Saturday, August 31, 2024

Guest Post: A Quiet Place, Day One (2024)


The Fault In Our Star-ship Troopers

 

By Jonas Schwartz-Owen


Finally, the spend-your-last-day-on-Earth-to-the-fullest love story/alien bug mash-up for which audiences have been clamoring. A Quiet Place, Day One, a prequel to the hit John Krakowski films, hands the reins to Michael Sarnoski. While the action scenes seem like retread War of the Worlds, there are tiny magical moments that illustrate Sarnoski’s talents. 

 

Sam (Oscar winner Lupita Nyong'o) is dying of cancer in a hospice center across the bay from Manhattan. She has lost hope and will, and only wants to relive a memory from her childhood with a slice of pizza in Harlem. She reluctantly agrees to join fellow patients to the city so she can indulge in this final slice. Vicious creatures who look like giant crickets with xenomorph mouths land on earth and quickly demolish civilization. Sam, her cat Frodo, and the hospice nurse (Alex Wolff) wind up hiding in a theater under attack. As she journeys up to Harlem for that pizza, she picks up a dazed, shellshocked Eric (Joseph Quinn), who tags along, as they escape monsters at every turn.


 

Sarnoski made the exhilarating Pig in 2021 starring Nicolas Cage in one of his best performances. Both films follow a simple genre plotline but find layers in the unlikely relationships. The invasion sequences have been done before and shot/edited better by other directors, but choosing a protagonist ready to die but invested in a trivial but momentous (to her) journey elevates the through-line. The marionette performance, the charming scene at the jazz bar, the rapport Sam has with both Eric and Reuben, the nurse, go beyond the one-dimensional relationships in many action films. Though Sarnoski leaves out the central Abbott family of the first two films, he ties Day One to the sequel by reintroducing Henri (Djimon Hounsou) in New York, before he escaped to the island where Emily Blunt’s character finds him later. 

 

The script has a few quizzical short-hands. We’ve sadly seen governments in chaos before in the real world, and information does not flow quickly. Yet, in the movie, the government manages to decipher and disseminate that the aliens can’t swim, and the fact that noise draws them to attack, within an hour. That’s a lot of details to get to the panicked public under attack and makes you wonder if the Director of Defense watched the first two films as a primer when the monsters begin raining down in the major cities.  

 

Nyong'o plays all of the emotional beats so you warm to her even though she has essentially given up on fighting to live. The character starts as despondent and though her impending death still doesn’t worry her, she’s more at peace and heroic than miserable. Quinn, who won over Stranger Things audiences as the misunderstood rocker, Eddie, has an endearing persona and builds great chemistry. Their scene in the Harlem Jazz Club is celebratory. 

 

A Quiet Place, Day One, may have not proven its necessity to exist -- the information it adds to the saga is meager --  yet, Michael Sarnoski is a special director, who’s reminiscent of the RKO ‘40s legendary producer Val Lewton. It’s never the title nor the plot line that invests the audience in his films, but his reflection of the human condition in even the most insane circumstances. It would have been more interesting to see what he could have done if all the extraneous action scenes were stripped away. 

Thursday, August 29, 2024

Abnormal Fixation: Two new Quarter Finalists at Oniros Film Awards!


I am thrilled today to announce that the prestigious Oniros Film Awards in New York has named our upcoming web series Abnormal Fixation (to air the October!) a quarter finalist in two additional categories beyond best web series, the award we are also up for.

Alicia W. Martin, my co-author on The Subway Game (2024) and the lead of Abnormal Fixation, is a quarter finalist for Best Actress. Alicia is amazing -- simultaneously real AND funny -- in the role of Season Winters, and I can't wait for you to see her in the show. Alicia brings charisma, passion and energy to the role of a long-suffering spouse and forensic biologist with some...quirky tastes. Congratulations, Alicia!

Oniros Film Awards also honored us with a quarter finalist designation for sound design, and that's all Tony Mercer. Tony its an incredible talent, and world builder, the sound engineer, mixer, editor responsible for the wondrous multiverse of Enter The House Between (2023). His accomplished sound design for Abnormal Fixation lifts all boats, and showcases our story and cast to the nth degree. Congrats, Tony!

We'll find out next week if we move up to semi-finalist designation in the categories of best web series, best actress, and best sound design, and I'll keep you all up to date on the results!



Monday, August 26, 2024

30 Years Ago: Natural Born Killers (1994)

Following two surreal hours of ultra-violent imagery and deep social criticism, Oliver Stone's controversial 1990s masterpiece, Natural Born Killers concludes with fact.

Specifically, the film ends with real-life footage of the Waco/David Koresh stand-off, disgraced ice skater Tonya Harding taking a tumble, Lorena Bobbitt on the witness stand (on trial for cutting off her husband's penis), the murderous Menendez Brothers, murder suspect O.J. Simpson, and even Rodney King asking (famously): "can't we all just get along?"

This montage is an exclamation point; a sharp punctuation capping off a fiercely presented argument. It states: "welcome to the tabloid-TV culture of America in the 1990s; where crime pays, and pays well." Commit a notorious murder and you are...a superstar.

Who's that on the phone? The Jenny Jones Show is calling...

Accordingly, Natural Born Killers was advertised on theatrical release as a "bold new film that takes a look at a country seduced by fame, obsessed by crime, and consumed by the media."

And yes, that indeed represents truth in advertising. 

Natural Born Killers -- a sensational bombardment of incendiary sound and imagery -- burns through its expansive running time with a blazing indictment of the mainstream media. 

The charge? Lowering the national discourse. Finally, director Stone makes his explicit closing argument with real-life archival footage. 

Natural Born Killer's closing montage declares, essentially: You think we're exaggerating? 

You think we're kidding? Well, lookie here: this is who we are (to appropriate Millennium's confrontational [1996-1999] tag-line). The documentary-style final montage pointedly connects the misadventures of fictional mass-murderers Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis) to the real-life celebrities who found fame and fortune the same way. It tells us that even though Natural Born Killers qualifies as satire, it is hardly exaggerated in terms of narrative content (though style and presentation are different arguments entirely.)

This closing documentary montage also represents Oliver Stone's inoculation from critics who complained that he was coarsening the dialogue himself. On the contraryNatural Born Killers represents cinematic commentary at its finest because it draws together so many disparate cultural elements and synthesizes them into a lucid, pointed critique of the times. After making its case in fictional and artistic terms, it graduates to the terrain of the real and we see there is little gap between what Stone has imagined and was happening every day on our televisions.


Sitcom America: Or I Love Mallory

Early in Natural Born Killers, the film re-constructs, in flashback, the first, fateful meeting of Mickey and Mallory. 

This sequence is presented as a black-and-white TV sitcom from the 1950s. Something along the lines of Leave it to Beaver (1957-1962), or, of course, I Love Lucy (1951-1957).

This "sitcom" of Mallory's family life in Natural Born Killers charts the colossal gulf between the imagery sold to America regarding family life, and the truth, for many Americans, of such family life in the 1990s. 

Specifically, a greasy, monstrous Rodney Dangerfield portrays Mallory's Dad in this sequence and, well, let's just establish he is hardly Robert Young in Father Knows Best (1954-1960). On the contrary, he is verbally and physically abusive to his wife (Edie McClurg) and his children. He gropes his own daughter and even sexually abuses her. 

Again, this is a far cry from the perfect domestic bliss of The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet (1952-1956).

When one of the first national surveys regarding childhood sexual abuse was conducted in 1989, researchers discovered that such abuse was prevalent in a whopping 27% of respondents. To parse that figure, on the cusp of the 1990s more than one-in-four American women reported being sexually abused by family members during their formative years. That's not just a shameful statistic, it's an epidemic. But the media wasn't going to connect the dots for us. It was too busy feeding us reinforcing images about the American family (in empty-headed sitcoms), and, at the opposite pole, entertaining us with the bread and circuses of talk shows. 

Natural Born Killers threads together these two disparate worlds. One commercial image was patently idealized and false (dangerously so), and the other encouraged our worst rubber-necking instincts. Was it any wonder our culture had become so schizophrenic? Self-righteously moral on one hand, and voyeuristic on the other?

In Natural Born Killers, the form of the sitcom or "situation comedy" reveals Mallory's life as she imagined it should be (replete with an oppressive laugh-track eradicating any scary sense of ambiguity). But the content of that domestic drama reveals the grim truth of it. "She has a sad sickness," Mickey notes of Mallory at one point. She "wanders in a world of ghosts." Those ghosts are black-and-white ones transmitted by a flickering cathode ray tube; images of perfect sitcom personalities who don't exist in real life. Mallory is haunted by the media's image of family life, unaware that it can never be. 



You're Buying and Selling Fear: Mass Media as The Devil


In Natural Born Killers, Robert Downey Jr. plays Wayne Gale, the arrogant host of a lurid "true crime" TV series called American Maniacs

Gale is not, however, concerned with truth or objectivity, merely with high ratings, which will bring him wealth and personal fame. Gale is so smug that he looks upon his subjects as "apes" and notes he is the "God" of his own world.

Mickey and Mallory's cross-country killing spree is thus an opportunity for Wayne to grand-stand, to look powerful in front of his audience. He schedules a live interview with the incarcerated Mickey for Superbowl Sunday. And there, the vainglorious Wayne shall show off to the high heavens. He will look heroic by verbally jousting with the "monster," Mickey.

When a riot begins in Mickey's prison, however, Wayne blurs the lines. He goes from reporting on the crimes to participating in them. He picks up a gun and actually starts shooting police officers to keep the broadcast going, to keep the story alive. 

The message is clear here, isn't it? The media is complicit in the crime sprees it reports with such verve.

Occasionally in Natural Born Killers, Oliver Stone jump cuts -- in almost subliminal fashion -- to expressionistic visuals depicting Wayne Gale as the Devil. Actually, as a blood-soaked Devil. Since this character symbolizes the media in the film, Stone is making a comparison of "evils," and finding the mainstream media amongst the worst. Natural Born Killers reveals clearly how criminals and the media work hand-in-hand. The media transforms criminals into celebrities, and the criminals in turn, hand the media high ratings. It's a win-win arrangement in what Stone calls a "fast food culture."

In keeping with this theme, there's a great montage midway through the film that features "people on the street" in London, Tokyo, Paris and America professing their undying love of killers Mickey and Mallory. 

The spree-murderers also make the covers of People, Esquire, Newsweek, The New York Post and other periodicals. 

That which is famous must be good, right? Stone even cuts to Brian De Palma's Scarface at one point, and, as viewers, we are asked to ponder an important question. Why do we, as Americans, worship our gangsters? Why do we admire killers?

Like Remy Belvaux's brilliant satire, Man Bites Dog (1992), Stone's Natural Born Killers suggests that, in the unending quest for a greater audience share, the media can't help but participate and encourage the violent stories it reports on and profits from. The irony is that Mickey and Mallory understand this "evil," and put an end to Wayne Gale: they kill him on camera, effectively killing the media's role in their particular story. To some people, this makes these bad guys -- on some weird level -- admirable.

Many right wing critics complained vociferously about Natural Born Killers. It indeed seems to present unrepentant murderers as the "heroes" of the piece. My response to this argument is two-pronged. 

First, Natural Born Killers is a surreal, avant-garde expression of Mickey and Mallory's story, and to them, they certainly are the heroes of their adventure. 

And secondly, Stone boasts no illusions about his protagonists. In fact, he continually associates the two killers with the symbol of the rattlesnake.

A rattlesnake is not, in a strict sense, evil. A rattlesnake is, however, a dangerous killer. And, in the lingo of the film (and Mickey himself), Mickey and Mallory are "natural" born killers, meaning that they were made this way...like the rattlesnake. I take this to mean they were socialized to become society's rattlesnakes. They are not evil, per se, they are merely living according to their nature. And even though they are murderous, at least they love each other. 

This is not a glorification of violence or brutality, it's a notation, I submit, about honesty. Mickey and Mallory are honest about themselves. They are the only people in the film who can make this particular claim. They are exactly what they appear to be: Natural Born Killers. 

Mallory's Dad is not a loving force of paternal wisdom as the sitcom form suggests he should be...he's an exploitative sexual abuser. Wayne Gale is not a tribune of the people and honest broker of the facts, he's a sideshow barker and rubber-necker seeking personal fame and glory. Even Tommy Lee Jones' warden and Tom Sizemore's police detective, Scagnetti, are not symbols of legitimate law enforcement, but rather sick sadists looking to get their piece of the pie.

In a world of such personalities, Mickey and Mallory are indeed a lesser evil because they know what they are and don't pretend to be something else. At the very least, they aren't "buying and selling" an artificial image.

It's no coincidence that Mallory is depicted, at one point in the film, reading Sylvia Plath's 1963 novel, The Bell Jar. That story was set in a complacent, slick modern society of tremendous hypocrisy. The main character, Esther, was a tabloid writer aware of the lurid details of the jet-set. In real life, Plath chose suicide rather than continue existence in such a culture. In Natural Born Killers, Mickey and Mallory choose homicide as a solution, but in both cases, the act seems a protest against a garish, excessive world built on tabloid pillars.

Oliver Stone's film stops very far short of endorsing Mickey and Mallory as role models or model citizens, however. During one powerful scene, a window in a hotel becomes a TV screen of sorts. Behind Mickey and Mallory we see images of Stalin and Hitler prominently displayed. Worship these people at your own risk, the movie seems to say. It's a slippery slope indeed from Mickey and Mallory to O.J. Simpson to The Menendez Brothers to Hitler or Stalin. Why? The celebrity culture thrives on ratings, not on inherent worth or morality. We should not mistake fame or infamy for virtue, and that's a key message of Stone's movie. (And, yes this explains Donald Trump, doesn't it?)

It's a well-known fact that Columbine Killers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris used the term "NBK" (Natural Born Killers) as code for their own horrific killing spree. But these young killers certainly took away the wrong lesson from Stone's film. 

They imagined being famous, whereas fame is something that Mickey and Mallory never covet or desire in the film. Stone's film criticized such fame, and specifically, we have that ending montage to confirm that Natural Born Killers is intended, indeed, as social criticism.

Mickey and Mallory are rattlesnakes in Natural Born Killers, and they almost die while crossing a field of authentic rattlesnakes. That image, perhaps, is the film's most resonant one. It's not just a regurgitation of the old live-by-the-sword/die-by-the-sword truism, but a comment on the very nature of our culture and corporate media. 

Natural Born Killers? Mickey and Mallory are practically babes in the woods compared to the cynicism of Wayne Gale, Jack Scagnetti and the other vultures they encounter in this film.

Sunday, August 25, 2024

60 Years Ago: Godzilla vs. The Thing (1964)


Godzilla movies can often be quite blunt in presentation, so -- in honor of that trait -- allow me to be blunt about Godzilla vs. The Thing (1964).

It is, basically, a superior, artistically-coherent version of King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962).  

This movie dramatizes a very similar tale, but Godzilla vs. The Thing ties all the familiar elements together into a caustic and effective critique of Big Business.

Accordingly, this film feels far more direct and meaningful than its predecessor did.  In fact, I would agree with critics who state Godzilla vs. The Thing is one of the all-time best Showa Godzilla films.  

In particular, it is noteworthy how Godzilla vs. The Thing forges a link between irresponsible Big Business and environmental and manmade catastrophes. Even Godzilla himself is contextualized in light of this nexus. 

In man’s blazing desire to profit from things that aren’t his to profit from, says the film, he risks total apocalypse, even if that apocalypse is unintentional.

But Godzilla vs. The Thing doesn’t desire to be a polemic, either, and also comments meaningfully on man’s connection not just with nature, but with his fellow man. 

The great Mothra -- who has seen her island devastated by atom bombs -- could refuse to help civilized Japan in its hour of desperate need.  But, as the film states, “we must learn to help one another,” or we’ll all go down, if not to rampaging Kaiju then to some other dire threat.

Agree or disagree with its premise about reckless capitalism, Godzilla vs. The Thing really works splendidly, and the battle scenes are fantastic too, featuring more cut-ins and extreme close-shots so the fighting monsters seem even more vicious than before.



“Money, that’s all they’re interested in….”
Following a dangerous typhoon, a reporter, Ichiro (Akira Takarada), and his new photographer, Junko (Yuriko Hoshi) survey the damage to the shore-line. They uncover a giant reptile scale, but that discovery pales in comparison to another.
A giant, colorful egg has been seen in the shallow waters of the coast. 
This colossal egg is brought ashore by the poor locals, and studied by scientists, including Professor Miura (Hiroshi Koizumi) until a businessman named Mr. Kumayama (Yoshifumi Tojima) brazenly explains that the egg is his property. He has just purchased it from the desperate locals, who have endured the typhoon damage. He plans to sell it to the head of Happy Enterprises, with the express purpose of creating an amusement park attraction based on it.  
Soon work is under-way to incubate the egg in a large structure…
Before long, the Shobijin -- two tiny fairy women -- appear in Japan, and ask the businessmen for the return of the egg to its home on Infant Island.,The egg belongs to their deity, a giant old creature called Mothra. Their pleas are ridiculed and ignored, however and the small women face capture themselves.  They escape from custody and return to Infant Island.
Meaenwhile, Godzilla rears his head in Japan again, this time near the beach where he washed ashore (and lost his scale…) in the hurricane.  Godzilla promptly begins to cause great damage to Japanese industry and property, prompting Ichiro and Junko to visit Infant Island and beg Mothra’s help to defeat him.
On the island, Mothra’s help is solicited, even though the island has been ravaged by atomic testing, and civilized man refused to return the giant monster’s egg. Still, Mothra agrees to help…but the monster is aged, and may not be able to defeat Godzilla.
When Mothra dies in a fierce battle with the giant radioactive lizard, her egg finally hatches, and two Mothra grubs continue the fight, for all mankind.




“I’m sure they hate us for what happened here.”                                      

If the angle about a pharmaceutical company and its CEO was played largely for laughs in King Kong vs. Godzilla, a similar plot-line gets more serious treatment in Godzilla vs. The Thing. Here, a company takes possession of an egg it clearly didn’t hatch, and offers to let scientists study it…for a price.

The “entrepreneurs” that turn this egg into a commodity hope to mint a fortune by making it the center of a tourist attraction. In short, they seek to exploit that which is not theirs. An egg is a symbol for nature, and for life, but these men see it as a golden egg, a path to personal wealth.

Then, when the fairies -- speaking on Mothra’s behalf -- ask for the return of the egg, the company people all but laugh at them. The egg is the company’s asset now, and they have extended themselves with some expense to build an incubator, and so forth. 


There’s no way the company is giving it back.

Uniquely, the company’s representatives see the egg exclusively as property. They purchase it from a previous (illegitimate…) owner, the locals whose land it came to rest on.  But now, because payment was made, it is a resource that belongs to the company for reasons of exploitation.

In contrast, the fairies make an argument based not on property, but on the common good.  They are afraid that the egg could hatch, and inadvertently cause tremendous destruction.  The fairies, in other words, are looking out for all mankind, while the company just cares about its own profits.

The fear that a hatched egg could inadvertently cause tremendous damage is significant in Godzilla vs. The Thing and we see that fear realized visually with Godzilla. He begins a reign of destruction in Japan, but notice that in this case, his destruction doesn’t seem at all intentional. 

For example, his tail gets caught in a tower, and the tower falls down on him.  

Moments later, Godzilla actually slips on a stretch of land. He loses his balance, and falls into another building.  Then, trying to stand-up and re-balance himself, he further damages the building.



This is not the behavior of angry animal pulping a city. This is a natural force doing what natural forces always do: inadvertently causing great damage in man’s world. There is not malicious intent, but damage is nonetheless caused.

The commentary about big business in Godzilla vs. The Thing also extends to journalism. 

Journalism is supposed to be a beacon of hope, exposing corruption and danger and keeping the public informed in a timely fashion.  But as one character notes “a newspaper has a limited capacity to reach people. It can’t enforce the law.”

By implication, the government – in bed with big business – should be the one enforcing the law, but it isn’t doing so. 

Again, Godzilla vs. The Thing forges its critique of laissez-faire capitalist practices.  The government and military in vain try to stop Godzilla’s reign of terror, when a route of diplomacy -- with the fairies – has been neglected.

The general idea applies to Mothra’s island, as well. 

Look what the countries of the so-called First World have done here, with their fearsome, high-tech military-industrial complex. Such forces have destroyed a once-beautiful island, leaving it an environmental wreck.  Only one small area is still green, and the rest of the island is barren, littered with skeletons. 

The land -- representing nature itself -- was used as man’s property (much like the egg is treated as property…), by people unconcerned with the common good, focused instead on ideological or material profit.


But Godzilla vs. The Thing isn’t cynical or pessimistic about such matters, which is one reason why I love it so much.  Instead, the film is actually hopeful, and shows that two wrongs don’t make a right.

Mothra and her people were treated rudely by the new owners of the Egg, and their needs and desires were never taken into account. It would be easy to treat the people of imperiled Japan the same way now.

The people of the island could have reciprocated cruelty with cruelty. They could have stuck to their “we will not help” line, when assistance was requested.  

Instead, the fairies see how bad judgment should not be repaid with bad judgment.  A line of dialogue in the film notes that “as humans, we are responsible for each other,” and that’s the film’s positive message.  

If we can help each other in a time of crisis, we must do so.  This is true even in times when there is nothing for us to “gain” or “earn.”  That’s the behavior Mothra models.  The giant creature is weak and infirm, and has no “vested” interest in fighting Godzilla.  But Mothra goes into battle for the common good, putting selfish concerns aside.  




It’s true that Godzilla vs. The Thing moves along some familiar story lines and plot points. As was the case in King Kong vs. Godzilla, we here visit the native island and meet a culture that worships another monster.  In both cases, that “other” monster is recruited to battle a rampaging Godzilla. 

And also as in King Kong vs. Godzilla, Godzilla apparently goes down in the last round, and the victor (Kong or the Mothra grubs…) begins the long trek back to an island home.  

In this case, the two closing shots are practically identical.

But if you put aside the familiarity of this narrative’s overall structure, you can begin to see how there is (red) meat on this Godzilla film’s bones, and how the filmmakers have found a way to again explore aspects of man’s world, and his short-sighted misdeeds.  

The best Godzilla films are ones in which the creatures represent some force or aspect of human life beyond themselves. They become, instead, avatars of atomic war, avarice, or even pollution.

Here, sweet Mothra is a shining symbol of hope, and selflessness, representing the capacity for man to do the right thing, even if there are personal consequences.

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Abnormal Fixation Web Series is a Quarter Finalist in the Oniros Film Awards!

This summer, as many of you know, I worked with many great cast and crew members on a comedy-horror indie, super-low budget web series called Abnormal Fixation.  

It's a nutty mock-documentary about a character, Elvis Bragg, who enters a contest to prove the existence of the paranormal. He has just one year to deliver the evidence, or face dire consequences. At the same time, he is trying to win back Season, his estranged wife...

 I am planning for you all to get to see the series in October!

But in the meantime, we just picked up a quarter-finalist notification for the Oniros Film Festival in New York!

I am thrilled and honored that the episode received this honor (in the category of best web series) and I'll update you all when I see what comes next!


Thursday, August 15, 2024

40 Years Ago: Dreamscape (1984)


Joseph Ruben’s Dreamscape (1984) is a science-fiction action movie that involves psychic researchers entering the dreams and nightmares of their patients and becoming “active participants” in them. 

The forty year old film shares some qualities in common with Douglas Trumball’s Brainstorm (1983), but is ultimately not as dazzling in terms of its special effects or imagination.  Perhaps more to the point, Dreamscape also features many plot-points -- including a man with finger-knives – that appear in Wes Craven’s masterpiece, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984).

But where Brainstorm and A Nightmare on Elm Street approach their subject matters with a sense of gravitas and seriousness, Dreamscape often descends instead into silly action clichés, and features chase scenes (on motor bikes, no less…) instead of any consistently-applied leitmotif about the nature of the human subconscious, or the power of dreams.

These facts established, Dreamscape is very much a product of its turbulent time, and it expresses beautifully the “apocalypse mentality” of the 1980s Cold War Era.  

Lest we forget, this was the age of The Road Warrior (1982), War Games (1983), and The Day After (1983), when fears about nuclear Armageddon ran high in the nation.  Russia had invaded Afghanistan in early 1980, and President Reagan began his administration as a hard-line Hawk.  

Remember, President Reagan -- in addition to being a peacemaker with the Soviet Union in his second term -- was initially the fellow who joked on a live mic that he had outlawed Russia and that we would start bombing it in “five minutes.” He was also the leader who said that the Soviet Union was an “Evil Empire,” and that -- once launched from submarines -- nuclear missiles could be recalled.

Such statements, in conjunction with right-wing debates about “winnable” nuclear war, created an atmosphere of fear. When you coupled these comments with Secretary of the Interior James Watt’s comments that we were living in the “End Times”…things got really scary.


I grew up in the 1980s, lived through these times, and heard -- as a boy -- quite clearly the comments politicians were making about our planet’s future. I went to bed many a night in those years worrying about nuclear holocaust and wondering if I would live long enough to attend college, or get married. Dreamscape connects with such fears very well.

Today, we are all fortunate indeed that President Reagan underwent a re-think of his policies -- similar to the one the president of Dreamscape undergoes -- and became such a committed “warrior” for peace in his second term, going so far, even, as to walk-back his “Evil Empire” statement.

But the point is here is not politics, rather that this very 1980s apocalypse mentality context finds terrifying visualization in Dreamscape, and that the moments concerning nuclear war remain the film’s most powerful and resonant.  

Throughout Dreamscape, we see mushroom clouds, hideously-scarred children, and a burned-out crimson landscape function as symbols of man’s self-destructive ways.  At one point, a President who blames himself for nuclear war takes a train tour through the apocalyptic landscape, and spies the ruins of the capital building.

America -- that shining city on the hill -- is in ruins because two countries couldn’t see to get along, or to cooperate peacefully.

For all its goofy lightness and ho-hum concentration on action and romance, Dreamscape actually works best as a science fiction film when its phantasms grow darkest; when they deal bluntly with the national “dread” of nuclear war rather than the personal, subconscious fears of specific patients.  

Dreamscape could have been a great film about the biggest fear of an epoch. Instead, it’s just a mediocre film that never quite lives up to its incredible potential.


“Who’s your decorator? Darth Vader?”

The U.S. government recruits a small-time con artist and psychic, Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) to work at Thornhill College’s dream research center, located in the Bates Building.

Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw) and Dr. Paul Novotny (Max Von Sydow) train Alex to psychically-link with dreaming patients, including a construction worker with a fear of heights and a boy, Buddy (Cory Yothers) suffering from nightmares of a snake man. Alex is successful in treating both patients, and helping them overcome their nocturnal fears.

At the same time, however, Alex’s success fosters resentment in another dream “traveler,” Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly). 

In addition to being psychic, Tommy is a murderer, a trait which comes in handy when shadowy government agent Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer) approaches him with a secret assignment.

Specifically, the President of the United States (Eddie Albert) has been suffering from dreams involving nuclear apocalypse, and Bob fears that he will give away America’s nuclear store at upcoming peace talks with the Soviet Union.  

To prevent this eventuality, Bob orders Tommy Ray to enter the Commander-in-Chief’s dreams…and assassinate him.  To the rest of the world, it will appear that the President simply died of a heart attack in his sleep.

Alex learns the truth about Bob’s plans, however, and -- without the aid of instrumentation -- also enters the President’s dream to confront Tommy.




“He’s going to emasculate our nuclear deterrent...” 

Although decidedly not a great film, Dreamscape perhaps deserves a little credit for two things.

First, it expresses perfectly the “apocalypse mentality” of its time, as noted above. 

The president’s recurring dreams of apocalypse are strongly-visualized by Ruben.  The film opens with them, in fact, as the President’s (deceased) First Lady attempts -- and fails -- to outrun a nuclear mushroom and shock wave.



Later, the President (in another nightmare) tours the post-apocalyptic landscape in an ornate train car, and he gazes out across the barren, blood-red landscape. Out on the ruined land, we see the Capitol building, and the Lincoln Memorial.

Importantly, this vision of the President on a train, observing the land, calls to mind the American tradition of presidential whistle-stop tours.  Only here, a leader surveys not a beautiful land of plenty and a happy populace, but a ruined land of death and desolation.




Another dream finds the President confronted by horribly burned and scarred children, and that’s a potent image, as well.  In any war, children are always innocent victims.  They have no control over the policies of the government, or even the policies of their parents.  Here, the children have their innocence -- and their future -- taken away from them in grisly, visceral terms.  This is the true obscenity of nuclear war. Millions of children will die in such an event simply because two countries can’t accept that they have different philosophies about economics

Yet another nuclear vision is powerfully wrought in Dreamscape: Alex and the President end up in a subway car of scarred survivors, and that packed, modern car contrasts perfectly with the ornate old-fashioned presidential train.  

It’s as if this old, set-in-his-ways President cannot quite think in modern terms, and so out of misguided notions of patriotism and peace through strength, he leads the contemporary nation -- a nation of subways and commuters, not romantic whistle-stops -- into ruin.




Secondly, it should be noted that Dreamscape actually predicts real-life world events to a large degree.

On the latter front, Eddie Albert makes for a very Reagan-esque president a gentle-seeming, avuncular older man. 

His terrifying dreams of nuclear annihilation lead him to re-think his policy about the Cold War, and he plans to negotiate with the Russians at an upcoming summit in Geneva.  But by doing so, the President provokes an insurrection or rebellion on his right flank. Hawks in his administration, including Blair, are afraid he will give up the nuclear store and simply “appease” the Russians.

This is almost precisely what happened in real life, in 1985. 

First, President Reagan experiences his conversion about nuclear war. But that conversion arose not from personal dreams or nightmares, but rather from a viewing of The Day After, allegedly. 

When Reagan softened his hardline stance regarding the Soviet Union, in anticipation of – again -- a Geneva Summit, members of his administration rebelled. 

Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, for instance, wrote a letter to the Washington Post urging President Reagan not to give up any bargaining chips, and not to appease Gorbachev in any way. The letter was made available to the press on November 16, 1985.

Fortunately, no one attempted to assassinate President Reagan as he transitioned from “cold warrior” to crusader against nuclear war. 

Once more this is the journey Albert’s president takes in Dreamscape.

There’s one another effective scene in Dreamscape worth discussing, though it is off the subject of the 1980s apocalypse mentality. 

Alex journeys inside Buddy’s dreamscape, and encounters a world straight out of German Expressionism, at least if we take the angles and compositions into effect.  In this world of cockeyed, jarring angles, Buddy asks his father to save him from the Snake Man, but the father is out to lunch, and can’t -- or won’t – help him. So Alex runs with him, and they descend through what looks like infinity itself, on a suspension staircase surrounded by blackness.

Despite some bad stop-motion photography involving the Snake Man, this night terrors scene is effective because it speaks legitimately in the language of nightmares. In our nightmares, we are all children in a sense -- alone and vulnerable -- and our imaginations run wild, unfettered.  

Between the expressionist angles, the snake man, and the dizzying descent, down and down, Dreamscape effectively visualizes this idea, as well as the notion of parents who somehow can’t help us. 

In dreams, we’re always on our own…unless Alex Gardner shows up. 





Given such successes, it’s a shame that Dreamscape isn’t a better film.  All the material involving Alex getting pursued at the race-track by small-time hoods is a waste of time, and even the romantic angle with lovely Kate Capshaw seems to diminish the film. For the most part, the film feels light and inconsequential, rather than searing or sharp. Except for the moments in Buddy’s nightmare, or on the President’s post-nuclear landscape, Dreamscape feels jokey and kind of dim-witted.

I should preface my next remarks by stating that I have no idea how this occurred, but Dreamscape also ends up aping, relentlessly, A Nightmare on Elm Street

Dreamscape was released first, but Craven’s script made the rounds in Hollywood well before either film was made. Spontaneous creation does happen occasionally in Hollywood, but there is certainly something fishy about the narrative overlap between films.

Both efforts, for instance, feature scenes set at dream clinics, where scientists discuss the nature of REM sleep and dreams. 

Both films find the opportunity to discuss the Malaysian Dream People.

And it’s impossible not to notice that Tommy Ray sprouts finger-knives at one point, or that the Snake-Man battles Alex in what looks like a hellish boiler room…Freddy’s digs.

Again, I cannot and would not assert rip-off or plagiarism without further knowledge of the facts. But I will state this: All the moments of similarity carry less psychic weight and impact in Dreamscape.

In other words, the moments discussing the Dream People or REM sleep feel casually dropped into Dreamscape, as if to give it a veneer of respectability or legitimacy, whereas in A Nightmare on Elm Street, all those elements tie together brilliantly with other aspects of the story.  

For instance, in the Craven film the Malaysian Dream People are discussed because they turn their backs on Evil, and that’s the very thing that Nancy (Heather Langenkamp) -- ever the digger (hence the film’s comparison to Hamlet) -- has trouble doing.

Accordingly, it’s much easier to make a case for the validity of these concepts in Nightmare than it is in terms of Dreamscape, even though Dreamscape arrived in theaters first.  



Dreamscape is one of those films from your youth that you probably remember fondly. Alas, I found that the fond memories are erased a bit in modern re-watch.  

The film features powerful nightmare imagery, but instead of exploring it fully, wants to waste your time on car chases and bike-chases, and fisticuffs.  The movie strenuously avoids trying to be about the thing it is supposed to be about: the subconscious mind.

Thus Dreamscape’s approach is not the stuff that dreams (or good science fiction movies…) are generally made of.

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