This week’s Guest Star is Jeffrey X Martin writing on Dreamscape (USA, 1984).

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You may have seen that rad poster Drew Struzan created for Joseph Ruben’s 1984 movie, Dreamscape. It’s the one with a smirking Dennis Quaid holding a torch while creepy heads float on the sides, implying an over-the-top, Indiana Jones-like escapade. That doesn’t strike an accurate tone, and it’s not the whole story. 

Marketed as a run-of-the-mill sci-fi/action/horror flick, Dreamscape tosses our fears of authority and a lack of structure into a thresher, creating a wicked study of paranoia.  It’s the perfect post-Watergate conspiracy theory movie for the decade. Nowadays, if you combine the ideas of secret government agencies, nightmares, and the gratuitous use of saxophone music, you wind up with an edgy podcast. Dreamscape gives us men in dark suits, stop-motion animation, and, well, Dennis Quaid. Were there really 1980s movies without Dennis Quaid? 

DreamScape 1984 Film Trailer

Quaid plays Alex Gardner, a gifted psychic on the lam after bolting from a research project at the age of 19. Since his disappearance into the underground, Gardner has used his powers to pick winning horses at the track. Discovered by those who wish to continue studying him and his abilities, Gardner becomes a participant in a program that allows people with psionic abilities to enter other people’s dreams, specifically their nightmares. 

Sure, Gardner is smug, smarmy, and skeevy. He inserts himself into a risque dream had by lead researcher Dr. Jane DeVries (the buoyantly coiffed Kate Capshaw), with the full intent of seducing her. Upon awakening, DeVries calls Gardner out for his terrible behavior instead of blushing and saying, “Well, psychic boys will be psychic boys.” Gardner redeems himself (allegedly) by working with Buddy (Cory Yothers), a wheelchair-bound lad with recurring nightmares about a hideous monster. With Gardner’s help, Buddy overcomes his fears (and an awesome stop-motion and physical prosthetic Snakeman). 

One person having bad dreams is the President (Eddie Albert). He’s got a terrible feeling about all those nuclear bombs and the inconvenience they could cause, like his wife being vaporized in the initial shockwave and the destruction of densely populated areas. That’s bad timing, because the President is due to participate in negotiations about nuclear disarmament in a few days. If the President allows his nightmares to affect his statements at the summit, the US could be woefully under-protected. 

That idea doesn’t sit well with Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer), who would tell you which government agency he works for, but he would have to kill you, your family, your neighbors, and your collection of tropical saltwater fish. Blair makes plans for the President to enter the dream-walking project, where the clever doctors and nifty psychics will (allegedly) make those nasty dreams go away. 

Not really. Blair wants to make it look like the President died in his sleep, and his secret weapon is already embedded in the project. Tommy Ray Glatner (David Patrick Kelly) is a veteran of the psychic wars who has entered the dreams of multiple research project subjects. 

A classic 1980s psycho killer, Glatner is the kind of guy who tapes ads for martial arts weaponry to his wall. He seems desperate for parental acceptance, which is odd, seeing as how he murdered his father. Blair wants Glatner to enter the President’s nightmare and kill him before he can suggest dismantling all of the US’s precious nukes. Amoral Glatner has no problem with that, especially if it increases his status in Blair’s eyes.

And if Glatner can get rid of Alex Gardner and his ubiquitous saxophone, all the better. 

One of the reasons Dreamscape works today is because of the complex dual villains. There’s Blair, the guy who probably got in on the ground floor of MK Ultra, the bureaucrat gone rogue in his misguided patriotism. Then you’ve got Glatner, the emotionally stunted kid who probably failed high school metal shop while sparking doobies and listening to Black Sabbath, ready to kill anyone who gets in his way. If you want a political thriller, you’ve got it. But if you want to watch Glatner and Gardner fight it out in a red-filtered post-apocalyptic world of fallout and fire, Dreamscape has that for you, too.

Eddie Albert’s character, cleverly known only as The President, held similar views to then- President Ronald Reagan. Dreamscape was released near the end of Reagan’s first term. Reagan had a collector’s mentality about nuclear weapons. He who dies with the most nukes wins. If the Soviet Union ramped up its missile production, then the United States should match or exceed the USSR’s total number. In a stunning display of the duality of man, Reagan was not a huge proponent of killing the world with radioactive flames. “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” Reagan said, angering those who were ready to wipe out the Russians with the push of a blinking red button*. It’s okay to be confused because Reagan himself said at one time that the idea of a nuclear freeze was conceived by “foreign agents.”**

It makes sense that some people in the government saw de-escalation as a concession, much like Dreamscape’s Bob Blair. With his crisp hair and natty suit, Blair was the embodiment of all the sneaky CIA agents we believed infested the Pentagon. He was the guy who pulled the strings, the company man and keeper of secrets, the instigator of all those dark projects of which the public only heard rumors. Why wouldn’t Blair want to oversee a clandestine assassination of the President, especially if it meant keeping his country safe and his position secure?

In a small supporting role, George Wendt plays a writer who has figured out What’s Going On. He lays it all out for Gardner, connects the dots. If this guy did that thing, then doesn’t it make sense that he is also doing this other thing and planning to do another, bigger, much worse thing? Then, in a sequence as unbelievable as it is plausible, Wendt is murdered in the dumbest way possible, right there in public. He knew too much! They had to get rid of him!

Just like Elvis, the government is everywhere.

Conspiracy theories have been around as long as people have been blaming unseen forces for strange occurrences. If your crops failed, it must have been because the devil consorted with your fallow fields. When your husband didn’t come home for three days after going on an alleged hunting trip, then the aliens must have snagged and probed him. If nothing else made sense, blame the government.

Our overwhelming fears of nuclear destruction may have waned since the 1980s, but most of us retain a healthy distrust of the government. Immigration agents can roll up in front of a business, grab anyone they choose, and send them to prison. Citizens wake up and find themselves involved in another illegal foreign war. If the government can (allegedly) track us through our cell phones and smart TVs, who’s to say they can’t (allegedly) walk into our dreams and stop our (allegedly) beating hearts? 

At least it looks cool. Director Ruben bathes the dream sequences in weird light and wavy visual effects. When the President’s sleeping brain places him on a train, traveling ever so slowly through a nuclear holocaustic hellscape, complete with mutated passengers, it looks vividly real. Dreamscape doesn’t use the smooth CGI viewers have become accustomed to, but that jankiness somehow makes those sequences more frightening. Life’s scary enough. We don’t need everything in movies to be painstakingly accurate to be fearsome. 

It’s interesting to note that about three months later, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street was released, giving the public another story about entering the dreams of others and murdering them. This time, however, the victims were sexy high school students instead of grown-ups with important jobs and bills to pay. Watching teenagers writhe up the walls of their teenage rooms to meet their teenaged demises was far more profitable than watching the guy from Green Acres fret about the fate of humanity. A Nightmare on Elm Street raked in over $57 million at the box office, while Dreamscape only pulled in around $13 million. Blame the CIA. 

Through modern eyes, Dreamscape may seem unevenly divided between fantastical psychic manipulation and Pakula-lite political thriller. But it captures the shattered atmosphere of the 1980s in a way that other movies of the time don’t. Dreamscape is entertaining, memorable, and full of Quaid. There’s also a freakin’ Snakeman, and that’s more than you get from most any movie. 

* I have no proof that the button is red or that it blinks.
** This is not meant to be an exhaustive study of Reagan’s nuclear policies, especially during his second term, when the Cold War (allegedly) ended and the Scorpions got a hit song out of the fall of the Berlin Wall.  

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As a child, Jeffery X Martin was told by professionals that his nightmares would disappear as he grew older. They did not. Martin likes old movies and professional wrestling, as any growing boy should.  You can read more of his writing at Biff Bam Pop! or buy his weird little books at Amazon.