DREAMSCAPE
The Snakeman would kick Freddy Krueger's ass
Dreamscape was the one movie I adored as a kid (well, teenager, I guess; I was 12 or 13) that nobody else ever cared for, or noticed. As soon as I had money (that is, when I was 16 and thus could get a job), I went straight to the video store and asked them to order a copy for me. They looked it up, told me the price and my jaw dropped through the floor.
"ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY DOLLARS?!?!?!?"
So, I didn't buy that copy, which is just as well, because our Beta permanently broke down about two months later. I waited a few years and a nearby video store went out of business ' I picked up a whole bunch of movies I wished I hadn't, didn't pick up a lot of movies I wish I had (ah, hindsight, you useless, nagging bitch), but I'm glad I got me a copy of Dreamscape.
Watching it now at twice the age I first saw it, I still have a lot of affection for it, and I enjoy it from beginning 'til end, although its numerous flaws have become fairly obvious. This isn't a horror movie as one might normally define it, but there is a very strong and prevalent horror aspect to the film; it does, after all, revolve around nightmares.
A saxophone-playing Dennis Quaid (you can tell this is the 80's because that's when playing a saxophone was considered cool, for whatever reason) stars as a young psychic fella named Alex Gardner. (man, check out that pink sweater) He's basically frittered away his chances at Making Something Of Himself, and he's surely making his parents proud, using his mental gifts to bet at the track. One day he's taken by some strange men to an Thorn Hill University, or College, or something, where his old mentor (Max Von Sydow) is developing a technique to enter psychics into the dreams of those suffering from chronic nightmares, to resolve whatever issues those people have.
Alex reluctantly gets in on the program, partly because his track-betting is becoming increasingly monitored by local goons, partly because one of the people working on the project is a fox (Kate Capshaw), and partly because it's just a cool idea. At first it's comparatively harmless, and then he starts entering the dreams of people with more problematic nightmares, and then there's the President (Eddie Albert), who can't get dreams of nuclear annihilation out of his head, represented by his rather creepy aide (Christopher Plummer). And there's another psychic in on the project, a possibly insane young hood named Tommy (David Patrick Kelly).
The script itself (by David Loughery, Joseph Ruben, and Chuck Russell) is pretty klunky in terms of dialogue, particularly Quaid's attempts at comic relief. But in terms of story and setup, it's imaginative as hell. Dreamscape involves its characters in a half-controllable nightmare world realized with more imagination and energy than you could hope to mine from all seven Elm Street movies.
Not just in terms of set design and creature creation (gotta love the Snakeman, who absolutely terrified me as a young 'un), but in the shape of the interactions in the dream. A boy runs from that Snakeman and comes across his father. The kid turns to Alex and says "That's my dad, but he won't help." The dad stoically replies "The little bastard's right!" In another dream, a man imagines his wife having sex with his brother (hilariously set up, with carnival music and everything) ("You're doing it with my brother? And...and...in front of the children!" he sobs, as the camera cuts over to these two well-dressed little kids, looking dutifully on, rather bored), and when he confronts her, he keeps pulling more of his friends and acquaintances out of hiding places in the room.
The political intrigue aspect doesn't work very well as political intrigue, but it does work as a romp through various levels of nightmare and psycho-logic; it gives us men turning into monsters, zombies, nunchaku action, dogs with glowing eyes, a train ride through a blasted world, a guy getting his heart ripped out - all aboard, baby!
Quaid smirks and quips his way through the film like a low-rent Han Solo, no favors done to him by the script, and Capshaw doesn't do much more than look pretty, not to mention look really fantastic, breast-wise. (whatddya want from me? Yeesh, if you saw her in this assortment of shirts and sweaters, you'd agree) But it's a lot of fun to see Sydow in this role; like a kindly grandfather-type who isn't above blackmail and just being a mad scientist. And Christopher Plummer does his icy villain thing better here than most anywhere else.
Standing out among the players is Kelly, who brings an interesting shade of near-humane desperation to his role. Yeah, he's a nut, and he's probably evil too, but there's a nugget of humanity in there, a refusal to sink TOO far in to the mulch within. He's a nut, but he knows he's a nut, and he doesn't like it - there's a whiff of tragedy here. Kelly got a lot of badguy roles, but this is his best.
Of the movie's flaws, the script stands out the most. Maurice Jarre's music is terrible, bad beyond any measurable standards of bad. And Quaid's smirk gets really old, really fast. Still, what's left over is a lot of fun, and an undeservedly overlooked gem. Dreamscape was directed by Joel Ruben, who gave us The Stepfather and a number of its imitators, and here he makes the most out of a low budget.
This was one of the very first movies to receive a PG-13 rating - perhaps second, behind Red Dawn. This movie never got a sequel (which is a shame - the possibilities here are way beyond that of most franchises), but a TV series last year (I don't even remember the title) tried to explore the same idea. Lasted about three weeks. Abraham Benrubi went crawling back to E.R..