Dreamscape

It will earn your respect as a film and you will be intrigued, but not a film you'll write home about.

Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) is a psychic, he is in tune with his subconscious, once involved with the studies of Dr Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow) he is now an outcast, trying to live off the grid. He survives by gambling, his ability to predict horse race winners, makes this line of work easy pickings, accept there is a gang of thugs on to his abilities and want a cut of the pie.

Whether Alex is rescued or not is up for discussion, but he is whisked off to a campus and persuaded to work once again under his protege Dr Novotny in a project funded by the government. This project is to enter people's dreams, they then have the ability to alter the dream, curing night terrors etc. Something sinister is lurking though, otherwise we wouldn't have a movie.

Despite its obvious flaws, it is quite a solid flick and would be enjoyed by any sci-fi enthusiast. The cast are brilliant including Kate Capshaw as the beautiful Jane DeVries, David Patrick Kelly as the creepy Tommy Ray Glatman and a host of other names you'll recognise, Christopher Plummer, Peter Jason, George Wendt and Eddie Albert.

I might be a bit harsh to say the writing is bad, but there are enough kinks in its armour to say so, the flow is definitely off, whether this is due to writing or editing I don't know. It is a very good story, and it is as if there was a much bigger plan, but maybe money or something else got in the way of executing exactly what was wanted, it felt like it had lost 30 mins in the middle somewhere. All in all, a good watch.

Cheese moment: Not the cheesiest of films, but it has its moments. The scene when he is being chased by the govt agents, they are on foot while he is on a motorbike.

Psychic Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) is recruited for a government-funded institute. In it psychics are able to get into peoples' dreams and interact with them. However one subject dies while in this state and Alex realizes something is wrong. And the President (Eddie Albert) is going to visit the institute for some nightmares he is having...

I enjoyed watching this but realized, after it was over, that it didn't make a whole lot of sense and there were plot holes left and right. Still, it moves quickly and the dream sequences themselves were lots of fun. This was also the second PG-13 rating ever released. It was cut to get that (a sex scene between Quaid and Kate Capshaw was almost completely dropped) but there were some complaints about the amount of violence (none of which was cut) that was allowed in. By today's standards though it's not that bad.

Quaid is good--he's young, handsome and not taking any of this seriously. Max von Sydow is very good as the head doctor of the research. Kate Capshaw is pretty terrible as his assistant. Christopher Plummer seems to be proving he can say his lines without moving a muscle in his face. Albert is lots of fun as the President and David Patrick Kelly almost runs away with the movie as Tommy Ray Glatin.

So a quick, fun little movie. Just don't think about it too much.

Years after studying Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) for his psychic abilities, Dr. Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow) tracks him down to talk him into experimenting with psychic dream research. However, higher ups in the dream research program may have ulterior, nefarious motives.

Dreamscape may be a good candidate for "most misleading poster art". The theatrical poster, which is also the DVD cover, suggests a kid-oriented, slightly hokey adventure film--perhaps a combination of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984), The Neverending Story (1984) and "The Hardy Boys Mysteries" (1977). Not that the combination sounds like a bad idea to me, but this film is much more adult, much more sci-fi, and more of a thriller. It's not really an adventure, although some of the dream material could be seen that way. The tone, if not content, is closer to something like Coma (1978), and later films like Flatliners (1990) and The Cell (2000), the latter being obviously influenced by Dreamscape. It also has a bit of the bizarre surrealist tone of late-1970s fare such as Phantasm (1979) (and this aspect also influenced films like The Cell).

Part of the reason the films works as well as it does is the cast. Dennis Quaid carries the film, frequently injecting enjoyable comic relief. Max von Sydow is always excellent. Kate Capshaw, as Jane DeVries, is also good as the research assistant and Alex' love interest. Although they're underused, Christopher Plummer, Eddie Albert, George Wendt and David Patrick Kelly all turn in superb performances as well.

Director Joseph Ruben frequently treats us to great dream sequences, with often-subtle touches. Note, for example, the different colors upon entering different persons' dreams. For the relatively benign construction worker, the entry is blue. For the child troubled with nightmares, there is a complex of colors. For Jane, who is giving Alex the cold shoulder, the color is an icy silver-white. Although the film was relatively low budget, and effects relatively primitive at the time, I thought all of the effects worked well. I even loved the part stop-motion, part guy-in-a-costume snake-man. At times the stop motion work briefly resembled Harryhausen. I especially loved the more surreal and more horrific aspects of the dreamworlds, such as we see from Eddie Albert's character, the expressionistic sets for the child's dream, the zombies, and so on.

Surprisingly, perhaps, Dreamscape is also much more effective on the suspense/thriller end than I expected it to be. There are a few great chase scenes, and one brutal (though not graphic) murder on-screen, one off-screen. It was also steamier than I expected in one section.

The idea is fantastic. Can you imagine being able to get into other people's dreams, watch them, interact with them. The problem is, the plot is inconclusive and becomes kind of a TV movie along the way. It would make a fantastic remake with a stronger cast and director. However, movies about dreaming are always scary because they touch on something so close and yet inexplicable to all of us. I saw recently a short movie from Italy entitled "Xchange" which is the closest to this one in terms of innovation insofar as the subject is concerned. Not an easy area to tell a long story about. Dreams are often used as omens or hints of psychological discomfort in movies. Instead, it would be great if they could be regarded as something different: a world of their own, a parallel state of mind no less real than real life itself. Someone should redo Dreamscape!

For 1984, this is a good sci-fi movie. I remember watching its as a kid. I was scared for days of the Snake Man in the movie. Having watched it recently, I noticed that it had naturally lost the terror that it instilled when I was a child. Despite this, it brought back foggy memories and allowed me to analyze and enjoy the film on an adult level.

The story concerns a project that allows telepaths to enter into the dreams of others. Inside these dreams they are able to help/harm the individuals from/with their nightmares. Dennis Quaid plays a young Alex Gardner who possesses the gift of telepathy. Under the study of Max Von Sydow and Kate Capshaw (forgot how attractive she was), Alex enter patient's dreams and tries to help them. But with this ability, there are others that would use it as a weapon. When the President (Eddie Albert) begins having haunting nightmares, can someone help him escape his dreams before its too late?

Dreamscape delivers some of the eighties creativity and originality that we can only hope for in today's movies. Take out the gore and grotesqueness of "The Cell" and you could say this movie was its inspiration.