Deadly Dreams (1988)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Excellent but underrated film

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Alex Torme (a solid and sympathetic performance by Mitchell Anderson) suffers from horrific nightmares from the time he witnessed a hunter in a wolf mask murder his mother and father in front of him as a little boy. Things perk up after Alex meets and falls for the sassy Maggie Kallir (a nicely spunky portrayal by Juliette Cummins), but Alex is still plagued by deadly dreams. Director Kristine Peterson relates the engrossing story at a snappy pace, ably crafts an eerie and intriguing enigmatic atmosphere, and generates a good deal of tension. The smart and taut script by Thom Babbles delivers a dandy surprise twist at the end; Babbles also acquits himself well in a sizable supporting role as Alex's wisecracking best buddy Danny. Xander Berkeley likewise excels as Alex's bitter and overbearing older brother Jack. Popping up in nifty small parts are Duane Whitaker as vicious psycho Norman Perkins, Troy Evans as a gruff sheriff, and Stacey Travis as a friendly librarian. Moreover, there's a satisfying smattering of sex and violence as well as some tasty distaff nudity courtesy of ravishing redhead Mrs. Cummins. Zoran Hochstatter's glossy cinematography provides a snazzy stylish look. Todd Boekelheide's shivery score hits the spine-tingling spot. Worth a watch.

This movie could have been a quite good thriller have it not been for the rather dull first hour and a very inept conclusion. But the ending is not totally predictable as one other writer wrote because the movie begins like a thriller but ends like a horror.Acting is quite good and shines up in a few places. A lurking fear is felt through the whole movie but there should really have been a better punch in the shock department. It's like the director couldn't decide if he would do a psychological thriller or a horror/slasher.Young Alex parents was murdered during Christmas eve by a business competitor who shot himself after that, or so we are told after about one hour into the movie. This is a rather cheap trick to make the viewer wonder if Alex is imagine the murderer's appearance or if he's real. It is also probably a trick to make the movie longer. You see, Alex is not only dreaming about the killer, he also hallucinates seeing him. This could have been done much more exciting, because the mask the killer wears is frightening. Problem is that Alex really sees the killer, and therefore is not mentally ill. This is where the script lacks because it becomes unrealistic and clumsy staged. Later in the movie we are introduced to his brother though, who at first seems rather caring about Alex but later we find out about his real intentions. A triangle-drama is suddenly appearing and the whole thing finally becomes rather laughable.Well, the premise is good. I mean it's naturally that a kid who has his parents killed in front of his eyes and then told by the killer to run or be shot works up a tendency for mental illness and becomes unstable. Any kid would have become traumatized by that. If the movie had been done by a more skilled director who could work with the story in a more exciting way and made the movie run at a faster pace, this would probably have been really interesting I think. Now it's only a rather dull mishmash.

***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.

Since no one has reviewed "Deadly Dreams",I will.The story goes like that:The Torme family takes a weekend picnic in a secluded forest.Little do they realize that they're marked for death by a deranged hunter.The murderer kills off each one,except for the son,Alex.Ten years after massacre,Alex finds himself haunted with the vision of a man in a hunter's clothing...His dreams begin to blend into reality.Each successive nightmare brings him closer and closer to the spectre-until Alex is convinced that the killer is real-and hunting Alex.His friends and remaining family offer him no support.Alex fears his sanity is slipping further away.Then murders begin to happen in the real world...OK,so the premise is quite interesting,but "Deadly Dreams" is completely unscary and deadly dull.The acting is very average,and the action moves incredibly slowly.To be fair,the scene of massacre is pretty nerve-wracking,and the killer wears creepy mask of the deer.Watch this one,only if you have time to waste.