Dream No Evil

I have been an ardent admirer of the delightfully deviant, uniquely inspired genre filmmaker, John Hayes ever since I had the goodly fortune to enjoy his ominous, sporadically goofy, grievously Gothic oddity 'Grave of The Vampire' (1972). 'Dream No Evil' is arguably Hayes's most exquisitely eerie expression of his altogether singular filmmaking artistry. Not unlike fellow indie marvel, Robert Allen Schnitzer, I sincerely feel that these quality Blu-ray restorations will draw worthy scrutiny upon this somewhat unfairly neglected cinematic iconoclast, whose wonderfully off-beat, idiosyncratic visions are manifestly unlike any other filmmaker.

'Dream No Evil' opens tersely in an orphanage wherein a terrified young girl, Grace McDonald (Brooke Mills) has a screaming nightmare, crying out desperately for a father who may or may not still be alive, or if alive, may have simply abandoned her. While Grace grows up into a beautiful, physically healthy young woman her morbid obsession over her absent father warps her objectivity, ultimately sending her on a hallucinatory pilgrimage into a waking, techinicolor nightmare. Ice-cold corpses reanimate at will, intricate dreams become terrifyingly real and her darkly incestuous fantasies are so vividly rendered, she is wholly consumed by make believe. Grace's morbid fantasies prove to be anything but harmless, as they all too frequently say, be careful what you wish for!

The calamitous rupture in her tormented psyche is deftly orchestrated by Hayes, and the heady, evocative milieu of a barnstorming, roadside preacher with all its attendant hysteria is no less memorably staged. The inimitable, Michael Pataki imbuing the barnstorming role of Rev. Paul Jessie Bundy with all the unfiltered zeal such a flamboyant misfit requires! Dream No Evil's delirious final act is a suitably terrifying expose of a deranged, murderously-inclined psyche, both morbidly fascinating and existentially repellent at the same time. Grace's astonishingly angelic beauty, lustrous red hair and lissome charms belie an uncommonly vibrant, 3-dimensional, preternaturally destructive madness, 'Dream No Evil' remains a luridly immersive Freudian phantasmagoria one is unlikely to forget!

I pride myself in being able to sit through some pretty awful movies. To me, low budget doesn't always equal garbage. There are a lot of hidden diamonds on the rough out there that the world passed by because they weren't marketed well or never got solid distribution. I'd hoped Dream No Evil would be one of those movies, but it's anything but. It's a tedious, slow journey into absolute nothingness.

A young orphan girl who suffers from bad dreams is eventually adopted, but she still longs to, one day, meet her real father. She grows up and becomes a flamboyant preacher's assistant in their church act which seems much more circus than the churches I've attended. She falls for a guy, she meets her real father, and then she goes insane and starts chasing people with an axe in the last 5 minutes of the film.

There's not a lot of logical story progression in Dream No Evil. There's an odd, fairy tale-esque voice over throughout that seems to have been added to help better explain what the hell is going on, but it's about as useful as buying a hooker for a nun. Character motivations come and go and you never know why anyone is doing anything.

I'm sad to report that Dream No Evil is a film better left buried.

I wanted to like this film more than I did. Sadly, the grindhouse filmmaking missed more opportunities than it took.

Brooke Mills carries this little film with her mesmerizing beauty. I simply could not take my eyes off her. Her performance is good, as is that of Edmond O'Brien as her father. But although the basics of a decent story are there, the script left so little to work with that they relied upon her mere presence onscreen. Great as that may be, it simply is not enough.

This film is a fun diversion and time capsule of the early 70s. Enjoy it for what it is, and try to overlook a weak script and journeyman directing that failed to deliver on what could have been.

"Dream No Evil" focuses on Grace, a woman who was orphaned as a child and adopted by a traveling circus/Evangelist act. Grace harbors a deep yearning to find her birth father, with whom she is deeply obsessed. Her fixation on finding her biological father leads her into an increasingly grim situation.

While it's clear that "Dream No Evil" has taken many notes from "Psycho," it is far more bizarre than Hitchcock's film could have dreamed of being. This low-budget effort is shot in a style reminiscent of 1970s TV movies, and it boasts a significant amount of atmospheric, dusty Inland Empire desert locales that are strangely captivating. Set against them are bizarre characters doing bizarre things, such as the lead, Grace, jumping from a high-dive as part of her adopted family's religious circus act, or hiding out in an abandoned farmhouse and regressing to her childhood self.

Befitting its title, "Dream No Evil" is in fact dreamlike--nightmarish, even at times. Screenplay-wise, the film is fairly straightforward, and the twist can be seen from a mile away (it is all very neatly tied together in the end, in a similarly didactic "Psycho"-esque way), but it is still fairly watchable despite this. While it is not high art, "Dream No Evil" is a minor but intriguing oddity. It certainly won't shock, but it will captivate with its weirdness. 7/10.

DREAM NO EVIL is the perfect example of regional, independent features being far more interesting than Hollywood films from the same age. When studios and producer moguls get involved in a film, they ask questions. "Where are these people? How does any of this advance the plot? Why are they doing an Irish jig now?"

DREAM NO EVIL doesn't want to answer those questions, steadfastly refuses to, and is all the more interesting because of it. Notice I say "more interesting" and not "better": this misses the majority of shots it takes, the narration eviscerates the mood, and the shots and performance are stilted. But an undeniable charm still radiates, as long as you're into this kind of thing.

Could work as the B-side of LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH or MESSIAH OF EVIL for a double feature of outside-reality Americana horror.