Bad Dreams

Our love will never die.

A crazy Svengali (Richard Lynch), during the 70s, a type of Jim Jones cult leader, who claims that leaving the life state will lead to a state of bliss once you cross over after death, is able to convince a group of followers to obediently set fire to themselves. Cynthia (Jennifer Ruben) was able to survive this, awakening from a coma 13 years later. She is admitted to a psychiatric hospital in the hopes of being rehabilitated; her first face upon awakening was Dr. Berrisford (Harris Yulin), and he is the one who admitted her to his hospital because, it seems, she needs preparation for the real world of the 80s.
**½

Under the guide of Berrisford’s psych staff doctor, Dr. Alex Karmen (Bruce Abbott), Cynthia will sit among a group of patients, feeling after listening to each (seeing how they all behave erratically and oddly) of them, that she doesn’t belong, wanting to leave. When Cynthia starts to see Harris (Lynch) roaming the halls, popping up unannounced, and appearing in various forms (sometimes before, sometimes after he burned himself alive; especially creepy is Lynch in burn make-up form) when least expected, Karmen is concerned for her mental health, unsure if she is hallucinating or falling apart psychologically. Meanwhile Berrisford seems undeterred (and, frankly, not particularly bothered…) when patients in his hospital, as part of Cynthia’s group, start offing themselves in numerous ways. Karmen will try to figure out what’s going on while Cynthia must see patients dropping like flies and endure Harris sightings (asking her to come to him through her own suicide).

Life and death are simply different states of being.You’re just crossing to the next state.

During the late 80s, movies like Bad Dreams would have been on heavy rotation on my VCR no doubt. A movie like Bad Dreams isn’t particularly distinguished and doesn’t necessarily stand out as anything of special note, but I think it has a little of this and a little of that which should appeal to the undemanding horror fan. It is competently made, echoing Nightmare on Elm Street III (maybe this has been established by many others, but this could be a reason for fans of that series to seek this out), with recognizable faces such as Jennifer Ruben (she was a teenage patient on Elm Street III and has a far bigger part here), Bruce Abbott (of Re-Animator; as Ruben’s psych doc), and Harris Yulin (as Head of the psych hospital, seemingly interested in helping his patients, but his motivations could be questionably immoral), along with some cool supporting parts rounding out the cast of mental patients with various neurosis and psychological hang-ups.

I think Lynch’s presence is the draw of Bad Dreams along with the really impressive burn make-up work on display; the murders are okay but when compared to other supernatural slashers (like the Nightmare on Elm Street series) they don’t quite measure up. Ruben is stunningly beautiful in this film even though she’s in large gowns and heavy clothes due to the place where she’s located. Her role demands a struggle for her sanity and a desperate fight not to surrender to Harris while he terrorizes her.

The twist regarding why she sees Harris might be disappointing to horror fans who love the idea of Lynch’s psycho spirit on the rampage in a hospital causing the suicides. His face, that great evil presence he evokes, the way he talks; this all is used effectively when Lynch appears to Ruben’s horror. When you can use Lynch sparingly, he can really benefit your film. I think he’s in Deodato’s Cut and Run like ten or so minutes and it seems he was the star of the whole film; that was what Lynch could do with the right part and used in just the correct way.

Abbott really does what he can with a rather colorless part for most of the film until he goes up against his superior in Yulin and is fired. He does show sympathy for his patients and a sense of urgency at the end when he realizes why his patients are committing suicides, but his funniest moment comes in a “psychotic drug-induced fantasy” visualizing himself running over Yulin with his car multiple times for his being fired.

The little parts sometimes damn near overshadow Ruben, like LA Law’s Susan Ruttan as a constantly-berating, chain-smoking, hot-tempered patient, Elizabeth Dailey (of Valley Girl and Pee Wee’s Big Adventure) as a patient yearning for a friendly connection with someone having been mute until Ruben’s arrival, and, especially, Dean Cameron (he was one of the horror buffs behind the best scene in a funny Mark Harmon comedy called Summer School) as the volatile, aggressively hostile, and often hilarious in a wisecrackingly nutty way young man named Ralph. Ralph’s demise of the group is the most cringe-worthy, first abusing himself with a hunting knife (Why does he have a hunting knife?), then later using surgical knives on his torso. A suicidal leap to the pavement from an upper floor window, a pool drowning, a romantic couple deciding to throw themselves into a spinning fan (!), and the drinking of acid are the variety of deaths that happen over the running time. Seeing Harris before the murders gives Bad Dreams a possible supernatural antagonist but for me the film’s major flaw is the twist itself; the reasoning behind allowing the patients to succumb to the hallucinogenic, mentally altered dreams overcoming their logic for what they are doing didn’t satisfy me. I didn’t quite buy into the sociopathy involved behind a quack theory that wouldn’t work unless evidence proved it accurate.

I think the best scene, besides all of Lynch’s great work here, is when Harris pours gasoline over the heads of his people inside their house located off the beaten path, isolated from society, eventually lighting a match, his face eschewing a fixed state of harmony, everyone eventually engulfed in flames. The pyrotechnic work here is first rate. The way the fire consumes bodies really freaked me out, and it was when all this talk about crossing over truly becomes a real nightmare of how a master of manipulation can truly cast such a spell to others that they would be willing to let themselves burn, baby, burn. But Lynch has that way about him as Harris; to me, he was believable as a Manson type cult leader with the ability to capture the passion and love of a group needing someone to guide them. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Cy Richardson as a detective who thinks Ruben is possibly complicit in the deaths piling up at her hospital; he always felt she might have had a hand in the Harris house fire suicides. Richardson is in-your-face, bossy, accusatory, but he has this expression (and shrug of the shoulders) when the mastermind behind the suicides takes a giant push from the roof of the hospital into a convertible that is priceless. That whole scene on the roof, as Abbott tries to talk Ruben out of taking a flight to the bottom below while holding her arm for dear life as someone attempts to ruin his rescue just left me rolling my eyes…just how long could Abbott barely hold on to her with one hand?