Bad Dreams
We all remember how The Golden Age Of Horror in the 80s with their various lucrative franchises and iconic villains in many ways defined what made the genre so entertaining at the time, but what was also interesting was the trend of one shot, âone offâ horror movies that nonetheless were MARKETED at the time as being the beginning of a ânewâ franchise even going so far as to hype their main villain as being a virtual âNew Freddyâ or âNew Jasonâ, only to have any plans for sequels peter out because of either poor box office and / or getting lost in the shuffle, but that doesnât mean that all of these one and done horror flicks werenât actually GOOD, as a large number of them featured novel, original concepts with strong acting and quality writing. A good example of this trend was this 1988 release that was put out by 20th Century Fox and actually played theatres at the time on the basis of being a whole new type of franchise with a new type of villain which incredibly in the years since has almost gotten practically forgotten when it comes to being mentioned alongside the true classics, and today is now among the best type of horrors that one can imagine, that of a nearly lost, not very well remembered scary movie that when discovered by a younger generation, can now be thought of as an unearthed gem, or maybe as a once buried treasure. Taking as its premise the concept of warped pseudo hippie cults going all the way back to Jim Jones and Jonestown (referenced directly in the dialogue) or even The Manson Family itself while also looking ahead to the yet to be seen terrifying antics brought on by David Koresh and The Branch Davidians, the story starts off in a place called Unity Fields, a perfectly serene little commune whose leadership has struck upon a uniquely sick idea: Since the âreal worldâ has utterly rejected their intentions to spread peace and love everywhere they go, then what better way to both acknowledge and embrace that rejection by essentially committing mass suicide, with the pretense being that doing so all at once will allow their spirits to all join as one in the afterlife and truly be united? That the chosen method to do so is by setting themselves on fire after they are all anointed with gasoline is a particularly twisted (and painful) way to go about it, but as with all the weak minded, personality deprived members of the real life cults, they must all willingly follow their leader in lockstep formation onto death itself, and that leader is Franklin Harris (the villain who was promoted in the ads as the one starting his own franchise) played by Richard Lynch, one of the most frighteningly sinister actors to ever live, with the added twinge factor being brought on by those who know of his own personal history when back in 1967, while a hippie actor in New York, he freaked out one night while tripping on LSD and actually managed to really set himself on fire(!), only to recover with horrific looking facial burn scars and then use that as an asset to have a long movie acting career playing cold blooded villains (similar to Jack Palance who suffered facial burns when shot down in WWII), with this role being the absolute pinnacle of his career, made even more astounding by the fact that much of what we see of the Harris character is done in flashback, and yet director Andrew Fleming does an amazing job of being able to allow the actorâs own downright frightening PRESENCE to somehow permeate the very atmosphere of the film itself without really requiring Lynch to do much more besides just stand there and intone some ominous dialogue. That plus the horrendous sight of the cult members and Lynch himself lighting themselves on fire (one of the most underratedly horrific sequences in cinema history which includes women and children) sets the uneasy tone for what is to come, as a young female of the group manages to flee at the very last second only to be knocked unconscious by the large explosion during the aftermath, falling into a deep 13 year coma and waking up in 1988 where she (Jennifer Rubin, literally walking off one hospital set in Nightmare On Elm Street 3 onto this) is admitted to the psychiatric ward and placed into group therapy with a bunch of borderline personality patients presided over by two doctors played by Bruce Abbott (forever known as the inept hero of Re-Animator) and Harris Yulin (one of the greatest character actors to ever live) and consisting of such types as a goofy, younger guy (Dean Cameron, still remembered for his transcendent turn as Chainsaw in Summer School) with a thing for cutting himself with knives, a creepy older couple (Susan Barnes and Louis Giambalvo) who make little effort to hide their interpatient sexual relationship from the others, a spaced out black girl (Damita Jo Freeman) who talks like she knows whatâs actually going on but is really just channeling her own imaginary âcosmic Godâ, a broken down female reporter (LA Lawâs Susan Ruttan) who sees a possible great story in Rubinâs experiences, and a beautiful, sweet, dewy eyed, tortured young girl (E.G. Daily, with whom one look at her resume in both music and movies can be said to have literally epitomized the 80s) who only wants to connect with someone in a positive way and for whom only the meanest, hardest male viewers wouldnât want to just hold her and cuddle with her. Suddenly, Rubin starts having visions of the long dead Harris himself who lays out to her the basic idea which is that the longer that she holds out from finally committing suicide and âjoining her familyâ, then one by one he will take others âin her placeâ, namely the other members in her group. And thus begins the rash of sudden patient suicides, with the key being that although Harris is NOT AT ALL directly responsible for these people taking their own lives, it would seem that his evil spirit and its influence over the Rubin character is having a sort of âundue influenceâ over the nightmarish events occurring at the hospital, with Rubin always seeing a vision of Harris prior to each death as a forbidding omen of doom. Which is why we get a drowning, an out of the window nosedive, a self induced vivisection, a guzzling of a bottle of Drano, and most memorably a leap into the buildingâs power turbine that makes a bit of a mess out of the ventilation system. As for the other performances, Rubin plays her character as (rightfully) spaced out after all of the trauma that sheâs been through, going so far as to being daring enough to play her role as surly and even unlikable considering that we are told that she has no family or next of kin to take her in. Cameron plays the comic relief role with all of the funniest lines although he also brings the right amount of edginess to the proceedings so as to remind us that heâs still highly dangerous to both himself and to others. Only Abbott as the straight arrow doctor steps just slightly wrong with his (very) forced romance with Rubin, as we are practically TOLD that he is madly in love with her even while he displays borderline unethical behavior being a doctor who pretty much ropes his attractive female patient in the hallway and pulls her into her room to express his feelings for her. The film tries late in the game to ârationalizeâ the goings on by implying that the doomed patients are really part of a sick social experiment involving them being given drugs designed to induce an irrational, suicidal state, an explanation that might appear at first to rule out Harris as being the main culprit behind all of it, but there is enough wiggle room given to suggest that he may have actually POSSESSED those responsible (or at least more than one person) or even that the guilty party responsible for inducing the actual suicides might just be a âcloset discipleâ of Harrisâ who is intent on âfinishing his workâ (keeping in mind that the film makes it pretty clear that Harris was almost a minor media celebrity even before his death), though the script still plays it very close to the vest and keeps things pretty much ambiguous either way. And finally and most incredibly of all is the successful use of Guns nâ Roses âSweet Child O Mineâ being used in a genuinely sinister way (especially in how Harris constantly refers to Rubin as âLove Childâ) and one knows that GNR just had to have signed off on the approval to have their signature anthem used in this way in what was such a relatively low budget movie, one which is still an overlooked, underrated classic waiting even now to be discovered by our current generation of young horror nuts and thereby appreciated by them just as much as those who stumbled across it back in the hazy, crazy late 80sâŚ
9/10