Dreamscape:
A 40 Year Retrospective
1984
Director- Joseph Ruben
Cast- Dennis Quaid, Max Von Sydow, Kate Capshaw,
Christopher Plummer, David Patrick Kelley, George Wendt, Eddie Albert, Peter
Jason
Alex
(Dennis Quaid) is a psychic who squanders his gifts leading an irresponsible
lifestyle, supporting himself by gambling on horse races. He gets recruited
into a secret, government funded project to enter people’s dreams. The project
is ran by Max Von Sydow (Flash Gordon, Needful Things, The Seventh Seal), a
pure scientist only interested in the exploratory possibilities. Behind him is
a shadowy government figure (Christopher Plummer) who wants to use the program
for spying and assassination.
The President of the United
States is plagued by dreams of nuclear annihilation and is brought to the dream
program for help with his nightmares. Alex is aided by a scientist (Kate
Capshaw) and opposed by another psychic, Tommy Ray (David Patrick Kelly), a
sociopath who is training to be a dream assassin.
Dreamscape was a highly
original movie for its time with an all-star cast. But four decades later, how
well has it aged? Does it still hold up and what is its place in film history?
Dreamscape was one of the
first movies to be released with the PG-13 rating (right after Red Dawn, which
was the first). Actually, it feels very much like the dark fantasy films that
Disney was making in the late 70s and early 80s, films that would scare the
crap out of you but didn’t have sex or too much violence. There's no nudity and
minimal violence, so I think the PG-13 rating must have come from the disturbing
imagery, which one might expect from a movie that takes place in dreams.
The special effects are all
practical and still look pretty good, especially the Snakeman, a cobra headed
monster that haunts a child’s nightmares. The dream world is a combination of
post-apocalyptic landscapes and German Expressionism architecture.
The thing that really holds up
are the performances. Max Von Sydow was
charismatic in any part and Christopher Plummer always played great Bond level
villains. David Patrick Kelley, though, steals the show as the sociopathic
Tommy Ray. David made a career of playing memorable villains. He’s probably
best known as the gang member Luther, from The Warriors. Slightly younger fans
might remember him as T-Bird in The Crow. Both of those villains, however, were
chaotic. Tommy Ray is calculating and ice cold.
Given the fertile material that
the dreamworld offers, its surprising that more films haven’t dipped into the
premise of Dreamscape. Probably the best-known examples of similar movies are
the supremely disturbing The Cell (2000), the Japanese anime Paprika (2006) and
the Christopher Nolan thriller Inception (2010). Compared to those, Dreamscape blends
some of the disturbing imagery of a horror film with science fiction concepts but
also introduces elements of a political thriller via a plot to kill the President.
Something that sticks out to me after a recent viewing is how unlike an 80s movie it seems. The 80s fashions are toned down and there is no 80s music. This prevents the movie from feeling quaint and dated like a lot of other movies from the era.
Dreamscape won’t leave you
scratching your head like Inception and it certainly won’t leave you needing therapy
like The Cell. It walks a a middle ground, a little bit scary, a little bit
thrilling, but still entertaining, even after 40 years.
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