Director: Harley Cokeliss
Notable Cast: Jemma Redgrave, Kathleen Wilhoite, Timothy
Spall, Jimmy Nail, Mark Greenstreet, Susan Fleetwood
With relatively no expectations going into Dream Demon,
it’s something of the perfect film to surprise its viewer. With a title like Dream
Demon along with some of the taglines used for the film, one could regularly
assume that this 1988 horror flick was simply a Nightmare on Elm Street
or Phantasm knock off. In reality, the film is far more serious and traditionally
dramatic than what those franchises had become by the late 80s. Dream Demon
is certainly more in the vein of the atmospheric and European flavors of
Italian cinema of the 70s. It’s an impeccably paced and surrealistic dive into
the ‘haunted house’ film that hardly gets the love that it’s due. Unsurprisingly,
it’s Arrow Video that’s unburying this overlooked classic for release and it’s
definitely one worth the gander for horror fans.
When Diana (Redgrave) moves into a new house, in preparation
for her upcoming public wedding to her military fiancée Oliver (Greenstreet,)
she starts to have vivid and horrifying dreams. When she befriends a visiting
American Jenny (Wilhoite) the dreams become so real that her friend starts to
experience them with her – as if they were real. As the lines between
nightmares and reality blur, the two women must decipher the messages and
figure out why this is happening now.