Flicks of Shame: what's a nice actor like you doing in a movie like this?

Dream Demon (1988)

Poor Diana. This wilting English rose, resplendent in her stuffy Laura Ashley style floral dress, is terribly worried about her impending marriage to Oliver, a Falklands hero more wooden than the church pews. Her anxiety is heightened when, at the crucial “I do” moment, she can’t bring herself to go through with it. The rather peeved Oliver slaps her, and she retaliates with a punch that decapitates the poor sod, showering her – and pretty much everything else in spraying distance – in sticky red gore.

Then she wakes up.

Yes, it’s one of those movies.

Diana’s less-than-useless psychiatrist, Deborah, informs her that the Oliver of her dreams is a symbol – though a symbol of what, she’s unwilling to speculate. “I think you need to work that out for yourself” she smiles, presumably before sending Diana an invoice for several hundred pounds.

Due to Oliver’s status as a war hero, Diana starts being hounded by the press. Or, at least, two unscrupulous tabloid hacks from the “Post & Echo” – played with leering relish by Jimmy Nail and Timothy Spall. Both were well-known faces on British TV at the time, thanks to the 1983 comedy-drama Auf Wiedersehn Pet, but Spall’s long-standing collaboration with Mike Leigh was still in its infancy (with just one Play For Today on TV) and the lure of Hollywood and blockbuster movies such as Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket and Sweeney Todd was a long way off.

As the two grotesque oafs bombard Diana with questions about her virginity and the size of Oliver’s “pork sword”, she’s rescued by Jenny, a punky American girl who delivers a hefty kick to Spall’s bollocks and helps Diana flee into her house.

This, apparently, is enough for Jenny to become Diana’s only friend in the world, and the two embark on a quest to uncover the truth behind Diana’s weird dreams. Hey! Maybe it has something to do with Jenny’s amnesia, and the fact that she’s convinced she’s been in Diana’s house before…

What follows is best described as A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Polite English Edition, as increasingly random and resolutely non-scary nightmares bleed into the real world, like a Sade video with added blood and guts. Walls bleed, there’s a remarkable amount of running around in mist-shrouded backlit corridors, while a girl dressed as an angel and a burning man keep appearing at pivotal moments, to the extent that they might as well carry placards reading “Look at us! We’re clues!”

Spall’s odious photographer is central to these sequences, as he is (apparently) sucked from reality into Diana’s dreamworld where he dies. Then he keeps popping up in increasingly more mutated forms, dripping gore and slime, slobbering over the girls until Jenny simply punches her fist through his head. Which seems reasonable enough, given the circumstances.

The rather bizarre twist in the tale is that Jenny used to live in the house as a little girl, where her sculptor father forced her to dress as an angel and tied her to a pole in order to pose for a statue to adorn her dead mother’s grave. And while sharpening his chisel, he knocked over a bottle of paint thinner, which then caught fire. And he died. It’s one of the most random and pointless movie deaths ever, and makes for a twist ending so laughably illogical that even M. Night Shyamalan might think twice about using it.

So all the psychic shenanigans have nothing to do with Diana (although Oliver turns out to be an unfaithful bastard all the same) which doesn’t make much sense, as all the weirdness started well before Jenny arrived on the scene. Anyway, the two girls get closure of some sort, pay a visit to dear Mommy’s resting place and leave the gloomy old house to its own devices.

Naturally, this being a stupid horror film, we’re then taken on a Steadicam journey down to the basement where Jimmy Nail and Timothy Spall, both inexplicably alive and unmutated, break through the wall, dust themselves off and head upstairs for breakfast.

Oh, and the Dream Demon of the title? There isn’t one.

Need to know: Diana was played by Jemma Redgrave, niece of the more famous Redgraves, Vanessa and Lynn. Kathleen Wilhoite played Jenny, and went on to score reasonably large recurring roles on TV shows like LA Law, ER and Gilmore Girls. Deborah, the ineffectual psychiatrist, was played by Susan Fleetwood, sister of Fleetwood Mac star, Mick, and Jenny’s hilariously clumsy and insane sculptor father was portrayed by Nickolas Grace, probably best known as the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham in the cult TV series Robin of Sherwood.

Dream Demon was directed by the unfortunately named Harley Cokliss (who has since added a vowel to his name to become the slightly less unfortunate Cokeliss), and his varied resume includes second unit work on The Empire Strikes Back, the classic 1977 Children's Film Foundation sci-fi movie Glitterball, plus various episodes and spin-offs from the Xena and Hercules franchises.

Honourable mentions: Spall preceded Dream Demon with small roles in a couple of barmy Frankenstein-themed flicks. The Bride (1985) saw Sting as the Baron in an awful update of The Bride of Frankenstein, while Gothic (1986) found Ken Russell (see: William Hurt, Hugh Grant) re-enacting the events that led Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein, with all his usual restraint and good taste. For a more recent horror oddity in the Spall filmography, see: Jude Law.

Availability: Dream Demon is no longer commercially available, even in the UK, so it’s Ebay or nothing.

		Dream Demon (1988) Poor Diana. This wilting English rose, resplendent in her stuffy Laura Ashley style floral dress, is terribly worried about her impending marriage to Oliver, a Falklands hero more wooden than the church pews. Her anxiety is heightened when, at the crucial “I do” moment, she can’t bring herself to go through with it. The rather peeved Oliver slaps her, and she retaliates with a punch that decapitates the poor sod, showering her – and pretty much everything else in spraying distance – in sticky red gore. Then she wakes up. Yes, it’s one of those movies. Diana’s less-than-useless psychiatrist, Deborah, informs her that the Oliver of her dreams is a symbol – though a symbol of what, she’s unwilling to speculate. “I think you need to work that out for yourself” she smiles, presumably before sending Diana an invoice for several hundred pounds. Due to Oliver’s status as a war hero, Diana starts being hounded by the press. Or, at least, two unscrupulous tabloid hacks from the “Post & Echo” – played with leering relish by Jimmy Nail and Timothy Spall. Both were well-known faces on British TV at the time, thanks to the 1983 comedy-drama Auf Wiedersehn Pet, but Spall’s long-standing collaboration with Mike Leigh was still in its infancy (with just one Play For Today on TV) and the lure of Hollywood and blockbuster movies such as Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket and Sweeney Todd was a long way off. As the two grotesque oafs bombard Diana with questions about her virginity and the size of Oliver’s “pork sword”, she’s rescued by Jenny, a punky American girl who delivers a hefty kick to Spall’s bollocks and helps Diana flee into her house. This, apparently, is enough for Jenny to become Diana’s only friend in the world, and the two embark on a quest to uncover the truth behind Diana’s weird dreams. Hey! Maybe it has something to do with Jenny’s amnesia, and the fact that she’s convinced she’s been in Diana’s house before… What follows is best described as A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Polite English Edition, as increasingly random and resolutely non-scary nightmares bleed into the real world, like a Sade video with added blood and guts. Walls bleed, there’s a remarkable amount of running around in mist-shrouded backlit corridors, while a girl dressed as an angel and a burning man keep appearing at pivotal moments, to the extent that they might as well carry placards reading “Look at us! We’re clues!” Spall’s odious photographer is central to these sequences, as he is (apparently) sucked from reality into Diana’s dreamworld where he dies. Then he keeps popping up in increasingly more mutated forms, dripping gore and slime, slobbering over the girls until Jenny simply punches her fist through his head. Which seems reasonable enough, given the circumstances. The rather bizarre twist in the tale is that Jenny used to live in the house as a little girl, where her sculptor father forced her to dress as an angel and tied her to a pole in order to pose for a statue to adorn her dead mother’s grave. And while sharpening his chisel, he knocked over a bottle of paint thinner, which then caught fire. And he died. It’s one of the most random and pointless movie deaths ever, and makes for a twist ending so laughably illogical that even M. Night Shyamalan might think twice about using it. So all the psychic shenanigans have nothing to do with Diana (although Oliver turns out to be an unfaithful bastard all the same) which doesn’t make much sense, as all the weirdness started well before Jenny arrived on the scene. Anyway, the two girls get closure of some sort, pay a visit to dear Mommy’s resting place and leave the gloomy old house to its own devices. Naturally, this being a stupid horror film, we’re then taken on a Steadicam journey down to the basement where Jimmy Nail and Timothy Spall, both inexplicably alive and unmutated, break through the wall, dust themselves off and head upstairs for breakfast. Oh, and the Dream Demon of the title? There isn’t one. Need to know: Diana was played by Jemma Redgrave, niece of the more famous Redgraves, Vanessa and Lynn. Kathleen Wilhoite played Jenny, and went on to score reasonably large recurring roles on TV shows like LA Law, ER and Gilmore Girls. Deborah, the ineffectual psychiatrist, was played by Susan Fleetwood, sister of Fleetwood Mac star, Mick, and Jenny’s hilariously clumsy and insane sculptor father was portrayed by Nickolas Grace, probably best known as the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham in the cult TV series Robin of Sherwood. Dream Demon was directed by the unfortunately named Harley Cokliss (who has since added a vowel to his name to become the slightly less unfortunate Cokeliss), and his varied resume includes second unit work on The Empire Strikes Back, the classic 1977 Children's Film Foundation sci-fi movie Glitterball, plus various episodes and spin-offs from the Xena and Hercules franchises. Honourable mentions: Spall preceded Dream Demon with small roles in a couple of barmy Frankenstein-themed flicks. The Bride (1985) saw Sting as the Baron in an awful update of The Bride of Frankenstein, while Gothic (1986) found Ken Russell (see: William Hurt, Hugh Grant) re-enacting the events that led Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein, with all his usual restraint and good taste. For a more recent horror oddity in the Spall filmography, see: Jude Law. Availability: Dream Demon is no longer commercially available, even in the UK, so it’s Ebay or nothing.
Text © 2008 Dan Whitehead. No cut and paste, y'hear? All images remain the property of the offending studios and their reproduction is covered by Fair Use law.