Before there was Inception, there was Dreamscape!

Dreamscape opens with the image of a woman running down a street while a red mushroom sprouts above the city behind her.  Just as a radioactive cloud envelopes the woman, the scene cuts to a man named John (Eddie Albert) waking up with a scream.  John is the President of the United States and he has been having reoccurring nightmares about nuclear war.  The dreams have shaken him to the extent that he plans of signing a disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union.

Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer, playing one of the slick villain roles that dominated his career until he finally won an Oscar for Beginners) is a political reactionary who works for a shadowy agency that is even feared by the CIA.  Determined to stop the President from signing that treaty, Blair recruits psychotic martial arts enthusiast Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly, of “Warriors, come out to play…” fame) to assassinate the President.  Tommy is a psychic who can enter people’s dreams and when you die in a dream, you die in real life.

Tommy is a part of a government-funded research project that is headed by Dr. Peter Novotny (Max Von Sydow) and Beth DeVries (Kate Capshaw).  Tommy was the program’s superstar until the arrival of Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid).  Until he was recruited by Dr. Novotny, Alex was using his psychic abilities for gambling and womanizing.  Now, Alex has to use his abilities to save the President’s life.

Dreamscape came out the same year as Wes Craven’s Nightmare on Elm Street and they do share a few things in common.  During one scene set in the President’s nightmare, Tommy even has razor-sharp claws.  But ultimately, Nightmare and Dreamscape are two very different films.  Whereas Nightmare was a horror film, Dreamscape is an adventure film with horror elements.  In fact, Dreamscape feels like four different films all mashed together.  It’s a political conspiracy story, with Christopher Plummer plotting to kill the President.  It’s an adventure story, with Dennis Quaid as an appealing rogue.  It’s a love story, as Alex and Beth fall in love while researching dreams.  At times, it is also a very dark comedy, like when Alex enters the dream of a man who is terrified that his wife is cheating on him with everyone that they know.

Fans of cult cinema will appreciate that Dreamscape features one of David Patrick Kelly’s best villainous performances.  In the role of Tommy, he not only gets to do his usual bravura work as a weasley psychopath but he also gets to bust out an impressive impersonation of Bruce Lee as well.

Along with David Patrick Kelly at his demented best, Dreamscape also features the Snakeman, a claymation monster who may look cheesy today but probably gave many youngsters nightmares back in 1984.  Like the Snakeman, all of the film’s special effects have aged but it does not detract from the film.  Since the special effects were used to create the film’s dreams, it doesn’t matter that they no longer look 100% realistic.  Dreams are supposed to be strange so the cheesiness of some of the special effects actually works to Dreamscape‘s advantage.

Dreamscape may not be as well-known as Inception or Nightmare on Elm Street but it is still a fun and entertaining excursion into the dream world.