i want you to hit me as hard as you can
what are you interested in dreams dreams hey everybody and welcome back to another edition of
the best movie you never saw and this week well we're taking a look at a childhood favorite of
mine a little movie called dreamscape starring dennis quaid kate capshaw who was of course
at the time the future mrs steven spielberg christopher plummer maximum sato eddie albert
and david patrick kelly of the warriors with music by maurice jarrett and it was directed by
joseph rubin who later on would go on to direct one of julia roberts's best early movies sleeping
with the enemy so in this movie a psychic played by dennis quaid with some absolutely hideous hair
and really bad choice in sweater wear i think is recruited by his former mentor played by max
vuncito for a top secret program that involves the infiltration of dreams let's pretend that a man
with a little help from science could psychically project himself inside the dream of a sleeping
person little do either of them know however that a government agent played by christopher plummer
is financing the program and intends to use it to assassinate the nightmare plagued president
of the united states of america played by eddie albert one of the things that's interesting about
dreamscape is that it was a studio acquisition way back in 1984. now studio acquisitions happen
all the time at film festivals now and i think we've gotten quite used to them but they were very
different in the 80s currently most acquisitions are of prestige titles from film festivals like
sundance or tiff and most movies get picked up by indie divisions at best but in the 80s the
pipeline wasn't quite as cluttered with movies as it is now and movie studios needed product so it
wasn't rare for a big time studio to put out a film that was independently financed if it had
real commercial appeal such a movie was dreamscape which was independently produced for relatively
small budget 6 million dollars but was also cast with a bunch of rising stars including dennis
quaid who had just had a big success in well the critically maligned but still pretty financially
successful anyway jaws 3d plus it co-starred maxum insider and christopher plummer and eddie albert
was in it add to the fact that kate cavshaw who was the love interest in the film was also putting
the love interest in indiana jones in the temple of doom which was foreseen to be the biggest movie
of 1984 oh indie open with me i could see why 20th century fox decided to pick this movie up quaid at
the time was really being groomed for big time stardom with a lot of people predicting he would
become the next harrison ford not only had he done jaws 3d but he had also done a movie called tough
enough and a movie that really got executives excited the right stuff too bad then that fox
kinda dumped the movie into theaters putting it out in the dead zone of summer back in 1984 where
it opened quite poorly it was not a financial success but it still managed to gross around 12
million dollars which was twice the budget and i suppose makes it moderately successful but where
the movie really did well was on video and all involved easily recouped their money and turned to
solid profit but while i would say the dreamscape is a called hit to children of the 80s who grew
up watching it with children such as myself being the case otherwise i think it's relatively unknown
so chemscape was a childhood favorite of mine but we know how it goes movies we loved as kids don't
always hold up when we're adults i mean i really loved the movie howard the duck when i was five
and we just did a what the [ __ ] happened to howard the duck a couple weeks ago
that goes to prove that there were a lot of things that were wrong with howard the duck but
i guess i still love it in a nostalgic kind of way that's it no more mr nice duck
my love of the film though from when i was a child doesn't necessarily mean it's a good movie so i
was very nervous revisiting a movie that even when i was a kid i knew was a little bit cheesy i mean
dreamscape came out in 1984 and was probably dated by 1985 with its over-the-top synthy score and
you know those sweaters that dennis quaid wears indeed dreamscape is a really wacky movie but
the thing is the kitsch factor in this movie is tuned up so high that as cheesy as it is
it all comes around full circle and suddenly becomes cutting edge and cool if you look at
it through the filter of nostalgia if people like 1980s kind of throwbacks like kung fury
i think that in some ways dreamscape plays out as like kind of the perfect 80s spoof movie
i might say that except that it's kind of the real deal it actually was made in the 1980s and
isn't really a spoof i mean it was meant to be a serious movie the only thing is 30 somewhat
years later it just seems kind of laughable but in a good way in fact i think if a studio like
a24 was to team up with a really cool director and they wanted to make a deliberately cheesy
80s movie it probably would come out almost exactly like dreamscape this movie has all the
hallmarks of the cheesy 80s genre from a wildly over-the-top synth score by the great maurice jar
who in his early days composed movies like dr zhivago and lawrence arabia
but by the 80s it actually becomes something of a synthesizer specialist with the score for this
the amazing score for witness and a couple others under his belt you got a saxophone playing a wise
guy hero played by the oddly quaff dennis quaid he spots this preppy look in the film that's
totally contrary to the cool guy look that made him a heartthrob just a couple of years later in
the big easy and inner space it feels like quaid at the time just didn't quite figure out his look
the short hair double make hair look i think was what really pulled dennis quaid over
his look here is very strange i mean i guess they're trying to make him look like he's a
college student or something but i don't know i thought he looks very strange throughout this
it does kind of work though for the character because i suppose he's
supposed to be kind of an overgrown kid in some ways friends friends
you're treacherous i was half expecting him to walk around with a pocket protector though which
is kind of strange because he's again this cool guy hero i mean like i said he plays
a saxophone you don't get much cooler than that in the 80s saxophone means you're a pretty cool
guy you play music with this thing that's a matter of opinion kate capshaw is the
serious academic who immediately melts into his arms because of course he's dennis quaid
so jane what you do here in effect is counting boners
while maximum cyto and one of his many forays into genre in the 80s is cast against type
as one of the good guys usually in a movie like this maximum sido would be evil here he's actually
kind of a likable guy but of course he gets killed pretty early in the film christopher
plummer is actually the baddie yes that's right canadian icon christopher plummer it's very simple
either you work for me or you die but the movie is absolutely stolen by this actor named david
patrick kelly who specialized in playing scumbag villains all throughout the 80s you may not know
to look at me but i'm a pretty sensitive guy you'll remember him as sully from commando with
that famous scene remember sally when i promised to kill you last that's right you did i lied
then of course there was the adventures of ford failing but the movie that really made him famous
was the warriors when he does that great scene
so kelly in this movie plays quade's evil counterpart the only other psychic that's powerful
enough to enter dreams on his own without the kind of weird equipment that they use in the film this
makes him plumber's tool for a presidential assassination plot you see eddie albert in
this plays the u.s president and he's haunted by the death of his wife and has terrifying visions
of her dying in an awful nuclear holocaust that are so convincing that he's actually prepping
disarmament talks with the soviet union remember this was the 80s that could gasp in the cold war
he's like the anti-reagan my responsibility to bring the world back from the brink this nuclear
madness has to end of course that means he has to die it adds up to a fun caper that's partly a
horror movie especially in the mid section where quaid helps a kid that's played by visions of a
snake man and partly an action adventure movie and also partly a sci-fi thriller slash romance
so no matter how you slice it dreamscape is pretty good fun and notable in that it was only
the second movie ever to earn a pg-13 rating with red dawn being the first a strange byproduct of
the rating is that different versions of the movie exist out there i vividly remember the vhs version
of this movie having some nice nudity but the new blu-ray version of the film is nudity-free so
i guess it got cut out at some point i'm not gonna go to bed with you bad well bad who said
anything about bed i'm talking about linguine here there's a lot of really cool imagery in dreamscape
one of the most notable is of course the snake man that of course gave me nightmares as a kid but
watching the movie again what really strikes me is the awesome opening scene where right after
the credits you're plunged into the president's nuclear nightmare which is rough stuff for a pg-13
and i think if this movie was released nowadays he would easily get an r it's such a striking moment
so while dreamscape is definitely a product of its time meaning the 80s it
can't be denied that as far as sci-fi horror goes the 80s were kind of rad and dreamscape
is a super fun retro flick that i definitely definitely recommend checking out especially
if you like this kind of thing in fact i recommended runaway a couple weeks ago
and if you liked my recommendation for runaway give dreamscape a look alex have a heart and
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