Dreamscape

(1984)**1/2

Alex (Dennis Quaid) is a psychic who basically uses his special abilities to win at the local horse races (I’d use it to go into the girl’s locker room, oh wait, different power). Max von Sydow, who will always be Ming to me, recruits/blackmails Alex to participate in his dream research, a project that involves entering peoples’ dreams and becoming part of what is occurring in said dreams (e.g., helping a little boy confront that silly-looking man-serpent above so he’ll no longer have nightmares, etc). It’s not too long before Alex realizes that Ming’s research is really evil-government-funded research and it’s going to be used to assassinate the President of the U.S. (Eddy Albert!) in his sleep. The president’s would be assassin? None other than Sully from Commando,

It becomes a race against time as Sully and Alex duke it out in the (pretty lame) dream world. Along for the ride is Kate Capshaw, playing a scientist and looking every bit as 1980s as possible,

I remember seeing this in the theater with Octo and thinking it was just swell in 1984. However the (now) bad fx and cold war concerns renders Dreamscape terribly dated today. Whirlygirl watched the first 30 seconds, a dream sequence, and announced, “No, I just can’t watch a movie that looks like this”. True it’s every bit as silly as she sensed, but the film does have charm, if for no other reason than the cast, most at their peak. Where else, for example, will you see a Cheers-era George Wendt playing against type? I shouted “Norm!” every time he appeared on screen (I really did). Despite the poor fx by today’s standards, I like what director Joseph Ruben attempts to do here, and he partially succeeds in creating a dream world with the tools at his disposal back in the 1980s.