Rêve mortel

I remember the first time ever noticing Deadly Dreams. I was working in a Video Warehouse years ago and noticed the cover. Something about it caught my eye. It wasn't until years later that I would come to sit down and actually watch this movie.

Deadly Dreams plays off like an episode of Tales From the Crypt. It just runs 35 minutes too long. The storyline starts out with a family on Christmas Eve. Two parents and their son Alex wait for the oldest son to come to the house. When they receive a knock on the door, it isn't the oldest son but a man with a rifle who guns down the two parents. 10 years later Alex is 20 years old and often has horrible nightmares of the man who killed his parents murdering him. Alex and his brother both gained a hefty inheritance from the death of their Father and it looks like someone might be trying to get their hands on it.

For a movie that runs 79 minutes it certainly is very slow. We don't get anything new out of the storyline as Tales From the Crypt did have a story very similar to this one in one of the old comic books. At least the acting was decent in this film and the last ten minutes are interesting. Other then that, I was falling asleep at times.

This movie might be good for one viewing on a boring Sunday afternoon. Other than that, I would rather watch something else. 5/10

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.

***SPOILERS*** The movie "Deadly Dreams" starts off with a Christmas Eve massacre of Mr. & Mrs. Torme, Geoffery Forward & Gyl Roland, with their terrified ten year-old son Alex, Timothy Austin, running for his life outside the cabin into the woods from the masked killer. The killer turns out to be Norman Perkins, Gary Ainsworth, a disgruntled business partner of Mr. Torme who later turned the gun on himself. Waking up in a cold sweat Alex, Mitchell Anderson, now ten years later still has nightmares about that horrible incident.

"Deadly Dreams" does hold together at first until you realize that after a while you, as well as Alex, can't tell whats a dream and whats reality! That take away a lot from the tension and suspense of the movie.

The wolf-masked killer is seen popping up all over the place with really no real explanation why he's there and why have him put on that ridicules mask! Since were told who he is in the first place? Later we meet Alex's older brother Jack, Xander Berkeley, who seems to be mad at him for not tending to the family business which his parents left him. You wonder why did they leave it to the much younger Alex, who was ten at the time of his parents death, and not his older brother Jack who seemed to be much more competent. On top of all that Alex didn't seem to care if Jack was in charge so why the conflict between the two brothers?

Alex is attending college and does some free lance writing on the side and, with the exception of his nightmares, seems happy with his lot in life. Danny, Tom Babbes, a collage friend of Alex gets him to meet pretty and at the same time mysterious Maggie Kallir, Juliette Cummins, on a dare who we later see is having an affair with Jack. Together their both trying to drive poor Alex insane in order to get his share of the inheritance that was left to him from his parents. There's an even more sinister force involved in the story that doesn't reveal itself until the very last minute or so of the movie.

"Deadly dreams" could have been a really great horror movie but it was so hooked up in it's many dream sequences that they just about wrecked the entire film. The plot holes, mostly due to the dream sequences, were as deep and as many as a mine field in the Western Sahara Desert during the Battle of Al Alamine. Watching the movie I wondered what a top horror film director of the 1980's like Fred Walton or Sam Raimi would have done with the same movie? The improvement in the movies story-line would have been quite noticeable and made more sense.

The material in the film "Deadly Dreams" was far better then most stories that were made into horror/suspense films back then and the movie should have been far better then it ended up being. If only all those confusing and annoying dream-sequences were cut out of it.

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.