Beyond Dream's Door

This is an odd movie. I first heard about it when Mr. Parka brought it up on a podcast. From what I heard; this was a wild movie from the late 1980s. I put it down as a potential movie to watch for the Podcast Under the Stairs' Summer Challenge Series for 1988. I lucked out that the Gateway Film Center was showing it as part of their Mammoth Monday so my first watch was on the big screen.

Synopsis: Ben's (Nick Baldasare) nightmares come back to haunt him and his friends.

So, I'm going to be honest. This is a hard movie to talk about. It feels like a dream. What I mean here is that we jump into the middle of scenes and then switch to the next much like you do in a dream. It can be a bit jarring at times, but it also feels natural in a way. Even though I tend to start with recapping the movie, I wanted to give credit to writer/director Jay Woelfel, as well as the editors of Susan Resatka and Randy Spears. I'm not normally a fan of dream sequences, but what they do here works.

With that out of the way, we follow Ben. He is trying to study when his younger brother of Ricky (Lucas Simpson), wants to play hide and seek. He tells him he can't, but Ricky gets him to change his mind. Ben goes to hide and ends up in the basement. He sneaks past a shelving unit to a crawlspace. While there, he is attacked by a monster. Ricky watches as this happens.

We then shift to Ben back in his room where he is enticed by a character credited as Witch (Darby Vasbinder). She beckons him to join her in bed, but he stands his ground. If you can't tell, this is all quite surreal. Ben then wakes up and writes up his dream on a typewriter.

The movie then introduces us to two teaching assistants. There is Eric Baxter (Rick Kesler), who just got this position, and he is joining Julie Oxel (Susan Pinsky). We get an interesting meeting with Professor Noxx (Norm Singer). In their class is Ben. He gives the professor the papers detailing his dream, asking if he will read it. Professor Noxx gets to them that night and wants Ben to come over to discuss at once. Things aren't as they seem though. The lines between dreams and the real world are blurred. There is also a creature that is trying to get into our world through dream's door. This is also where horror lies.

That is where I'm going to leave my recap and fleshing it out. I think that should be enough to give you an idea of what we are getting here. Now I've already commended the filmmaking. This is a low budget movie but being able to convey the atmosphere of what they're going for was great. This feels like it is Lovecraftian. We never get to know what these creatures are, but it feels like ideas Lovecraft would explore. There are ancient ones that we could call demons. We are blurring the lines of reality with the supernatural. Despite the jarring nature of how things play out, I was invested to see where this would go. If a character is killed, they're not necessarily gone. In the dream world, things don't work in the confines of reality.

Going beyond borrowing from Lovecraft, this does feel inspired by A Nightmare on Elm Street. I think this movie does well in getting that same type of atmosphere with using sleep and dreams. We are getting a different style of dream demon than you would with Freddy Krueger. This movie isn't a slasher film though, so I do want to temper expectations there. Again, much like how this is difficult to recap, it is also tough to classify. We get a creature, but I wouldn't necessarily call it a creature feature, as that isn't the focus. I've already used the best sub-genre that I think with cosmic horror.

That should be enough there, so where I'll go next would be the acting. Baldasare isn't great, but I think he works here. From what I was able to find about him, he did some theater and was in other movies as well. He is a bit stiff here, but I'm going to partly say that is with the writing. I don't think he is bad by any stretch. Being that most of this is in a dream, there is a surreal feel to it that his performance fit. Kesler, Pinsky, Singer and the rest of the cast fall into this as well. They work for what was needed. A bright spot I want to include is that we see Vasbinder nude a few times, so if you are looking for that.

The last things then to go into would be the effects and the soundtrack. For the former, they were a solid. They were done practical and even though at times I could tell they were fake; I still appreciate it. There is blood with aftermath of kills that look good. They also do some interesting things with characters after they die. We are seeing the aftermath, but they're still able to move around which is creepy. It also adds to the atmosphere. Speaking of which, I think the soundtrack helps there as well. Not a score that I would listen to outside of the movie. It does work with what they needed for sure in building an eerie vibe.

In conclusion, this was an interesting movie that I'm glad I got to see. We are getting a film that blurs the lines of reality with dreams. It can be jarring at times, but I think that adds to what they're doing here. I love the Lovecraftian vibe I got from this. The acting can be a bit stiff, but I can be forgiving there. The effects we get are solid. They were at least done practical which I can appreciate. I like what the score does to help build the atmosphere here. Do not come in expecting a lot. This movie has a lower budget, which impressed me with what they did with it. I'd say that this is an above average movie for me. I'd only recommend it if you like regional cinema or low budget horror movies.

My Rating: 7 out of 10.

Hopefully Jay will get this film re-released. I personally very much enjoy it. It has a certain quality that most modern horror films do not have--the ability to watch it more than once or twice and still have it perk your interest. A film doesn't have to have dazzling modern special effects or top Hollywood actors in it to be good. What I look for in a film is an interesting story and an overall enjoyable viewing experience. This film certainly meets that criteria. I came across this film in an independent video store that (sadly) has closed down a few years ago because they were bought out by a large chain. Support your local independent video stores and support independent film!

It's easy to see that this movie was made on a shoestring budget. The special effects are not great, but the story itself is very interesting. The acting can be a little flat at times but that gives this film an odd sort of charm. The music and photography are good and that helps the movie quite a bit. The poetry and visual images give the movie a surrealistic feel that makes it feel otherworldly. I can't say it's a masterpiece, the scenes are a little choppy and it really could have used a bigger budget, but it does manage to overcome these issues and lift itself out of the Z grade and more into a B grade movie.

It's by no means perfect, but I have seen far worse and with bigger budgets. It is one of the better low-budget 80s films out there.

Beyond Dreams Door was essentially the most important film in my young movie-watching life, and for good reason, as it represents everything a film should be - dynamic, experimental and most importantly, intelligent. It also yielded the notion, at least to me, that low-budget independent cinema was where the true passionate visionaries existed, people like Jay Woelfel.

Utilizing elements from popular culture and new wave French cinema and working with a limited budget and a mostly in experienced cast and crew, Jay Woelfel managed to craft a stylish cerebral film that dares to takes chances like few films before it were willing to do.

Bypassing the conventional formula exercised in most other horror films, Woelfel chooses to operate in a non-linear format (remember, this pre-dated Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs by a few years) while also utilizing Hitchcock's various laws of systematization, specifically the use of colors, and the lighting schemes of the various characters. Add to this various other subtle factors that fail to stand-out during the initial viewings, but become quite prominent the more the film is examined, and, in the end, what you are left with is an important film, that is essentially way way ahead of its time.

The movie concerns a shy Ohio Psychology student Benjamin Dobbs, played by Nick Baldasare, who finds himself plagued by a series of horrific inter-connecting nightmares, after he unknowingly agrees to be apart of a dream research experiment. Ben's initial sense that the dreams might have something to do with the untimely loss of his parents quickly fades as they become increasingly stranger and more terrifying. Unable to cope, Ben seeks help in the form of the various on-campus teachers. His psychology professor Dr. Noxx, played Norm Singer, is his first obvious choice, and Noxx easily embraces Ben's pleas for help as something real. After looking into it, the two come upon a notation in a book, and a case history of another man named D.F. White, that seems to point definitively to the existence of the very things Ben has been dreaming about. Ben quickly discovers the 'things' in the dream realm aren't happy with the sudden Earthbound knowledge of their reality, and quickly take it upon themselves to get the evidence back any way they can. Woelfel makes a point to not render any religious allusions, and the doorway, and what lies beyond, remains vague enough for the viewers to decide for themselves what 'the beyond' actually is.

As the film unfolds, we also note that the narrative changes hands, along with the usage of colorful composition, as Ben passes on knowledge of his curse to the various people he asks for help. The second person to get swallowed up in Ben's nightmares is a teaching assistant Eric Baxter, played by Rick Kesler, who early on is posed a question by Noxx about what he would do if confronted with a life or death question -- and through the course of the film, is allowed to truly answer it. Baxter's initial reasons for helping Ben, and his later insistence that "It's not my problem" point to a screenplay not constructed to fit a formula, rather, the real actions of a three dimensional character. Also aiding Ben on his quest for answers is D.F. White (Daniel White) who died nearly twenty years earlier, and appears to him in the form of a ghostly apparition, or guardian angel, as one friend in college put it. The enigmatic White offers up cryptic words of advice, while leading Ben through the land of the dead and into the proverbial "light".

Visually the film is stunning, and the usage of color as a means of depicting the various character's motivations, is amazing. Personally, it was the first time I had ever seen it used before in film. Woelfel's insistence on telling the story in a non-linear format means a lot of jumping around, back-tracking, and various other things that will make for fun multiple viewings. Woelfel also avoids spoon-feeding his audience. Rather than pointing out the obvious, he allows the viewer to make up their own mind about what they are seeing. In my opinion, the film is much more effective because of this fact. The musical score, also composed by Jay Woelfel, is very good as it helps to add some genuine atmosphere to the film.

A few people have complained that the acting was stiff, but I felt it fit perfectly with the tone of the film, which is easily one of the more somber pieces one is likely to see. The special effects were lacking for the most part, but that doesn't take anything away from the piece as it becomes abundantly clear that this film is not about the boogeyman-in-the-closet but rather the psychology behind the boogeyman-in-the-closet.

Beyond Dreams Door is a cult film that has earned its status. It garnered much discussion and many long debates from my various friends in college, each with a differing theory one what, or who, Benjamin Dobbs is, and what actually lied beyond 'The Beyond'. I personally believe that Beyond Dreams Door should be mandatory viewing by anyone with a true interest in film. I highly recommend it.

Low-budget film-making at its absolute best!

College student, Ben, has been having problems with his frightening dreams, but they only get worse and start to take over his entire life and the lives of those around him.

For a low budget, regional horror film without a lot of resources, Beyond Dream's Door is jaw-droppingly well made with an almost David Lynch-ian quality at times with some really great creature and makeup effects. The acting is a mix of good, bad, and lobotomized, but it's the script that's the film's biggest downfall and kills a lot of goodwill built up by the imagination on display elsewhere. The narrative does feel like a dream in the sense that nothing really ever gels and things just happen without any explanation. It's intriguing for 20 minutes or so, but after that, you start hoping there might be a little bit more to it.