Dreamscape

Dennis Quaid is at peak Dennis Quaid as a psychic who exploits his gifts for gambling and womanizing until he's reunited with his mentor (Max von Sydow), a research scientist who has developed a method of diagnosing and curing people's psychic traumas by having people with psychic abilities enter their subconscious and interact with their dreams. You know things won't go well when Quaid arrives at the lab and discovers that the powerful government agent who has taken over the project is played by '80s-era Christopher Plummer, and David Patrick Kelly is the hot-shot psychic Quaid is replacing. Director Joseph Ruben (The Pom Pom Girls, The Stepfather, Sleeping with the Enemy) teamed up with Chuck Russell (who would go on to director A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, the remake of The Blob, and The Mask) and David Loughery (who would pen Flashback, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and Money Train) to write what comes off as a lighter, breezier take on the previously year's Brainstorm. Scoring von Sydow, Plumber, and Eddie Albert as the President of the United States gives the movie some prestige, but Quaid, Kate Capshaw, and Geroge Went go out of their way to constantly remind us this is an '80s movie, and we really don't need reminding.

Despite its excellent cast and distinctive hand-made special effects, this sci-fi/action/horror indie, which became a VHS staple for much of a generation, is a bit of a letdown. The main issue is that the all-important dream sequences just don't look or feel like actual dreams. Maybe that was a budgetary issue, but the design of the dreams and the way they function in the story make this film seem like they were created by people who've never actually gone to sleep before.

Though most fans discovered Dreamscape by renting the tape or seeing it on cable, I consider it a prime example of a movie that only works (at least to my adult eyes) when seen in a theater on film with an audience. Especially on 35mm, there's an undeniable charm to Dreamscape found in other genre films of the period, such as Night of the Comet and Impulse. However, those films benefit specifically from their lack of major stars, which lends them an air of creepy realism not found in the more comical Dreamscape.