Dream Demon (1988)

Simply A Masterpiece

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good concept, poorly executed.

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Dream Demon starts at a wedding as the Minister (Richard Warner) ask's the bride Diana Markham (Jemma Redgrave) to take her vows but she hesitates & declines so the groom Oliver Hall (Mark Greenstreet) slaps her across the face, Diana ain't going to take that sort of thing so slaps him back which makes his head fly off his body & fountains of blood spurt everywhere. Diana suddenly wakes up, it was just a horrible nightmare. Diana is in reality engaged to Falklands War hero Oliver & their wedding becomes a big story with two local scumbag reporters Paul Lawrence (Jimmy Nail) & Russell Peck (Timothy Spall) who constantly hassle her for a story & try to dig a bit of dirt up if you know what I mean. One day Diana befriends an American teenager named Jenny Hoffman (Kathleen Wilhoite) who claims she can't remember anything about her childhood but then confusingly says she remembers growing up in the house in which Diana now lives having just moved in a mere 2 weeks ago. Diana continues to have terrifying nightmares, a doll that a large maggot crawls out off, the basement turning into a labyrinth of dark corridors, a split in the wall appearing & starting to pour with blood & both Paul & Russell turn up horribly disfigured taunting her. Jenny also starts to experience Diana's nightmares, but in reality while Diana sleeps. Diana starts to lose her grip on reality as her nightmares take over, is it all in Diana's imagination? Is the sudden appearance of Jenny a mere coincidence? Is the house somehow involved? Is there a purpose to these gruesome nightmares? You will have to watch it to find out...This British produced film was co-written & directed by Harley Cokeliss & while I thought Dream Demon had potential it ultimately disappoints. The script by Cokeliss & Christopher Wicking is at fault here, basically it's one big unexplained mess. Even now I simply don't know what really happened & I finished watching it mere hours ago, where do the two newspaper journalists come into it? What were their purpose & why do they just walk off at the end discussing fast food? Why does not one single person die during the entire film? Where's the horror & threat? Why does Jenny not remember anything about her childhood but specifically remembers the exact house she grew up in in London? I mean London is a pretty big place you know & considering she can't remember anything else... What were the meaning & purpose of these nightmares? I know it recounts the house's past but why? Nothing is put right, nothing is avenged, nothing is resolved & at the end nothing has changed from when Dream Demon started. One final baffling question, does anyone else think Kathleen Wilhoite looks like a man? That jaw line, that nose & her face in general screams transvestite! On the positive side director Cokeliss manages to create some terrific sequences, I absolutely love that wedding scene at the beginning! The scenes that feature the disfigured Paul & Russell are pretty creepy especially a scene in a lift, I don't know what they did to Jimmy Nail to make him look the way he did but he gave me the creeps big time! It moves along at a nice pace but for the first hour or so it's just Diana having a nightmare, waking up & telling people about it & then having another nightmare, waking up again & telling people that she's had another one, & so this pattern continues for over an hour & I found it started to become dull as I wanted some sort of explanation of what was going on. The slightest hint of a story would have helped, there are also various plot threads that are left unexplored like the possible child abuse suffered by Jenny, the Angel symbolism, the two-timing fiancé & Diana's virginity & marital fears. There are some impressive gore effects too, the aforementioned decapitation at the wedding, a fist punched through someones head & some gory make-up effects plastered on Spall including him having his ear pulled off. It's just a shame there wasn't more of them & that ultimately they were all only dreams & everyone in the film survives. With a modest budget of about £3,000,000 Dream Demon has nice production design & is well made with a certain class & the late 80's London setting makes it feel a little different. The acting is surprisingly strong throughout except Kathleen Wilhoite, now I have nothing against her but she does look like a bloke & she is both terrible & annoying in her role, urgh. Well what can I say to sum up? There is no dream demon that the title refers to, it has a very loose poorly thought out story which is confusing & when all said & done Dream Demon disappointed & in no way could be described as the British A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984). It's unusual & has some great ideas & individual scenes but isn't something that I could recommend to the casual film-goer, however die-hard horror fans would probably get something out of it but just don't expect too much.

Two women - one about to be married, the other having returned to the area recently - find they are able to bring each other into their dreams, and that their dreams are connected with a house one of the women is due to move into.Though it might require more than one viewing to work it all out, this film is a first-rate ghost story. It is nothing too demanding, but still manages to be entertaining, creepy, well-written and filled with surrealism. Especially good are the nightmare images, many of which involve two unsavoury reporters (played by Jimmy Nail and Timothy Spall) who are sucked into the dreams and start becoming more nightmarish with each encounter.

Because this was British and starred Jemma Redgrave, I expected it to be classier. It's another of those dream horror movies where things happen according to no logical sequence but whenever the director feels like it. Yet it does have one great idea, which I know I've seen used in a story somewhere: the existence of a real house and its dream counterpart, connected in some occult way. In one scene of this movie the heroine's friend and partner becomes lost in the dream house, looking for a way to get out, while the heroine searches for her in the real one, looking for a way to get through. To me this is quite scary and evocative. But the idea only works if the two houses stay separate throughout; these dream horror movies rely on the shock of the dreams breaking through into the real world, or their mock-up of the real world. Some day a filmmaker with more restraint should take the idea and do it right.

I was very pleased when I saw this film. I rented it thinking it would be a cheesy, unlikable horror film, but it is a lot better than that. I'd say it is a gem in its own right.Made in 1988 but not released on video until 1993, Dream Demon is about an English bride-to-be who begins to have terrible, horrifying dreams. Not sure why she is experiencing them, and not able to find help from those close to her, she confides her trouble to an American woman (played by Kathleen Wilhoite, who is a very underrated actress) visiting London, who seems to be connected to the dreams in some way. It is then that the dreams turn more serious, as anyone unfortunate enough to be around the bride-to-be when she falls asleep can be pulled into the dream itself!From the opening scene (I was caught by surprise there, a rarity for me) this movie grasps you. It is a clear and rare case of a movie that could have been done extremely poorly done very well thanks to fine performances by the two female leads and a director who knew what to do when others would flop. It isn't an edge-of-your-seat horror film, but it is freaky and well-done; worth checking out. Zanatos's score: 7 out of 10.