Welcome to The Best Movie You NEVER Saw, a column dedicated to examining films that have flown under the radar or gained traction throughout the years, earning them a place as a cult classic or underrated gem that was either before it’s time and/or has aged like a fine wine.
This week we’ll be looking at the DREAMSCAPE movie!
THE STORY: A psychic (Dennis Quaid) is recruited by his former mentor (Max Von Sydow) for a top secret program involving the infiltration of dreams. Little do either of them know, the government agent (Christopher Plummer) financing the program intends to use it to assassinate the nightmare-plagued U.S president (Eddie Albert).
THE PLAYERS: Starring: Dennis Quaid, Kate Capshaw, Christopher Plummer, Max Von Sydow, Eddie Albert, David Patrick Kelly. Music by Maurice Jarre. Directed by Joseph Ruben.
THE HISTORY: Studio acquisitions are a lot different now than they used to be. Currently, most of the acquisitions are prestige titles from festivals like Sundance or TIFF, and most of the movies get picked by indie divisions (at best). But, in the eighties the pipeline wasn’t quite as cluttered as it is now, and studios needed product. DREAMSCAPE was such a pick-up, being independently produced for a relatively small budget ($6 million), although that’s not to say it wasn’t a prominent film, with Max Von Sydow and Christopher Plummer both very well known, while Eddie Albert had spent years as the star of “Green Acres”. But, the real appeal for the studio that picked it up, 20th Century Fox, was no doubt the two leads, Dennis Quaid and Kate Capshaw, both of whom were quickly ascending the ranks at the time.
Capshaw, for her part, was just coming off of INDIANA JONES & THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. Quaid, at the time, was being groomed as the next Harrison Ford, coming off JAWS 3D, TOUGH ENOUGH, and the movie that really got execs excited, THE RIGHT STUFF. Too bad then that Fox kinda dumped the movie in theatres, putting it out in the dead zone of summer back in 1984, where it opened poorly. That said, word of mouth was good because it still grossed $12 million, which was twice the budget. It did well enough on video that all involved easily recouped their money, turning a solid profit. But, while it’s a cult hit to kids of the eighties who grew up watching it, otherwise it’s relatively unknown.
WHY IT’S GREAT: DREAMSCAPE was a childhood favorite of mine, but we all know how it goes. Movies we loved as kids don’t always hold up when we’re adults. I mean, I loved HOWARD THE DUCK when I was five. That doesn’t mean it’s a good movie. So I was nervous revisiting a flick that, even when I was a kid, I knew was a bit cheesy. Sure enough, DREAMSCAPE is a wacky movie. But, the kitsch factor is turned up so high that as cheesy as it is, it comes around full circle and suddenly becomes cutting edge and cool through the filter of nostalgia.
If a cool director was to try and make a deliberately cheesy, retro eighties action movie, it would probably come out a lot like DREAMSCAPE. This has all the hallmarks, from the wildly over the top synth score (by the great Maurice Jarre – composer of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA!), to the saxophone playing wise-guy hero, expertly played by an oddly coiffed Dennis Quaid. He spots an odd preppy look in this that’s totally contrary to the cool guy look that made him a heartthrob just a few years later in THE BIG EASY and INNERSPACE, but it kinda works for a character that’s supposed to be an overgrown kid in some ways. Kate Capshaw is the serious academic who almost immediately melts into his arms, while Max Von Sydow, in one of his many forays into genre, is cast against type as one of the good guys. Christopher Plummer is the marginal baddie, but the show is absolutely stolen by David Patrick Kelly, who specialized in playing scumbag villains in movies like THE WARRIORS, COMMANDO, THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE and this.
Kelly plays Quaid’s evil counterpart, the only other psychic powerful enough to enter dreams on his own, making him Plummer’s tool for a presidential assassination plot. Ya see, Eddie Albert, as the U.S president, is haunted by the death of his wife and has terrifying visions of her dying in a nuclear holocaust, that are so convincing he’s prepping disarmament talks with the Soviet Union (remember this is the eighties) that could – gasp – end the Cold War!
It all adds up to a fun caper that’s partly a horror movie, especially in the mid-section where Quaid helps a kid plagued by visions of a snake man, partly an action-adventure movie, and partly a sci-fi thriller. No matter how you slice it, it’s good fun, and notable in that it was the second movie to ever earn a PG-13 rating (RED DAWN was the first). A strange byproduct of the rating is that different versions of the movie exist out there. I vividly remember the VHS version having some nudity, but the new Blu-ray version was nudity free, so I guess at some point it got cut? Boo.
BEST SCENE: DREAMSCAPE has a lot of really memorable, surreal moments, but one of the best is the movie’s open, where, right after the credits, you’re plunged into the president’s nuclear nightmare, which is rough stuff for a PG-13 (released now this would definitely get an R).
PARTING SHOT: While DREAMSCAPE is most certainly a product of its time, it can be denied that as least as far as sci-fi horror went, the eighties were kinda rad and DREAMSCAPE is a super fun retro flick.