Deadly Dreams (1988)

Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

One of my all time favorites.

Lack of good storyline.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I remember the first time ever noticing Deadly Dreams. I was working in a Video Warehouse years ago and noticed the cover. Something about it caught my eye. It wasn't until years later that I would come to sit down and actually watch this movie.Deadly Dreams plays off like an episode of Tales From the Crypt. It just runs 35 minutes too long. The storyline starts out with a family on Christmas Eve. Two parents and their son Alex wait for the oldest son to come to the house. When they receive a knock on the door, it isn't the oldest son but a man with a rifle who guns down the two parents. 10 years later Alex is 20 years old and often has horrible nightmares of the man who killed his parents murdering him. Alex and his brother both gained a hefty inheritance from the death of their Father and it looks like someone might be trying to get their hands on it.For a movie that runs 79 minutes it certainly is very slow. We don't get anything new out of the storyline as Tales From the Crypt did have a story very similar to this one in one of the old comic books. At least the acting was decent in this film and the last ten minutes are interesting. Other then that, I was falling asleep at times.This movie might be good for one viewing on a boring Sunday afternoon. Other than that, I would rather watch something else. 5/10

Deadly Dreams is yet another snooze-fest trying to pass itself off as a horror flick. The acting is fine, you even get to see some breasts, but that's about it. The plot involves the main character having dreams about a killer, and soon these dreams start to become reality. The film is really about revenge, and all is revealed in the 'twist' ending. There was potential in Deadly Dreams, it could have been a nifty backwoods slasher if they had tried - the hunting mask would have looked cool as a slasher mask. Sadly the potential doesn't seem to have been realised because Deadly Dreams is just a chore to watch. There is minimal blood, tedious dialogue, lifeless characters, and only one half-decent death scene which is at the end. Don't bother seeking it out - it's REALLY not worth it.

***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.

Young man who lost almost his entire family in a hunting trip several years ago by a serial killer is haunted by visions of the killer and then eventually reality and dreams cross over as he begins to see the killer in real life even though his brother assures him that there is no way that the killer is after him. Brief film with a wicked twist of an ending and a few chilling scenes, features lack luster direction and performances. This film could have been so much more given the premise.Rated R; Nudity, Violence, Sexual Situations, and Profanity.