Bad Dreams

BAD DREAMS

In terms of dialogue, production value, and overall quality, the 1988 film Bad Dreams is superior to most horror fare from the late 1980s.  The plot follows a young woman named Cynthia who awakens from a coma thirteen years after she survives the mass suicide of a cult she was in during her childhood.  The film opens with a literal bang as the cult leader (Harris) pours gasoline over his followers, and then their communal house explodes in flame.  When Cynthia emerges from her coma, she joins a psychiatric group therapy circle lead by Dr. Alex Karmen (who works for another psychiatrist named Dr. Berrisford).  The filmmakers took great care to give each member of the therapy group an individual personality – they are not interchangeable.  They do, however, start dying one by one in apparent suicides that Cynthia claims are actually the handiwork of cult leader Harris (who she sees lurking about the hospital).  A gal named Lana drowns in a pool, and a woman called Miriam leaps out of an upstairs window.  Two others get sucked into a power turbine, and a guy named Ralph stabs himself with a pair of scalpels.  Dr. Berrisford sends Cynthia into an isolation room within the hospital over the protests of Karmen, who gets fired for objecting to Berrisford’s plan.  Karmen then uncovers a nefarious plot (the nature of which I will not spoil, as much of the fun of watching this film comes from trying to figure out what’s really going on and what is just in Cynthia’s head).  A relatively happy ending implies that Cynthia has survived but may long suffer from the mental scars of her trauma.

Creepy, sometimes gory, and often deliberately darkly funny, Bad Dreams (which should have had a different title) delivers a singular story that kept this horror fan riveted for its brief running time (the tale runs about eighty minutes before the end credits roll).  One flashback sequence in which fire races through a room and engulfs members of the cult was particularly visceral and terrifying.  My only complaint is that Cynthia (the ostensible protagonist) becomes exceptionally passive during the final ten minutes or so and must be rescued by Karmen.  I like my heroes active.  Bad Dreams is otherwise worth a look.