Halloween and the awful awfulness of Dreamaniac

If there’s one thing I absolutely love (and by love, of course, I mean hate), it’s when people tell me, “You won’t believe this, but I love Halloween! It’s my favorite holiday!” Upon hearing this mind-blowing news, I typically feign surprise, engage in some socially accepted small talk and then quickly run home and hang myself. Extreme? Maybe, but proclaiming your love for Halloween in this day and age is about as shocking as telling someone you really enjoy breathing oxygen, or, if you happen to be a 20-year old girl, that you’re into photography. Everyone loves Halloween, and pretending that a fondness for this massively popular holiday is somehow unique or character-defining is simply idiotic. Of course, this is just my way of saying “I love Halloween. It’s my favorite holiday.”

And hey, what’s not to love? There’s the wonderful fall weather, the excuse to watch really crappy horror movies, and the fact that everyone gets to dress up as sexy dinosaurs or whatever. Speaking of which, Halloween is also a great holiday for drunken, totally random hookups, like this time in Madison when I found myself making out with a girl who was dressed as Sherlock Holmes (a sexy Sherlock Holmes). But when the game truly started to get, um, afoot, Sexy Sherlock nonchalantly informed me that she was only 17. I responded to this news the only way I knew how: I feigned surprise, engaged in some socially accepted small talk, and then ran home and hung myself. True story! My God, that was almost 15 years ago…

Ahem. So, Halloween. Um, really shitty horror movies. Right. Let’s review one!

Today’s selection is 1986’s Dreamaniac, a real doozy I found in a Blockbuster VHS cut-out bin for $1. (Speaking of Blockbuster, am I the only one who’s detected a weird, depressing, downscale Spencer Gifts-like vibe in their stores lately?). Actually, on second thought, I think I may have picked it up at the old Video Visions in the long-defunct Prospect Avenue Mall. God, I used to love that dump: the used bookstore, the dilapidated movie theater, the way the whole place used to smell like porn. How long has that building been vacant? Five, six years? While I have no reason to believe that local condo-mavens New Land Enterprises have anything to do with this travesty, I’ll take this opportunity to blame them anyway.

Ahem again. The first thing you need to know about Dreamaniac is that it’s shot on video, with an overall production aesthetic falling somewhere between an industrial training film and a Mentos commercial. It’s the kind of movie that screams “Canada!” throughout its mercifully short 80-minute runtime and seems to have been filmed under the influence of either some heavy-duty drugs or a series of particularly potent naps. The acting is uniformly terrible, the writing even worse, and the budget appears to have been somewhere in the neighborhood of $37. On the plus side, director David DeCoteau is also responsible for 1988’s excellent Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama, a movie so wonderful that if you haven’t seen it we can no longer be friends.

Dreamaniac involves a heavy-metal doofus named Adam — played by one-time actor Thomas Bern — who summons a demonic succubus in order to get laid. Or to become a successful musician. Or something like that. Later, his girlfriend’s sister decides to throw a big sorority party at his house, and the succubus chick kills everyone. The End. Or something like that. Fake blood, fake boobs and a scene that involves a man being electrocuted in his underwear ensue. A short message preceding the movie proclaims it to be “TOO SHOCKING FOR THEATERS!” — a straight-up lie, of course, unless you consider murky camerawork and long, awkward pauses where the actors visibly search for their marks shocking.

The film opens with a buff, dazed Adam walking through his house, completely naked. He makes his way to the shower and finds a comely, also nude, blood-covered woman. She gives Adam a come-hither look, and with nothing better to do, they hump. The story of my life. You can tell it’s naughty, evil humping, however, because everyone’s covered in blood and the soundtrack sounds like Joe Satriani shredding over a keyboard’s “demo” button. Suddenly, Adam screams and — wait for it — wakes up! It was only a dream, of course, and a poorly lit, masturbatory dream at that. Again, the story of my life.

In the waking world, Adam is slightly less buff and thankfully more clothed, sporting a typical ’80s heavy-metal look: a Def Leppard T-shirt, some Jeffrey Dahmer glasses and a dirt-lip moustache. His boring, non-blood-covered girlfriend stops by, and after some awful, awful dialog (“I have a headache.” “I know one way to cure a headache!”), they hump. You can tell it’s boyfriend/girlfriend humping and not naughty, evil humping because they do it during the day and giggle a lot. Post-coitus, the girlfriend leaves, and Adam immediately goes into his secret candle-strewn attic, reads some random words from a scroll and summons a demonic succubus. Just like a man! Am I right ladies? They put in their three minutes of dirty business, send you packing and summon a smokin’ hot demon babe. Foreplay? Please.

Back to the action. The succubus chick appears to Adam and — you guessed it — they hump. Oh, and it’s totally the same chick from the blood-covered shower dream. Meanwhile, Adam’s girlfriend and her sister are downstairs getting the house ready for the big sorority party.

Cut to a few hours later. The party is jumpin’. And by “jumpin” I mean there are four girls and three guys milling about a poorly lit set. Extras? Dreamaniac doesn’t need any stinking extras. There’s also this total bitch named Francis who keeps making fun of everyone’s clothes, apparently unaware that her own sweater has a collar big enough to house a Cub Scout meeting.

Anyway, a mysterious guest shows up, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s the succubus chick. Even under the heavy fright mask known as “’80s fashion,” (a.k.a. “American Apparel’s fall line”) she’s undeniably hot, and, you know, succubus-y. She’s played by frequent DeCoteau muse — and future porn star — Kim McKamy. McKamy’s performance, while certainly lousy even by direct-to-video standards, is about the only redeeming thing in this particular picture. Ugh. I can’t believe I just used the word “performance” to describe anything involving Dreamaniac. And I called it a “picture” for Christ’s sake. Just kill me now and get it over with.

TRAILER BREAK!!

A lot happens in the next 30 minutes: a sorority girl with a terrible Valley Girl accent gets stabbed in the forehead; Francis and some lunk named Brad sneak off to do it and another girl pukes on them (don’t ask); the partygoers start playing charades — yes, charades — while another random dude follows the succubus upstairs, strips down to his underwear and proceeds to get himself electrocuted (again, don’t ask); another couple raids the fridge and finds some whipped cream. Yup, quite the party. Meanwhile, Adam is feeling pretty uptight about all the killing, so he tries to get the demon-girl to stop. His efforts don’t last long, and he soon gives up and joins some fellow party goers who are eating hash brownies and snorting coke. It’s a credit to Dreamaniac’s awfulness that it makes these two otherwise awesome activities look completely boring.

And on and on and on. The succubus offs more and more people in increasingly dull ways (knife to the back of the head, fire poker to the chest), and Adam — his inner heavy-metal creep finally emerging — starts to get into the spirit of things. But in the end, Adam refuses to kill his girlfriend and her sister, so the succubus bites his you-know-what off. The End. Or is it?

Nope, Dreamaniac has one more poop-filled trick down its pants. The movie’s real ending is some “it was only a dream” crap where we find out Adam is actually a novelist dictating his newest book to his agent over the phone (his working title is Hemoglobin House on Sorority Row). There’s a knock at the door and suddenly the succubus jumps out and kills him. Blood splatters over a ream of paper. The End. God, that ending sucks. Let’s pretend instead that the succubus kills Adam, his girlfriend and her sister, burns the house down and moves to Des Moines to join a local revival of Godspell. Everyone dies, there’s some nice musical numbers and we find out that Rosebud is the name of the sled. The End.

It goes without saying that Dreamaniac is really, really horrible. But dammit, I love it anyway. Movies of this ilk are a sort of comfort food for me — especially this time of year — taking me back to when Friday and Saturday nights meant sleeping over at a friend’s house and nodding off to whatever schlock USA Up All Night was serving up. For all their flaws, these films are a gentle and reassuring reminder that no matter how hard life gets, no matter how defeated and hopeless you may feel at the end of the day, you still live in a world where a group of grown adults can get together and spend six months making a movie called Puppet Master III: Toulon’s Revenge. There, we all learned something. The End.

Happy Halloween!