DEADLY DREAMS
Perhaps best described as "flaccid"
Unbearably routine and pedestrian for its first two thirds, this movie saves itself from crapitude by a couple of twists near the end, although one of those twists is predictable as hell (I mean, would there be a point to that character at all if he didn't turn out to be evil?).
A 10-year-old boy sees a man saunter in to his home and blow away his parents with a shotgun. So for the next ten years or so, he keeps having nightmares and daytime visions of this guy - who, by the way, wears a wolf's skin mask. (I thought it was a big bunny rabbit mask when I looked at the front of the box)
There's a major problem here, and that's in the casting of the lead. The name Mitchell Anderson probably doesn't ring any bells to you, but I'll bet that if you saw this guy, you'd immediately know who I mean. Anyway, this guy's pretty much impossible to take seriously unless he's playing a sensitive gay guy - mostly, because he's such a limited actor that sensitive gay guy roles (which are usually written so simplistically that a capuchin monkey couldn't fuck it up) are the only ones that don't loudly announce those limitations.
The girl playing his geni-thrall, the fiery-maned Juliette Cummins, is pretty foxy, though, and carries the show along well when she's onscreen, especially when she's naked. She actually starred (and got naked in) three sequels in a row - Friday the 13th part V, Psycho III and Slumber Party Massacre II. I guess she knows where her talents lie. Nobody else is of note.
Another problem is the thing with the nightmares/daymares. I mean, they just don't fool anybody. Do they ever? This is not something that's pulled off very well very often, and certainly not here. I think this movie set some kind of record for number of times it tried fooling the audience with this trick (and failed).
If you've got a thing for redheads, watch this one in fast-forward. Otherwise, leave on the shelf.