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Nightmares (1983 film)

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Nightmares
Directed byJoseph Sargent
Written byJeffrey Bloom
Christopher Crowe
Produced byChristopher Crowe
StarringCristina Raines
Emilio Estevez
Lance Henriksen
Richard Masur
Music byCraig Safan
Distributed byAnchor Bay Entertainment (DVD)
Release datesSeptember 9, 1983 (USA)
Running time99 mins
LanguageEnglish

Nightmares is a 1983 film with four tales of horror, starring Emilio Estevez and Lance Henriksen. The film is directed by Joseph Sargent.

Nightmares began as a television project of four horror stories helmed by T.V. veteran Joseph Sargent, who also helmed the horror film, Colossus: The Forbin Project. The results were deemed too strong for the small screen. An opening scene was added and the project was instead shipped into theaters by Universal Pictures.

Taglines: Nightmares... is this year's sleeper.

You'll Never Be the Same

Each summer one film opens that you've never heard of... and that you'll never forget.

Four of your worst NIGHTMARES come true.

The DVD was released by Anchor Bay Entertainment in 1999 and has since gone out-of-print.

"Terror in Topanga"

Plot

During a traffic stop at night, a cop is stabbed to death by someone leaping from the bushes. A killer is terrorizing this local California area and the TV and radio are reporting that the cop is his fifth victim.

After Lisa (Raines) puts her children to bed, she discovers that she's out of cigarettes. Her husband forbids her to go to the store but sneaks out anyway and heads down the canyon.

Lisa gets the cigarettes and begins home only to realize that she's almost out of gas. All the gas stations appear to be closed. Finally, she stops at an out of the way station... Honks... And out comes a dead-eyed attendent, who just happens to pefectly match the killer's description on the radio.

"Bishop of Battle"

Plot

Young J.J. Colley (Emilio Estevez in one of his first feature roles) is a video game wizard. Since this is the '80's, it means he wears shirts without sleeves and a big-ass walkman cranked up whenever he plays. In a pointless introduction (which is they only way they could get the storyline long enough), J.J. and his bespectacled friend Zock (Billy Jayne, the smart kid from Bloody Birthday) do a classic pool-hall hustle in a Latino-filled arcade; they barely make it away with their ill-gotten $25.

After an argument about J.J.'s obsession with video games, they split up for the day, and J.J. goes into his local arcade to try again to best his nemesis: The Bishop of Battle. Seems that, though there are thirteen levels, everyone he knows has died on the twelfth (though he's heard rumors of some guy in Jersey who's gotten to 13 twice -- now just think, how did rumors ever spread before the Internet?). Everyone crowds around to watch him give the game is best. After several minutes of close-ups of his seeaty nose and lightning-quick hands intercut with vintage '80's computer graphics, he dies... on level twelve. Everyone clears out, and as he tries to play again, the owner pushes him out for closing time.

J.J.'s parents, concerned about his performance in school, ground him until his grades come up. That night, he creeps out the bedroom window and crowbars his way into the arcade to finally finish it with the Bishop of Battle.

"The Benediction"

Plot

Lance Henriksen is a priest (stop laughing) at a small parish who's undergoing a crisis of faith, spurred on by the violent death of a young boy. As he explains to his bishop, he's lost his belief in the whole good'n'evil thing; he sees people instead being "ground up in the gears of anarchy" (his words, not mine). He finally decides to leave the ministry, and takes his old beater car and a pocketful of cash (and a canister of holy water to drink) across the desert.

Out in Nowhereland he meets an ominous black 4x4. At first it just cuts him off and goes on its way, but it keeps reappearing, forcing him off the road, knocking off his bumper, almost flattening his stunt double (sorry, folks, it was pretty obvious). It almost doesn't seem -- mortal

"Night of the Rat"

Plot

Claire (Veronica Cartwright, Alien) can hear the rats moving in the walls of her beautiful home, but her husband Steven (Richard Masur) ignores it. As I'm sure you know, Masur always plays one of two roles: a big bearishly-huggable guy, or an unbelievable bastard. Here he's in bastard role, as an egotistically-obsessed go-getter who never misses to opportunity to belittle his wife in saccharine tones in front of their daughter.

Even though he says he'll take care of it with a couple of rat traps in the attic, the disturbances get worse: things start falling off shelves, and the family cat disappears. Claire goes ahead and calls an exterminator (Albert Hague, Mr. Shorofsky from Fame!), who discovers that this rat has gnawed huge holes behind various cabinets, and also likes to chew on the power cables. Naturally, Steven comes home, belittles his wife, and dismisses the exterminator.

That night, the rat really gets busy

Cast

Trivia

  • Originally made for network television, but deemed "too intense." Extra footage was added and it was released theatrically.
  • The computer game sequences in this part of the film were generated on an ACS1200 and cost so much that it nearly bankrupted production.
  • Emilio Estevez went through a two week training course with the NYPD on gun use to train for his battle scenes when the computer-generated enemies entered the real world.
  • Lee Ving, lead singer of punk band Fear, appears in the segment, "Terror in Topanga." One of the songs that Estevez listens to in the segment "Bishop of Battle" is "I Love Livin' in the City" by Fear.

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