In 1986’s Dreamaniac, Adam (Thomas Bern) is a total dork who lives with his much more popular sister, Pat (Ashlyn Gere).  Adam aspires to be a heavy metal superstar and he is very much interested in the occult.  He’s been having dreams about being visited by a sultry and mysterious woman named Lily (Sylvia Summers).  When he performs a Satanic ritual to summon her for real, Lily offers him anything that he wants.  Instead of asking her to turn him into the world’s greatest guitarist or something smart like that, Adam asks to be irresistible to women.

Seriously, Adam, if you were the world’s greatest guitarist, you would be getting laid all the time whether you were irresistible or not.  The ugliest guy in the world is still be sexy if he can play guitar.  Take a look at the Rolling Stones and its long history of ugly guitar players who all looked good as long as they were playing.  Take a look at …. oh, I don’t know.  I’m tired and I’m just trying to pad out this review because there’s not much to be said about this movie.  Let’s move on.

Anyway, Adam gets his wish but he also has to kill the women so that Lily can take their soul and …. eh, that’s stupid.  Like Adam, why would you agree to such a counter-productive agreement?  Adam was so desperate to get a girlfriend that he apparently didn’t consider that none of them would really live long enough for him to have a real relationship with them.  What an idiot.

After Adam sells his soul or whatever it is that he’s supposed to be doing with Lily, Pat throws a party at the house and a bunch of shallow sorority girls and fraternity boys come over and everyone dies one-by-one, usually right after having sex.  No one really notices that everyone at the party is dying but then again, no one in this movie really seems to like anyone else so maybe they just don’t care.

Dreamaniac kind of ticked me off, largely because the title should have been Dream Maniac instead of Dreamaniac.  I guess I would have let them even get away with something like Dreammaniac.  But Dreamaniac, with only one m, just doesn’t make sense and looking at the word makes my multi-colored eyes tear up.  This may sound like a petty complaint but there’s honestly not much to be said about Dreamaniac.  It’s one of those low-budget, shot on video horror films where the lighting is often so dark and the soundtrack so muddy that you’re never really sure what’s happening on-screen.  I dare anyone to watch this film and seriously try to tell one character a part from another.  I had no idea who half the characters were and quite frankly, I didn’t care.  This was one of David DeCoteau’s earlier films and it has none of the subversiveness that distinguished DeCoteau’s better efforts.  (Considering the harsh tone of this review, I feel like I should point out that DeCoteau has directed some truly entertaining movies.  Dreamaniac is certainly not the film that should be used to judge his overall career.)

Of course, today, DeCoteau is best known for directing the “Wrong” films for Lifetime.  And really, I think the only thing that could have saved Dreamaniac would have been Vivica A. Fox showing up and saying, “Adam, you picked The Wrong Succubus.”