Is Dream Stalker a Hidden Treasure or Dumpster Fire?
DVD Distributed By: Severin Films (Intervision Pictures Corp)
Intervision Picture Corporation has returned to the mom ‘n’ pop video shop to retrieve two underseen shriek fests from the bottom row of the “Horror” section. DREAM STALKER and DEATH BY LOVE are both brain-busting, reality -decimating slices of artsploitation from the outer edges of the shot-on-video universe. On April 11th, scorch your mind with a double feature disc of these lost gems, newly transferred from the original video masters.
“It fits right in with THINGS and SLEDGEHAMMER,” raves Outpost-Zeta.com. “DREAM STALKER is something special!” When a Sacramento supermodel is haunted by the super-mulleted corpse of her dead motocross-racer boyfriend, it will unleash an erratically ambitious nightmare of cheap lighting, bad sound, bizarre plotting, gratuitous nudity and grisly effects that Bleeding Skull says is “guaranteed to make you feel like you’re trapped in a lo-fi psychedelic abyss of fun!”
Trashmen Rubbish Round Table
Travis
TravisWhere to start? It’s a crummy shot on video horror film that is blatantly cashing in on the wisecrackin’ Freddy Kreuger 80s icon. Overall this really sucked and it walks the tightrope between endearing and inept the entire time.
Jamie
During a scene in a graveyard, out of nowhere a guy on a bike doing a wheelie goes flying by in the background that had me laughing. I had to ask Travis, “Did you just see that?”
This is the moment where the film goes from shitty, inept, and boring to shitty, inept, and entertaining.
Jimbo
I have to concur with Jamie. To say this movie is bad just doesn’t cut it. Dream Stalker displays levels of ineptitude rarely seen. That makes it a special brand of entertaining trashy schlock.
Travis
There is some bad acting worth a few chuckles, and a few shots that had me laughing like the bike popping a wheelie flying by in the background. I imagine Dream Stalker being done by someone who was also really into dirt biking and mashed the two together. Its deficient filmmaking abilities are on display early.
Jimbo
Executive Producer Tom Naygrow produced a movie called Learning Curve, starring Mark Dias (“Dead Ricky”), about an up and coming motorcross racer. While Mr. Naygrow was shopping Learning Curve around for distribution, buyers kept asking if he had a horror film. He did not, so he decided to produce one.
Naygrow met the director who had written a script titled “Kinetic Nightmare” about a woman who has dreams that would manifest into real life tragedies. (This sounds a lot like 1982s The Slayer, directed by J.S. Cardone and currently available on Arrow Films Blu-ray)
Unfortunately (or fortunately), it’s clear that the finished product is very far from the intentions of cast and crew. The director and Naygrow had a conflict that would lead to the director pulling his name from the project, Naygrow taking over “final cut”, and re-titling the movie Dream Stalker.
Jamie
When we first started Dream Stalker, the bad audio was enough for me to be completely willed out of the movie, not caring and just hoping the film was under 90 minutes.
Travis
This has some of the worst audio I’ve even heard. Muffled, uneven, just plain bad.
Jimbo
The audio isn’t bad for the whole thing. But I think we all feel compelled to mention it because when it’s noticeable, it’s really apparent. I wonder how or why this happened. If any of us shot a movie and we failed to capture good audio we would probably do one of two things. Either re-shoot/re-record the audio or edit the scene out of the movie entirely.
Mark Dias (Dead Ricky) pretty much implies in the interviews that the bad audio scenes weren’t supposed to be in the movie. According to Dias, the director knew the audio was bad in select scenes and intended to have them removed. However, when Naygrow took over final cut of the film, the scenes were put back into the movie. Sounds like that was just one of many reasons the director distanced himself from the production.
As far as the home video audience is concerned, I guess it’s good the Intervision DVD comes with subtitles.
Jamie
The film’s plot just went off the map. I had no fucking clue what was going on…and I was totally fine with it.
Jimbo
There are several reasons why you “had no fucking clue what was going on”. But one big one is what I’ll call “the rules”. If you’re going to make any kind of supernatural horror movie, it helps if the audience understands “the rules”. Travis compares Dead Ricky to “funny” Freddy from latter A Nightmare on Elm Street films. The comparisons are understandable. Dead Ricky has a burned face like Freddy and first visits Brittney in her sleep implying that he is “dream stalking” her.
Jamie
Right. Then everyone starts getting killed off by the ghost of her lover Ricky?
Jimbo
“The rules” are unclear. In A Nightmare on Elm Street, Freddy can only attack the teenagers while they are asleep. In Dream Stalker, Dead Ricky seems to have the ability to kill people while they are awake. Or are they awake?
Is Brittney’s psychic powers and dreams the cause of the murders? Or is it the cheap, ugly, music box that “Not Dead Ricky” gave to Brittney as a present? It’s implied that Dead Ricky may actually be the manifestation of the possessed music box that Brittney once called “different” which is female code for “complete piece of shit.”
Jamie
Then Brittney goes from mourning the death of her lover to being in the woods on a retreat and fighting a group of female bullies?
Jimbo
It was a camp for troubled youth…
So the script isn’t perfect. Nor is the directing. Let’s admit that the script and directing choices help to bring some unintentional laughs. Like, why is there a camp for troubled teens taking place right outside of Brittney’s family cabin? And why does Brittney get into a fist fight with one of the “teenage” girls (clearly not a teenager)?
The script includes one of my favorite sequences. One of the boys from the trouble youth camp slips and rolls down a hill. Not only does he roll down the hill like he’s falling off a cliff face, he somehow impales his leg with a stick. The stick is covered in gore and protruding from his leg. As he’s screaming bloody-murder, his buddy uses a rope as thin as twine to “climb down” to him. And when the injured boys friend gets to him he has the most laughable line of all. He sees the gory stick coming out of his buddy’s leg and yells “You’re fine! You’re fine!” Hahahaha!!!
Another favorite moment comes when Brittney’s friend Sherry (who cries a lot) comes to visit Brittney at the cabin. Two of the trouble youth are peeping on the women from outside. Sherry sees them. At least I think she sees them because she starts screaming her head off, but the camera never shows us what she sees. Then Sherry, for some unknown reason, decides to make a run for it and opens the back door. As she’s about to run outside, one of the teens smashes Sherry’s nose in with a log, covering her face in blood. Why? Who the fuck knows. As the teens invade the house, Dead Ricky comes to the rescue and says “It’s dangerous to play with sticks.” When has it ever been dangerous to play with sticks? What the hell is going on? Who knows? Who cares? This movie doesn’t make any goddamned sense!
Travis
The effects were okay, but still look like shit on video.
Jamie
There is one moment where a guy goes flying off a building, screaming bloody murder (was that a dummy?) that had me howling. The amount of screaming and blood-curdling yelling was so goddamn funny to me, I couldn’t stop laughing which is exactly what I was hoping for and what the film evidently needed.
Jimbo
Dr. Frisk is the character that Dead Ricky scares to the point of jumping out of a window. Not only does he have a German accent, then an English accent, then an American accent, but he is involved in the best death scene of the movie. I too was howling as he screamed and the dummy slammed into a car. The dummy was fake as hell, but gory and looked both cheap and awesome. I loved it!
Speaking of falling from high places…
Anyone else find it incredibly hilarious that the guy that jumped off the cabin balcony (a lame stunt) ended up breaking his leg? You can even see him bounce off the ground and appear at the bottom of the frame again for a split second.
Jamie
Oh and don’t forget Brittney meets an old high school boyfriend while she’s taking a bubble bath and the two later have some fuckings on the floor…
Jimbo
Greg, the “new boyfriend”, sucks. Yes, he’s the reason you finally get to see Brittney’s bewbs, but the character sucks. I just wanted him punched in the face, and hard.
And can we talk about the rape scene? I know I’m jumping all over the place (just like the movie) but near the beginning of Dream Stalker Dead Ricky visits Brittney in her sleep. Even though we’ve been told he loves her, he decides to rape her. He also has a condom. Why? Is he worried about ghost babies or paranormal STDs? It is played very “funny” Freddy Krueger as he seems to relish torturing Brittney. He even has a punchline! Referring to the condom, Dead Ricky says “It broke. Oh well.”
Jamie
…seriously I had no idea what was going on but thankfully the nudity, sub-par gore effects, screaming, and insanity was enough for me to be entertained.
Travis
It somehow ended up being the superior entry on the double bill [with Death By Love] though.
Jimbo
The movie left me feeling mostly befuddled and confused. But I did have a lot of fun laughing at how bad it was. I think Dream Stalker does hit that sweet spot of too terrible to be believed. It’s unimaginable that anything could be this inept. Quite literally everything is done wrong. But the movie is made all the better because of it.
I feel like the director had every intention of shooting his “Kinetic Nightmare” movie. But on-set squabbles between director/producer caused a rift and the producer edited the movie into the hilarious mess we have today. It’s one of those fortunate accidents.
Severin Films even bleeped the director’s name out of the DVD interviews. Everything online credits Christopher Mills as the director, but the DVD interviews never confirm this. If the director had been given final cut can you imagine how unwatchable this movie would have been? Instead the net film inadequacies add up to a fairly enjoyable and laughably absurd movie.
Hidden Treasure/Dumpster Fire?
| Jamie: |  (2.0 / 5) |
| Jimbo: |  (2.5 / 5) |
| Travis: |  (1.5 / 5) |
| Average: | (2.0 / 5) |
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Special Features
- Remembering Ricky: With Actor Mark Dias
- Dirtbike Dreams: Executive Producer Tom Naygrow
