Putting down my bag of ancient DVDs for the afternoon, and turning instead to something shiny and new
DREAM DEMON – I saw this years and years ago via a friend’s VHS and felt underwhelmed enough to wipe its very existence from memory. Maybe I had a real thing against ‘Auf Wiedersehen, Pet’ at the time, maybe my crocodile shoes were just too big for my feet to fill, who knows? I’m surprised I didn’t cotton on to the real value Jimmy Nail could bring to a horror film, particularly to a ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ rip-off with Timothy Spall in it. That’s the inspired / inspiring thing for me now, seeing that duo in the unlikely surrounds of a late-eighties dry-ice MTV vid-esque dreamarama which has all the ‘usual pretensions’ to something vaguely arty and symbolic. Similarly, there is much to admire about scenes such as the one in which a young Jemma Redgrave is roused from sleep by a huge maggot bursting through a china doll’s face. Despite the presence of all these ‘proper’ actors, the tone is stilted and awkward and doesn’t really flow. But this is not a movie you would watch for its grasp of exquisite drama. Instead, it’s a curio that’s perhaps now due its time, bringing together as it does all these odd, ill-fitting strands of yesteryear.
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