Dead Sleep

As a general rule, when I'm looking for a movie to watch, all I need to see is the word "Australia" in the description of the movie to know enough to keep looking. No offense to any Australians out there, mind you, and if watching padded-out, wordy, tepid, boring flicks with minimal action rocks your world then more power to you, although if you guys drink as much as the characters in this film do, that might have something to do with it. Anyways, I love Linda Blair and I find her quite cute and a talented actress with charm that lights up whatever B-movie junk she finds herself thrust into, but I knew she'd be put to the test in lighting up a garbage Australian flick before I even hit play and, arguably, this is one of the lesser films I've seen her in.

While I wouldn't describe this film as being entirely awful, it is predictable to where you know exactly what is going to go down before you are even 20 minutest into it, making this slow-moving, padded out timewaster that much harder to get through, with 98 minutes feeling like over two hours if you manage to make it that far. The basic premise itself is actually somewhat believable (I don't put anything past what the corrupt healthcare systems in Western countries will do for a buck), but this film can't decide if it is serious or schlock. It is too cheesy to be serious and too boring and toned down to be schlock and, seeing as it is a low-budget flick with middling actors and writers, the correct move should have been to go over the top with the exploitation and have some fun, but no dice. It's about what you'd expect and, sadly, even Linda can't save it.

I found this movie better than the critics reviews. It's a horror-thriller. Like most movies, you have to watch them for your self to know if you will like it or not. This particular film I liked.

Basically, Dr. Jonthan Heckett is a psychiatrist working with a treatment called "Dead Sleep". Maggie Healey (Linda Blair) is a nurse hired in a psychiatric ward who discovers that Dr. Heckett's treatments are not helpful to the patients - in fact, the treatments are quite harmful. Maggie finds herself pulled into investigating the situation.

The film does have an amount of realism to it... the movie does not give us Dr. Heckett's exact motive but one might guess it's for insurance money - money in his own pocket (along with others that are in on it).

Apathy for the patients is what most of the doctors and nurses have in the film - yet, as I mentioned above, the viewer is left wondering what their exact motive is.

The "realism" is the fact that is it possible that a doctor could do such a thing to people... keep them, make up illnesses just for insurance money in their pockets... that is what makes this movie scary and realistic/plausible.

The ending I did not like - I would have rather seen arrests made but I am assuming that arrests did occur after the film ended.

Good late night film.

8/10

Maggie Healey (Linda Blair) has just landed a job as a psychiatric nurse at the prestigious Elysian Fields Hospital. She soon uncovers a horrible secret, resulting in her quitting her position.

Oh no!

Maggie's boyfriend winds up in Elysian Fields for "treatment" and meets with a tragic end, causing Maggie to get her job back. This time, she sleuths around for answers.

Even diehard fans of Ms. Blair might have a difficult time with her Pollyanna / snoopy-pants character. Still, the story's good with some suspenseful moments...

A young nurse (Linda Blair) investigates suspicious deaths in a psychiatric ward.

I am not sure why after "Exorcist" it seems that Linda Blair ended up in cheesy films alongside David Hasselhoff, or with unknown Italians, or in this "ozploitation" film. I suspect it had something to do with drugs, but why that affected her acting is not clear.

There are some redeeming qualities to this film, and I think it would be worth a revisit if it was cleaned up an audio commentary was added. While it could never be a cult classic, I suspect Blair has interesting stories to share about this film and it would be good to get someone (Shout Factory?) to collect them.

Now, you have never faced a real situation of doctors murdering their patients for money. If you faced that situation, the movie portrayed is quite realistic. No one wants to rock the boat and everyone pretend to be stupid. I have seen it all the time. Yes, they look like "twits", but don't real life when you found somethings wrong, don't they all look like "twits"? While the movie is not on par with blockbuster or something as entertaining, I have had a bad luck to fight with corruption that is in similar scale to the ones in the movie, but the reality is much much worse, the ending is not as nice and neat like the movie, and the general apathy of people is quite ridiculously high. Collecting monthly and weekly salaries and making a living without rocking the system bad or good is usually their motto.

No doctor will admit that they kill their patients or make the patients conditions worse so they can collect more money by getting their patients to stay in the hospitals much longer or subjected to a more drastic measures when they could prevented the crisis by giving something as simple as an pill. You see many hospitals give doctors 50% of the cut from the money they collect from their patients. It makes for much longer hospital stays if they have their insurance covered. And believed it or not if the insurance is canceled, they will kick you out in a second's notice.

I have seen this issue hundreds of time and people just don't get it. Why doctors do what they do, is what I have seen in real life so many times and when you go through the bureaucrat you will see some of the worse treatment of denial ever.

It is only when the majority public knows about it that and facts are all out that they might look into the issue. This is the general state of what corruption is really like, just as the way the movie is exactly portrayed.

Mine you the movie is not entertainment, but in real life this is one of those movies I have to show children what bureaucrats, and doctors who kill their patient (happens much more than you think) is like.

If only people can see through it in real life just like the movie, it would be great, but people just can't see through this analogy. For this, it is the best Linda Blair movie I ever seen. Only Exorcist ranks second on the "reality" ratings. I can be quite vocal about this issue because three of my relatives are doctors and three more of my relatives are nurses. So this is straight from the horse's mouth!