BAD DREAMS: The Dangerous Side-Effects Of Krueger Envy

The suc­cess of A Nightmare On Elm Street opened a whole new world for the hor­ror film­mak­ers of the 1980’s.  Not only did Wes Craven’s influ­en­tial hit show them a way to put an imag­i­na­tive spin on the stan­dard slasher-flick cliches, it also offered a tem­plate that would allow film­mak­ers to work in added doses of sur­re­al­ism into their visu­als.  As a result, the suc­cess of the first Nightmare was fol­lowed by an array of dream-killer flicks: The Dream Demon, Dreamaniac and Deadly Dreams are a few examples.

However, none of the afore­men­tioned Nightmare knock-offs ever wore their Krueger envy as promi­nently as Bad Dreams.  In fact, this Gale Anne Hurd pro­duc­tion cops from the Nightmare fran­chise twice over: not only does it fea­ture a deceased psy­cho return­ing as a boo­gie­man dream-killer, it also fea­tures a premise where said dream-killer going after a group of men­tal hos­pi­tal patients — which is a lot like A Nightmare On Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors.  For added shock poten­tial, it also works in ele­ments of real-life ter­rors like Charles Manson and Jim Jones.  It’s a potent stew of ingre­di­ents but unfor­tu­nately for hor­ror fans, Bad Dreams is less than the sum of its parts.

The Nancy-style hero­ine of this film is Cynthia (Jennifer Rubin, who iron­i­cally hap­pens to be a Nightmare 3 alum).  She’s the lone sur­vivor of a cult’s mass sui­cide, an event insti­gated by their Manson-ish leader Harris (Richard Lynch) in the film’s pro­logue.  She awak­ens 13 years later in a world where she knows no one and is hope­lessly out of touch.  The hospital’s head psy­chi­a­trist Dr. Berrisford (Harris Yulin) diag­noses her with bor­der­line per­son­al­ity dis­or­der and places her in a ther­apy group of sim­i­lar patients that is han­dled by his assis­tant, Dr. Karmen (Bruce Abbott).

Unfortunately for every­one involved, Harris is not yet fin­ished with Cynthia.  He begins intrud­ing on her real­ity, appear­ing to her in ways that oth­ers can­not see.  When she doesn’t will­ingly “return” to him by com­mit­ting sui­cide, he turns his atten­tions to the other mem­bers of her ther­apy group and starts bump­ing them off.  It’s up to Cynthia and Dr. Karmen to fig­ure out a way to stop her past from slaugh­ter­ing her present — and the ulti­mate solu­tion is trick­ier than either could imagine.

Derivative as it might be, this premise could have worked if han­dled in the right way.  Unfortunately, Bad Dreams is a mess where all the signs point towards exces­sive stu­dio tam­per­ing: it’s sus­pi­ciously short (80 min­utes with­out the cred­its) and has a hastily reshot end­ing that just doesn’t work.  Without get­ting into spoil­ers, it also suf­fers from a final twist that, while unex­pected, effec­tively undoes any of the worth­while ele­ments that pre­ceded it for a cheap “gotcha”-style plot twist.

And what’s miss­ing from the film isn’t its only prob­lem.  Bad Dreams’ sim­u­la­ta­neously over­cooked and under­thought script is plot­ted in a rick­ety man­ner: for exam­ple, Cynthia is placed in the ther­apy group before she shows any signs of being mal­ad­justed when it would have been sim­ple to make this plot device work by allow­ing her to have a Harris-induced freak­out that would make her seem crazy.  It doesn’t help that the char­ac­ter­i­za­tions are either slim (Dr. Karmen, Cynthia) or a series of cheap grotesques that pan­der to the movie cliché ver­sion of a men­tal patient (every other mem­ber of the ther­apy group).

On the plus side, Bad Dreams has an unusu­ally good cast for a hor­ror film: Rubin and Re-Animator alum Abbott work hard in their respec­tive roles and the pres­ence of vets like Yulin and Alex Cox reg­u­lar Sy Richardson as a cop add a touch of grav­i­tas.  Unfortunately, the script never gives any of them a vehi­cle for their efforts.  Lynch is quite good as the vil­lain, sell­ing the character’s psycho-messianic mind­set with an eerie sense of calm.  As for the rest of the patients, they’re all enacted in a pretty shrill man­ner but Dean Cameron, bet­ter known for come­dies like Summer School, gives a pretty bravura turn as the smart-aleck of the bunch.

The best ele­ment of Bad Dreams is the direc­tion of Andrew Fleming.  He orches­trates the set­pieces with gusto and shows a gift for styl­iza­tion, han­dling the shifts between past and present in the hal­lu­ci­na­tion scenes with real imag­i­na­tion.  Highlights of his work here include a scene where a steamy shower room gives way to a depic­tion of a noc­tur­nal bap­tism, an extended flash­back to the fiery mass sui­cide and a really unnerv­ing moment involv­ing a car used as a mur­der weapon.  It’s a shame the script, which he must take blame for as a co-writer, doesn’t come up with a bet­ter frame­work for his styl­is­tic flourishes.

Ultimately, Bad Dreams is a for­get­table by-product of A Nightmare On Elm Street’s suc­cess.  Patient 1980’s hor­ror buffs might find it worth a spin for Lynch’s per­for­mance and its hand­ful of crafty shocks but the film is ulti­mately too deriv­a­tive and dis­jointed to com­pete with its inspiration.

Bad Dreams / Visiting Hours [Double Feature] In the mid-1970s the mem­bers of the love cult Unity Fields sought “the ulti­mate join­ing” by dous­ing them­selves with gaso­line and com­mit­ting mass sui­cide. A young girl blown clear of the fiery explo­sion was the only sur­vivor. Thirteen years later, Cynthia (Jennifer Rubin, Screamers) awak­ens from a coma inside a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal with only buried mem­o­ries of that hor­rific day — but now her fel­low patients are each being dri­ven to their own vio­lent sui­cides. Has the sect’s leader (Richard Lynch, Deathsport) returned to claim his final child? Bruce Abbott (Re-Animator) co-stars in the intense shocker Bad Dreams from direc­tor Andrew Fleming (The Craft) and pro­ducer Gale Anne Hurd (Punisher: War Zone, The Incredible Hulk).Academy Award®–winner Lee Grant (Best Supporting Actress in 1975 for Shampoo) stars as out­spo­ken TV jour­nal­ist Deborah Ballin, whose cru­sade against domes­tic vio­lence enrages a creepy loner (a truly dis­turb­ing per­for­mance by Michael Ironside, Scanners) in Visiting Hours. He bru­tally attacks the anchor­woman in her home, but Ballin sur­vives and is hos­pi­tal­ized. Her assailant is enraged; he is haunted by a hor­rific child­hood trauma … and now he has hid­den him­self inside the hos­pi­tal to fin­ish what he started. Can any­body — includ­ing her con­cerned boss (William Shatner), a fran­tic nurse (Linda Purl, Happy Days) or Deborah her­self — stop the psycho’s killing spree before it reaches sick new extremes?