Sonhos Mortais

Every remotely experienced horror fanatic becomes skeptical when the words "dreams" or "nightmare" feature in the title of a cheap & obscure late-80s slasher. Back then, every aspiring director wanted to cash in on the success of Wes Craven's "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and do 'something' with dreams/nightmares.

Kristine Peterson's "Deadly Dream" seemingly fits this description, but it honestly deserves a bit more praise and credit. This certainly isn't a hidden treasure or an undiscovered gem, but it does have a couple of worthwhile moments. The opening sequence, for instance, is quite heave and depicts the brutal murder or a mother and father - on Christmas day - by a hunter with a vicious animal skin mask, who goes by the name of Norman Perkins.

Norman Perkins! Get it? I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of another character named Anthony Bates, but he never showed up. Anyway, the murders are bloody and brutal, and little Alex who witnessed the massacre of mom and dad still struggles with mental issues more than a decade later. Alex has dreams and visions of Norman Perkins stalking him with his eerie mask. Then, inevitable, follows the clichéd and derivative middle section. Is Perkins really chasing Alex, or is he only dreaming it? Or maybe he's being pranked by his idiot best friend or driven loco by someone else entirely?

The middle section is quite dull, but the overall running time is luckily quite short, and there are still noteworthy moments, like the gratuitous nudity provided by Juliette Cummings and the many appearances of that really cool skin-mask! The climax also still holds a few neat (albeit predictable) twists in store. Overall, worth your time if you're an 80s horror fanatic.

A promising premise, but not all that successful in gelling everything together hampered this twisted, grim little unknown psychological thriller. It's strange and disjointed as the narrative moves back and forth where our main Alex is plagued by visions of his past where as a child he witnessed his mother and father brutally gunned down by a hunter wearing a skinned wolf mask. However what's screwing with his mind, is that he believes he's seeing the hunter for real despite that he's parent's killer shot himself soon after the murders. The plot is made-up of a collection of recurring flashes and bad nightmares, each one more jarring then the first. But these nightmares just seem too real. Is Alex just losing his sanity (as outside his nightmare he's seeing the masked killer) or is there something more devious going on. The slow-winding material is quite knotty, but simply too vague despite the predictably of the circumstances. It's all familiar; soapy dramatics tied amongst a shady web of paranoia and deceit with a twist upon a twist, although one of those revelations comes midway through it. The momentum can be quite bumpy (as some sequences can feel drawn out to only pad out what might have been better suited as a short film or a TV episode for such shows as "The Twilight Zone" or "Tales From the Crypt"), where the suspense only lasts in short bursts (due to the idea of dreams and reality blurring together) and from that the chills / shock tactics come to the forefront. There are solid bunch of performances; Mitchell Anderson is suitably fitting as the neurotic Alex. Juliette Cummins and Thom Babbes are acceptable as his worried girlfriend / and friend. Xander Berkeley keeps a bitter attitude as Alex's older brother. Director Kristine Peterson's sober handling didn't entirely do the production any favours, as while capable it just lacked the liveliness that was needed. "Deadly Dreams" is an interesting, but leadenly flawed low-budget oddity.

Much more a psychological thriller than a true horror film (despite the fairly regular doses of gore), "Deadly Dreams" details what happens as young writer Alex Torme (Mitchell Anderson, "Jaws: The Revenge") continues to be haunted by visions stemming from witnessing his parents' death on Christmas Eve 10 years ago. The perpetrator was Perkins (Duane Whitaker, "Eddie Presley"), a business rival of Alex's father, who showed up in hunters' attire and sporting a skinned wolf mask.

Now Alex begins to wonder if he's losing his mind, concerning his best friend Danny (played by screenwriter Thom Babbes), his new girlfriend Maggie (the gorgeous Juliette Cummins of other 80s genre flicks like "Psycho III", "Friday the 13th: A New Beginning", and "Slumber Party Massacre II"), and his older brother Jack (Xander Berkeley, "Candyman"), who dutifully runs the family business.

Directed with some style by Kristine Peterson ("Body Chemistry"), featuring a good music score (by Todd Boekelheide), and flirting with the whole "where does the nightmare end and where does reality begin" approach, "Deadly Dreams" manages to generate some atmosphere. The cast is game (character actor Troy Evans ('ER') turns up as a disbelieving sheriff), but the plot may fall apart if one starts to think about it too much. (Babbes does delight in delivering the twists as this reaches its conclusion.) Ultimately, it doesn't deliver any real surprises. It's watchable enough (this viewer, at least, didn't find it overly boring), but is largely unmemorable.

Five out of 10.

Troubled by strange dreams, a man tries to get to the bottom of everything with the help of his friends and new girlfriend to figure out why he's been seeing the masked killer who traumatized him as a child only for a series of cruel developments to hinder his progress.

Overall, this was a fairly solid if somewhat troubling genre effort. Among the better features here come from the strong setup that allows for the film to be a highly effective psychological genre effort. With a fantastic starting point including the harrowing murder of his parents by the killer in a chilling wolf mask and just barely escaping, this type of encounter affects him later in life to the point of still hallucinating the encounter or dreaming about the killer returning in his dreams. These encounters are built up nicely throughout here to the point of starting to genuinely believe that the situation has started to affect him and that his unhinged nature at the center of this one has come to pass. With it leading into a fun finale with some striking twists and some fine goer effects that help to establish the central plotline of this one, there are some good points to this one. There are some big problems here keeping this one down. The main issue is the fact that there's just not a whole lot else going on here while it's building up this psychological breakdown. This type of idea works far better as a short with the idea of him still being tormented by the dreams but unable to prove it so things like the idea of him going around seeing the hunter at his house, in the gym, or stalking trips with his girlfriend tend to meander around without a whole lot o purpose. Even though the trauma is somewhat justifiable and reasonable to still be struggling with, there's nothing here that keeps it interesting beyond waiting to see where the whole thing goes and gets resolved. This also causes the film to rely so much on the nature of being unable to tell dreams from reality that the attempts at curtailing his mental state fall into a somewhat neverending series of freakouts over things that may or may not be there to then realize it was a dream-within-a-dream that comes about way too often to be effective. Even with the idea of there being a genuine killer there, this tactic becomes far too irritating and repetitive dragging the pacing out. Also rather dragging is the tired cliche about the true purpose behind everything which comes across as quite overbearing and doesn't have the kind of sting expected of it due to following the expected revelation which gives this a somewhat large series of drawbacks to overcome the positives.

Rated R: Graphic Language, Full Nudity, Graphic Violence, a sex scene, and drug use.

This movie is as its title says....Dreams....ugggghhhh....

The movie is so confusing at times you never know when the dreams are real or not. The movie generally revolves around a man who was in the house with his parents the night they were murdered by a hunter in (I'm guessing) a wolf's head mask.

The movie moves along at all the velocity of a golf cart, with no real twists or turns. There is the underlying story of the main characters both in love with the same woman, who's playing both sides in order to get ahead (can you say gold-digger?) I'll give it a 3 out of 10, because it does have some nice nude scenes, with a very cool ending despite its slow story. However if you are looking for a great horror film, look away at another one instead.