Night Terror (1989) — Triskaidekafiles

NIGHT TERROR

WRITERS: Screenplay by Paul Howard, Michael Weaver and David C. Lee

DIRECTOR: Michael Weaver and Paul Howard

STARRING: Jeff Keel as Dreamer

Guy Ecker as Rick

Jon Hoffman as Sam

Michael Coopet as Harvey

Heidi Hutson as Susan

James M. Foley as Doctor

Sterling Macer Jr. as Barker

Robyn Ethridge as Tom

Lloyd B. Mote as Lenny

Kent Holmes as Reese

James Boobar as Skag

George Klein as Papa

QUICK CUT: A series of bad dreams trouble a mental patient.

THE MORGE

Dreamer - Born of a human and Naltorian, Nia Nal is blessed with the powers of the Dreamer, able to see the future and harness dream ener…wait what? Oh. Not the Supergirl character. Fine. This is just an unnamed character who has bad dreams of people dying for some reason. Boo.

The Killer - A force of evil that terrorises the dreams of people in this mental institution. I think. He’s not nice, and loves slitting necks.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! We are wrapping up the month with a flick called Night Terror, that is pretty much an anthology movie, and it's set at Halloween. Which is a fact I was genuinely unaware of when I decided to review it this week, so happy coincidences abound. Anyways, let's get to it.

The movie starts with a definition of night terrors, but then gets into a nightmare that we are told "always starts the same way" as our lead character, known only as "Dreamer" leaves an elevator and walks through a cemetery, telling us how he thinks he belongs there.

Dream logic continues to take Nia into a hospital where he's told he *doesn't* belong there, and he continues to wander. Make up your mind! Belong, doesn’t belong, sheesh.

He eventually runs into his doctor, who gets their throat slashed by a blad man in scrubs, and we are then watching as Dreamer relates this to that doctor, and insists that he keeps seing other dreams, THEIR dreams, dreams from THEM, and this is supposed to sound mysterious, but they quickly clarify he means the rest of the patients.

And like with most patients who encounter killers in their dreams, Dreamer does their best to stay awake, but this eventually fails him, as it always does.

This is basically the formula to get us into the anthology, as each dream he taps into of other patients becomes another story in our tale.

And the first one Dreamer steps into has some chanting by a Satanic cult, which is kinda mumbly, maybe vaguely Latin, almost certainly gibberish. But I wanted to know what they were saying, so I turned on the subtitles...

We watch as the cultists pull up their hoods, stand around a mostly nekkid dude tied to a chair, with some nudity, lots more chanting and bongos,

All of which culminates in the man getting HIS neck slit, and this is almost a theme. But no, it doesn't quite become a thing. Why isn’t it a thing? It coulda been a trend.

The cult smears blood all over themselves, and gosh, that is not at all sanitary.

We cut from there to an office where Rick is wandering around talking about his conquests to his kinda maybe friend, Harvey, who is the exact opposite, and probably a virgin.

Rick goes on and on until their female coworker storms off calling Rick an asshole. And that's pretty progressive for when this movie was made. Rick's behaviour was still very much the norm, as disgusting as it is.

Of course, Rick's response is to call her a "penis hating lesbian". Ah yes, the clarion call of the douche. If a woman doesn't like you, she must be gay. A view he reinforces when he gets a phonecall and another woman turns him down.

That phone is almost as outdated as Rick’s views on women.

Work gets out, and Harvey is heading to a bar, and asks Rick if he'll come along and try and help him out, and give him some advice from a, as Rick says, "Master Cocksman".

They hit the bar, and Harvey explains that his sister has set him up on a blind date with a hot woman that he just has to call and set something up, he's nervous, and doesn't know what to do.

Harvey asks if he could play Cyrano to her Roxanne and make the call for him, because he's the master cock. Yeah, that sounds about right.

Rick is shown a picture of Susan, and she is indeed quite attractive, and he agrees to help out. But in actuality, he makes the call with the intent of stealing her for himself, and tells Harvey she saw what she looked like, and changed her mind. More like CyraNO.

This walking justification for the Me Too movement pays for the drinks, much to his chagrin, and heads home. He keeps seeing visions of Susan, and the movie tosses in a crime scene where a dead body was found, for no good reason.

He gets home, kicks back to relax, and listen to his messages. One of which is from Susan. But it's a message that's not there when he goes to listen to it again. Literally he can't get her off his mind.

Doing coke? Yep, this was the 80s, all right.

Rick decides to call the girl back, claims to be Harvey, and they arrange to meet at a Halloween party. At 666 Shadow Creek Lane. So...not subtle, then.

It's been awhile, so it's a good reminder that this started with a Satanic sacrifice, and Rick has ended up at the same house. He befriends a guy who is also there for a sacrifice...er, date.

A priest barges in to yell about the house of sin and all that, and then gets dragged off to be dealt with.

Rick's friend goes through some doors to check things out, and that's when Susan shows up to distract Rick.

People start throwing Rick's catch phrases in his face, he wants to leave, but the allure of Susan is too much. We spend more than enough time watching them dance and make out and have sex.

And to make a long story slightly less long, this all culminates in Rick being tied down, hooked up to some tubes, and his blood being drained.

It's also revealed this was a master plan of Harvey's, and a test, to see if he was awful enough for them to sacrifice.

And this ends with the punchline being that once again, Rick has been "stuck with the drinks" which is a REALLY weird line to hang your twist on.

Dreamer shows up to remind us this is all a dream that's also real, and he wakes up and we wander the hospital a bit before dipping into our next dream.

This one starts out at a courthouse as a roller coaster is deemed to be not of historical value, and will be demolished.

Sam Hains...wait, seriously?? A little seasonally on the nose. Whatever. Sam gloats over yet another win, and can't wait to clear the land to make a profit.

Our victim sees a carny barker who asks for his ticket, and much like Susan, this vision disappears seconds later.

Sam goes out for drinks, and he keeps seeing the barker along his drive. Following another vision in the bar, Sam drives off to clear his head, and ends up right at the roller coaster he intends to tear down.

After a lot of wandering, Sam naturally runs into the barker once more. They talk things out, and there is eventually a scuffle and Sam shoves the barker back, impaling him on a very convenient pipe.

Sam runs off in a panic, and tries to call for help, and eventually returns to the scene of the crime. The barker's body is missing, of course, and to make a long story not as long, Sam runs around in a panic, and eventually gets run over by the roller coaster.

I gotta say, I get the broad ideas here, but the story doesn't have much to say. It never really sets up WHY the roller coaster is important, other than "progress bad!" I mean, it's a rickety, crumbling, old, wooden roller coaster, that is arguably a danger.

They try and say it has historical significance, but why? If you want me to think Sam is bad, and deserves to be killed, you gotta convince me of the whys first. This is one point the first story got right.

And we end this story, which with all the on the nose catch phrases, I can't decide if it should be called Tickets Please, or Hell of a Ride. Oh, and the horror continues as the 'barker' comes back to torment a man who gets ahold of a film library and can do what he want, include OH NO!! *Colourising film!!* Hardly a muderable offense. This barker guy is pretty fuckin' petty.

I'll be over here rolling my eyes.

Back in the hospital, Dreamer is saying how its the same damn dream, and uh, pal, it's very emphatically not. If it was, this would be a boring as shit anthology, and it's already dangerously close.

Fortunately, the boredom gets to Dreamer, and he can't stay awake, so it's time for one last story. We start this one off with a businessman hearing there was problems with a 'shipment' and he says to find...the Guatemalen. NO Not...the Guatemalen!!

This instantly cuts to, I presume, said Guatemalen chasing down the problem with a crowbar and making it very clear that Mister Red is upset about his missing shipment.

Another trio of goons, friends of the guy Burke just threatened and also being hunted, I presume, are plotting how to get out of this mess, and mock an old man who owns a toy store next to their pool hall.

But these three losers run into Burke anyways, and he gives them until midnight to have Lebowski's money.

They try and come up with a plan, and the brains of the operation (Which is a low bar to be sure) spies the toyman with a big wad of cash.

There’s good money in selling toys, I guess.

Inside the store, Toyman is showing a mother around, and showing off his wares. He focuses on a lion, a clown with an axe, and a teddy bear that says a little poem every time you give him a poke. This poem will be variated throughout the rest of the short.

Mrs. Toyman takes the day's earnings to the bank just in time for the trio to show up to try and rob the place. This ends badly for Toulon, and he tells the toys to not let them hurt Mama.

So the trio decide to lay low, and Skag gets paid a visit from the Lion of Murders Past, with Teddy heralding his arrival with a poem. And it ends when Skag tripping over Leo and falling down the stairs.

Next is Reese, who gets paid a visit by the Clown of Murders Present, and again with a poem from Teddy to keep that going.

This one is a little more drawn out as Reese wanders around trying to find who's making noises, and to make a long story not quite as long, the axeclown eventually gets him.

Finally, Lenny is visited by the Teddy of Murders Yet to Come, and since a fluffy little teddy bear isn't much of a threat, Teddy grows to full size, bears out, and mauls Lenny good.

...Is it too soon to make another Teddy Krueger reference?

So far this has more bear than Grizzly II.

And so the story ends with Mama showing up the next day, finding her dead husband, and Teddy telling her they took care of the problem in rhyme.

I will say this for it though; it's a better story than at least half the Puppet Master sequels.

Dreamer is around to bear witness to this, and once again wakes himself up in the hospital. He tries to break into the pill closet to get some speed to stay awake.

There's a brief moment where we see most of the victims in their beds, so they're NOT dead, just having bad dreams, and the logic of this movie is shaky at best.

You don’t get out of the movie THAT easily.

So some orderlies grab Dreamer, hold him down, and drug him, and so the bald killer from the start of the movie comes for him. And we again relive the opening of the movie.

The killer says he'll make Dreamer sleep for "a long long time" and is that supposed to be the long sleep of death, or is the killer's goal to put the people in comas. We are way too late for the movie to bother trying to make sense I guess.

But Dreamer starts running as the movie echos around him and Professor X chases him outside. At this point, he is literally running out the runtime of the movie, to get a few extra minutes in, of just running and avoiding.

But then Dreamer wakes up, and it was just a dream!! until he sees blood splattered everywhere, and his doctor dead in the toilet.

We stumble around some more, until Kingpin shows back up with his knife, and MORE running, until Nia trips and the credits roll. Literally something they could have done and cut to the chase at any point in the running from the last five to ten minutes.

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It’s not great. I’ve seen worse, but this is pretty rough.

Audio: It sounds okay, but there’s a few garbly moments.

Body Count: Not too shabby, but an anthology could do more.

1 - Four minutes in and the doctor gets his neck slit

2 - Patient in the cult dream gets his neck slit

3 - Priest is found dead

4 - and so is other party goer

5 - Rick gets drained of his blood

6 - Sam accidentally kills the barker on a pipe

7 - And then Sam gets run over by the roller coaster

8 - Burke probably plays softball with some guy's brains

9 - Toyman gets shot

10 - Rex the lion pushes Skag down the stairs

11 - The axeclown get Reese

12 - Lenny gets mauled by Teddy

13 - Presumably Dreamer gets got

Best Corpse: Lenny getting torn apart by a giant teddy bear is kinda great.

Blood Type - C+: Some good blood, but nothing to write home about.

Sex Appeal: There’s some nudity here and there.

Drink Up! Every time someone dies

Movie Review: There’s bits and pieces I like here. The basic ideas for each story are solid. But iverall, a lot of the meat is missing, and there’s too much stuff just happening. If you can’t tell, the clear winner of the stories is the dolls attacking the thugs. It has a clear setup, gets to the point, and has some interesting things. The weakest is the middle story, since like I said it does a bad job justifying Sam’s death. Also, the wraparound with Dreamer is pretty weak, since the whole reasons for the dreams is vague. It’s well made enough, but nothing ever really gels. Which is a shame, since there’s diamonds buried in here, if they polished things more. Two out of five carnival tickets.

Entertainment Value: Nothing really to write home about, sadly. Once again, the puppets are the best part. Teddy’s rhymes are delightfully, murderously, whimsical. Rick is a great sleazeball to see get what’s coming to him. It’s got just enough to keep you entertained, but again, it’s all just kinda there. Three out of five goat masks.