DREAMSCAPE (1984)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *psychological, sociological*

I was surprised to learn that DREAMSCAPE was based, however thinly, upon Roger Zelazny's own treatment for his 1966 THE DREAM MASTER. Though I haven't read the novel for many years, and though it wasn't a favorite of mine, I did think of the book while re-watching DREAMSCAPE. I would guess that the movie's three writers, one of whom was director Joseph Rubin, took nothing from the prose work but the basic idea of a person being able to project his consciousness into another person's dreams via technology.

Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) uses his talents as a psychic to gamble and to bed women. He's out for himself after the negative experience of being a lab rat at a psychic research facility, run by a man named Novotny (Max Von Sydow). Novotny then reaches out to Alex, asking the young fellow to provide aid on a new project devoted to psychological healing of trauma cases. With the use of a sophisticated mental technique, Novotny's psychics can project their minds into the minds of dreaming subjects, the better to find out the source of their disturbances. Alex, although suspicious, allows himself to be beguiled into assisting his sort-of mentor, at least partly because one of the old man's assistants is a hot young scientist, name of Jane (Kate Capshaw).

Novotny has a deeper concern than his patients' welfare, for the whole project has been underwritten by a "dark ops" government unit. Novotny suspects that the contact man, a highly placed agent named Blair (Christopher Plummer), wants to use the project for espionage, and the scientist's fears are aggravated by the news that the President himself (Eddie Albert) is about to enter the clinic for dream-treatment. Alex, who soon masters the ability to project himself into others' dreamworlds without the technique, eventually learns that Blair wants to use the procedure to perpetrate assasinations.

DREAMSCAPE is an efficient but by-the-numbers thriller. The audience isn't asked to look too deeply into the nature of dreams or of their dreamers. There's not much motive behind Alex putting aside his selfishness in order to save the President, except insofar as he falls in love with Jane and "becomes a better man" because of it. Nor is Blair's desire to depose the Prez explained by anything more than a vague hawkishness. The FX are passable for the eighties but prove rather disappointing in these CGI days.