Deadly Dreams

My review was written in November 1988 after watching the movie on Virgin Vision video cassette.

An interesting low-budget horror pic , "Deadly Dreams" provides an okay switch on the genre's morbid family in-fighting theme. Itg was released direct-to-video around Halloween time.

Mitchell Andeson's parents were killed on Christmas Eve 10 years ago by a hunter wearing an animal mask, who turned out to be an embittered ex-business partner who then committed suicice. Grown up, Anderson is plagued with recurring nightmares involving the hunter.

With adequate hints planted by screenwiter Thom Babbes (who co-stars as Anderson's best friend), the story paints a deadly conspiracy working against our hero, involving his older brother and girlfriend. Final plot twists are morbid enough to qualify the pic as film noir, resulting in a cold, vengeful finale.

Helmer Kristine Peterson, previously handling second unit work on Roger Corman pics, does a good job of maintaining the downbeat mood of the piece and even includes a somewhat daring sex scene that is relevant to the storyline. No-name cast is effective, including a cameo by one of Corman's '50s regulars, Beach Dickerson.

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.

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

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.

***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.