Project: Nightmare (1987) — Triskaidekafiles

PROJECT NIGHTMARE

WRITERS: Donald Jones and James Lane

DIRECTOR: Donald Jones

STARRING: Charles Miller as Gus

Seth Foster as Jon

Elly Koslo as Marcie

Harry Melching as Carl

LeRoy Hughes as Hall

Jeff Braun as Priest/Computer

Lance Dickson as Gus's father

QUICK CUT: Two friends take a seemingly endless trip into the woods, and are attacked by an unseen creature. They try and find out what it was and achieve some sort of resolution.

THE MORGUE

Gus - A man with abandonment issues, daddy issues, and issue issues. He is just as happy spending time with books than he is with people.

Jon - Gus’s best friend, and the more extroverted of the pair.

Marcie - A woman the pair come across, who is maybe too trusting, but also ready to help lonely strangers lost along the road.

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TRISK ANALYSIS: Welcome back, Triskelions! We have reached mid February, but we are breaking with tradition this year. Instead of our regularly scheduled Just Wrong Love Story, I am instead gonna talk about a movie called Project Nightmare. It has the connection to LAST year's Valentines movie, in that it is the first movie by the same writer/director of Murderlust. And it's called Project Nightmare. So let's pass out and see what this is.

After a bunch of wibbildy wobbledy sounds, and the credits, we find Gus and Jon very put out by something they can't explain, and we slowly find out that is the destruction of their campsite while they slept.

With little other choice, they begin walking back, but the strangeness continues. They know they should be able to see their hometown from where they are, and a few others, but no cities whatseover can be seen.

They continue to hike around and decide to hunker down for the night somewhere, and hopefully that won't get trashed too.

Eventually they come upon a cabin, and hopefully there's not some poor bastard handcuffed to a pipe while his friend tries to get him through the withdrawls of a drug cleanse.

Instead, they meet Marcie, who allows them a place to crash until the morning. People were WAY more trusting back in the day, kids.

They tell Marcie what happened, and she shrugs it off as oh, just the wind! Riiight, sure, just the wind.

Also, they mention that they encountered some...unseen force, and felt like they were being watched. Was it at the end of a rope dangling out of the darkness?

The chat continues well into the night, and we get some angsty backstory from Gus about how everyone leaves him.

After a nightmare with some artsy still photography transition shots, the boys leave to continue their journey to no civilisation anywhere.

They encounter the strange whatever it is following them, and Jon notices it doesn't move away from the trees, so almost literally goes to poke it with a stick. Surprisingly, nothing happens.

And what comes next? More walking!

They eventually come across someone else, and a car, in the middle of all this nowhere. They help to fix the tire, as David sits in the car, not feeling well.

While they do that, David Exposition gives us his backstory, of being a pilot who had to land his plane in the land of confusion. Fortunately, just as he was thinking where's a car when you need one, and the one they are all at appeared.

Then he mused about how unfortunate it would be to get a flat, and bam! Hmm, curious coincidences!

Sorry I brought the Langoliers down on you, boys.

Everyone gets in the car and they drive back to Marcie's, so I see we are gonna be going in circles now like we’re looking for a factory of paranormal. When they arrive, the house is bathed in red light, and weird noises.

Gus grabs the girl, and everyone drives back off to the middle of nowhere.

Before too long, David dies in the back of the car from whatever is wrong with him, and they continue on their way. He was in this movie for all of five minutes.

That’s what we like to call a challenge.

So they find a restaurant Marcie mentioned and thought they might be able to find peoiple at, but it seems to be closed. Still, they go to check it out, and you know what that means, more walking!

They find a payphone though, and Jon gives it a try. Hopefully they don't learn that Coke is a kind of rock.

But no, much like everything else in this broken land, the phones don't work either. So, they head back to the car.

And if all this walking isn't enough for you, now there's driving! It's like the credits to Birdemic!

The car eventually gets low on gas, and while trying to figure out where and what to do, Jon spies something off in the distance, and they decide to go for it, because why not?

Eventually they close in on it, and discover David's plane. Gus investigates, and determines he should be able to fix it.

Gus decides to fly on ahead to get help, leaving Jon and Marcie alone to do some driving. But after the plane takes off, Marcie is nowhere to be seen. Along with the car. More walking for Jon!

He has trouble controlling the plane, and flies through an anomaly like this is the Bermuda Triangle and not the Berkshire Parallelogram.

Eventually, Gus lands the plane in the middle of Yet More Nowhere, and walks some more, until he finds a strange chunk of metal embedded into the ground.

A strange force field shocks him and keeps him away from the nobelisk, until it...doesn't, and the cap is now missing, allowing access to wherever it leads.

It's a hatchway into an underground facility, and if he ends up having to press a button every 108 minutes...

Gus wanders around the underground lair for a bit, and runs into the gang from Riverdale...er, I mean, until some guy grabs him and pulls him into a room. He stares dumbfoundedly, as a woman cowers in the corner, and another man urges him to kill the woman.

Eventually, the woman, the threatening man, and the various weapons disappear in front of Gus's eyes, and here comes the exposition!

The scientist, for that is what he is, asks Gus how he got there, and he explains as best he can. That's when Marcie appears, and just as quickly disappears. The scientist explains that she was pulled out of Gus's mind, and yes, she was there, but is a creation of Project Touchstone, the systems at this base used to test people by throwing real physical manifestations of their worst thoughts, all to test astronauts and the like who would be subjected to extreme isolation.

It's all a lot of scientific goobledygook, and it makes sense well enough. But I am freaking out at ANYone just casually creating this elaborate system with thoughts made flesh as a test system.

Push a thousand different buttons in just the right order, and you get me.

So in short, the computer thought Gus was an interesting subject, started affecting his world, and the only way to make it stop that they can be sure of, because he is not part of the normal parameters, is to go through the psychological torment.

Gus briefly pops outside where he sees Jon who is suddenly there, being chased by the entity Touchstone is creating. Before Gus can ask if he can try another way, Jon falls back out to the desert, and Gus gets more exposition.

Carl decides the system needs to be shut down, as it is operating way outside its specs (YA THINK??), but the computer won't or can't comply.

Gus wanders around, ends up in a dance club, where his father is, and oh no, he has daddy abandonmnet issues. This all boils down to waaaah, daddy wasn't around enough, waaah!

Carl goes to shut the reactors off manually, and Gus tries to escape, but runs into a giant floating head that spells things out for him and his daddy issues, if you didn't get them already.

The head gets the upper hand, zapping Gus, and Carl can't stay alive long enough to shut down the reactor.

Which is when Marcie appears and flips the last few switches, shutting down Touchstone, freeing Gus, and he goes to find Jon and they drive back to the restored cities.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It looks okay, I can’t complain.

Audio: Much the same. A solid presentation, all things considered

Body Count: Being more scifi, the bodies aren’t why we’re here. But it is not devoid of death!

1 - David dies about 25 minutes in

2 - Carl succumbs to all the radiation spewing off the overworked reactors.

No real choices for best corpse or blood type this time out!

Drink Up! Every time someone goes for a walk.

Movie Review: This is not a bad movie at all. If anything, it does not go far enough. The ideas are solid, but they could have done SO much more. The psychological torture is almost a tossed away idea, and also the main plot. It’s got the right ideas, but is a bit on the slow slide, and the pay off feels ill conceived and comes off weak. I would love to see someone run with this idea and really make something with it. But it is well made, even if the story is a bit lacking. Three out of five nobelisks.

Entertainment Value: It’s lacking in anything truly bad and cheesy to keep you entertained, and you’re either on board with the slow burn, thoughtful pace of it, or you’re not. A little scenery chewing would not have been amiss. The movie laid a solid groundwork, it just really needed to run with its ideas. Two out of five unseen forces.