the most immersive track, but the songs in the film still come across nicely. I was happy overall.

Supplements

• Audio Commentary by Director David Nutter
• Deleted Scenes with optional commentary by David Nutter.
• Trailers

Overall Scores:

Video – 3.5/5

Audio – 4/5

Supplements – 2.5/5

Overall – 3.75/5

Disturbing Behavior is one of the least convincing teenage horror films from the crop of late Nineties horror that sprung from the success of Scream. It is also one of the most entertaining, because it never becomes too concerned with realism. The picture may have been better in its original form before a third of the picture was discarded by producers, but I enjoyed the film in its current short 84 minute form. I had a lot of fun watching this movie and could easily see myself watching this again with my wife in the future. Fans of the film will be happy to see that MVD had brought the film back to Blu-ray with an attractive retro slipcover and the same supplements as the Shout! Factory release. Fans of the film should definitely consider this budget friendly release.