Dreamscape

Dreamscape is one of the craziest balls-out rides of the ’80s. It’s absolutely dreadful, hopeless from concept to execution, but its enthusiasm is contagious and hey, sometimes I’m just in the mood for an all-out crud fest. This checks the right boxes. Checks them, underlines them, leaves a little doodle in the margin and then lights the page on fire. The whole mess is so constantly, aggressively over the top, I can’t decide if its motives are genuine or just playfully tongue-in-cheek. A 1984 release date makes me think there’s no way it could’ve been satire - most of the stuff it would be lampooning was still in development - but I’m almost positive I caught a few knowing smirks that imply otherwise. There’s no way Dennis Quaid could’ve delivered a line like “so you count boners” in a serious film, right? Whether or not the cheese factor is legitimate, this is the right kind of bad. We get that impression right from the word go: the opening shots clumsily depict a middle-aged woman in a nightgown, shrieking and jogging from a mushroom cloud in a ham-handed blue screen monstrosity. This nightmare vision, we’ll soon learn, belongs to the PotUS, and it’s put him in a mood to negotiate mutual disarmament with the Soviets. Predictably, that policy shift draws the ire of a shadowy figure who might benefit from an extended cold war, and he decides to course correct by... projecting a violent psychopath into the President’s dreams. Fortunately, Quaid’s character is also able to transfer his consciousness in hand-wavy, pseudo-scientific ways, and after a short training period (under the tutelage of a slumming Max von Sydow) he’s ready to go to war. It’s like A Nightmare on Elm Street meets Inception. Even when set in reality, this is a nonsensical fever dream. Heroes behave like villains and villains behave like poseurs. Every character trait is glibly explained by a regurgitated Freudism. George Wendt (Norm!) shows up as a flimsy Stephen King stand-in. Quaid gets his shirt off in three unrelated scenes. The special effects are the crown jewel. Ambitious beyond good reason, they’re a deliciously outdated collaborative effort that’s best demonstrated by the outrageous, towering, stop-motion snake man that powers the climax. Berthed by a child’s nightmare, this winking, writhing abomination soon chases Quaid into other dreams, reliably drawing big laughs with each appearance. I’ve been pranking my wife with unsolicited screencaps of his stupid face. If you’re looking to spend some time cackling at something truly awful, Dreamscape would be a fantastic choice. How do you rate that?