Review of Dreamscape

This is one of those 80s movies I watched on VHS over and over again and dearly loved. Dennis Quaid plays a cocky young psychic who's recruited for a scientific study to enter into the dreams of another person. Their hope is to assist people experiencing traumatic nightmares by entering into their dream and helping them overcome whatever it is that is plaguing them. One such dream is a young boy experiencing nightmares about a "Snake Man" tying to kill him. According to this film's "rules," if you die in a dream, you die in real life. One psychic was already "lost" after going into the boy's dream. That sequence is one that was burned itself into my own young brain and was quite scary back in the day. Watching it now, it's still nicely scary and I also very much enjoyed the German Expressionist influenced production design elements of the nightmare sequence, along with the awesomely retro claymation Snake Man. But the main plot is about the president of the United States having nightmares about ending the world with nuclear war and those nightmares are influencing his real-life decisions. Now enter another cocky young psychic, an excellent David Patrick Kelly, who is (SPOILER ALERT) being sent by an evil Christopher Plummer into the dreams of the president and kill him, so it's up to Quaid to stop him. The battle between Quaid and Kelly in a surreal dream world remains suspenseful, exciting, and visually interesting, even if the special effects are wildly dated. "Dreamscape" was directed by underrated director Joseph Ruben, who also directed underrated thrillers like "The Stepfather" and "True Believer," and it was co-written by Ruben and Chuck Russell ("Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" and "The Mask"), so it's a smart talented group of filmmakers behind the camera. Also behind the camera is cinematographer Brian Tufano, who'd previously shot "Quadrophenia" who would later go on to shoot on films like "Trainspotting" and "Shallow Grave." Top all that off with a surprisingly strong supporting cast that includes Max von Sydow, Eddie Albert as the president, Kate Capshaw, George Wendt, Larry Gelman, Peter Jason, and Chris Mulkey, along with a fun synthesizer heavy score by Maurice Jarre, and you get a highly enjoyably retro 80s sci-fi film that's pretty hard to resist.