Everything Action Theater: Drop Dead Fred
Blumhouse’s Imaginary is out this weekend in theaters and back in 1991 there was a less murderous, but still insane imaginary friend with Drop Dead Fred. Starring Phoebe Cates as a court reporter named Elizabeth Cronin, her life starts to spiral out of control as her husband wants a divorce after having an affair, someone breaks into her car and she’s fired from her job. Forced to move back into her childhood home with her mother, Elizabeth finds an old Jack in the box and unleashes her imaginary friend from childhood, Drop Dead Fred (Rik Mayall). Fred proceeds to cause all kinds of chaos for Elizabeth in a quest to make her happy again. The film was critically panned when it was released but it became a cult favorite and in recent years got new life from How Did This Get Made?, whose episode on the movie is one of their most popular shows and established the in-joke of “Team Sanity” vs “Team Fred” because of the disagreement about Fred’s reality and the quality of the movie between the hosts. You can watch the entire movie below, thanks to YouTube.