Nightmares
Horror anthologies can be a pretty tough sell since they usually involve asking an audience to invest themselves at least 3 to 5 separate times in each individual segment and of course the varying quality of those segments can result in a pretty uneven viewing experience. Oddly enough, the anthology horror films have become even more prolific in the past decade (particularly in the low budget arena) with more and more young filmmakers perhaps wanting to take inspiration from the granddaddy of all horror anthology films, that being George A. Romero’s Creepshow, but another one from right around that exact same time (1983) was this entry from director Joseph (Jaws The Revenge) Sargent. The irony surrounding this one though was that all of the stories here were originally filmed with the intention of being used in a planned TELEVISION anthology series (similar to Amazing Stories or Tales From The Darkside) only to be deemed as “too intense” for commercial broadcast and thus they wound up being corralled into this particular theatrical presentation. Ostensibly a collection of horror based “urban legends” (although only one really fits that description) with no kind of wraparound or narrative glue holding it together (each of the four segments is introduced with a title card and then it’s off to the races), we nonetheless get a decent cast and three great to very good stories before being concluded with a train wreck of the highest order (not really a surprise since the final segment had a different writer than the prior three). The first one concerns a pretty wife and mother (Christina Raines) who decides that she just MUST go out at 11PM for cigarettes over her husband’s objections. The problem? It turns out that a homicidal maniac has just broken out of the local looney bin and is now roaming the area, having just sliced and diced an armed, uniformed cop (whom admittedly was ambushed) and even though the husband is going crazy insisting that she wait until tomorrow to get her damn cigs, off she goes and just the intense sense of paranoia looming over this whole segment is impressive as well as appearances by Anthony James, William Sanderson and Lee Ving with Raines strongly anchoring the whole thing with pure charisma that makes you care about her fate. And the twist ending on the story is one for the record books, opening the movie up so strongly that you almost feel sorry for who has to follow this act. Smartly, they manage to follow it with maybe the best known story from this anthology featuring a young Emilio Estevez as an already legendary teenage arcade game player, first shown hustling in a downtown LA arcade (the concept that arcades are the same as pool halls is an appealing one) all while building himself up for another round with The Bishop Of Battle, an imposing machine at his local arcade that reportedly has never been beaten. The nostalgia factor here is strong mostly since arcades were an American institution (with an atmosphere like no other) that should have stuck around in the years to come. There is also the (half funny / half serious) metaphor that Estevez’s passion for playing arcade video games has become a severe, all consuming addiction, one which has destroyed his grades in school and caused him to steal from his family so when he gets the Bishop Of Battle video game in front of him for one final confrontation (having actually broken into the arcade after hours), it’s hard to tell exactly how this will all end, but the point is that Estevez (who dons his Walkman earphones with punk rock music playing before every go around) is fully ready, willing and able to see this thing through to the bitter end. A pretty good segment, although not the grand slam that the first one was. Segment 3 sees Lance Henriksen (probably the single best actor in this whole thing) as a mission priest who has lost his faith after having witnessed there being too much evil in the world, and setting off from his former church into the desert to see just exactly what fate (but not God) has in store for him, only to run headlong into the ultimate evil: a large black pick up truck with tinted windows and a bound determination not only to run Henriksen off the road, but to run him personally down as well and crush him under its wheels. The metaphor is way too obvious and Henriksen is written as being just a little too clueless for his own good, but the final denouement packs a legitimate punch and the homages to Spielberg’s Duel are both noticed and much appreciated. So, after doing some good work in the first three stories of this anthology, the whole thing utterly crashes and burns with the final segment, a ridiculously stupid tale about a giant rat (a “devil rat”) who takes up residence in the suburban home of a family that includes a workaholic prick of a father (Richard Masur), a sexy yet highly worried mom (Veronica Cartwright a.k.a. Lambert from Alien) and a precocious little daughter (Bridgette Andersen, the tragic young star of Savannah Smiles and former pretender to Drew Barrymore’s early 80s cutesy child star throne who would grow up to die from a heroin overdose at age 21). What does this creature want? Why is it there? Well, we get at least a couple of guesses thanks to the wizened old exterminator who also happens to be from the old country and even carries around the ancient texts detailing the myths and legends of this creature. Full of scenes that go nowhere and asking us to believe that this rat has near telekinetic abilities including cutting the power off and on at will and flinging whole pieces of furniture across the room, it ends very badly with Masur blasting his own house to smithereens with a shotgun and the little girl suddenly out of nowhere developing a telepathic link with the creature that allows them to communicate. But the worst is saved for last with the creature’s actual appearance, an enlarged, superimposed matte shot of an actual rat that has got to be the single worst visual effect in the history of modern cinema, one that must have made even pre CGI audiences at that time fall out of their seats laughing hysterically over what is supposed to be some serious business. It’s hard to figure out how a mostly good movie can literally hit itself with a torpedo in the end and manage to sink completely, but that’s what happens here and it almost leaves you awestruck…
5/10