DREAMANIAC

Directed by David DeCoteau. United States. 1986.

I have fallen down the stairs before. In fact, I have tumbled down virtually every flight of stairs in every home I have ever lived in. Not because I was drunk or high, but because god and gravity both hate me. Maybe I'm just especially clumsy. I don’t know the exact cause of my specific misfortune, but I do know what a bruised ass feels like. Watching DREAMANIAC is a bit like falling down the stairs. There’s a moment of sheer exhilaration when your feet first give way, then the unpleasant thud of your tailbone hitting the steps. This is followed by the rhythmic dum-dum-dum-dum-dum of your delectable man-ass sliding down each stair like a fleshy, hairy Slinky. A few seconds later, it’s all done. There's nothing left to experience but complete and utter embarrassment.

This film has three minutes of opening credits and five whole minutes of closing credits. The total running time is 82 minutes. I call that mercy. DREAMANIAC is the 1986 feature film debut from David DeCoteau, the gay porn extraordinaire behind such classics as MAKING IT HUGE, GOOD MEN GO BAD, and MALE-O-GRAM. Are those films any good? I wouldn’t know, as I would never watch them, not because I’m homophobic, but because I don’t want to watch more David DeCoteau films. DeCoteau went (mostly) mainstream-friendly in 1987 when he directed CREEPOZOIDS. He is now forever locked in the purgatory of the Lifetime TV Movie factory. Serves him right.

This movie begins with a naked man (naturally) named Adam walking down a red-tinged hallway to find an equally naked woman in his bathtub. The two suck face for a bit before the dream woman violently scratches his back, causing him to wake up screaming. Adam’s girlfriend Pat (played by future porn goddess Ashlyn Gere) pops by, reminding him that he agreed to allow her to throw a party tonight for her sorority sisters. Adam isn’t thrilled about the prospect. He has writing to do, after all. He is a heavy metal lyricist, don’t ‘cha know. Yes, sir, a heavy metal lyricist who wears Def Leppard T-shirts and ironed jeans. Hide your ovaries, ladies.

After Pat leaves, Adam spends his afternoon smoking cigarettes, drinking beer, and watching a Godzilla film on TV (aka how I spent my 20s), before dabbling in the dark arts (aka how I spent my 30s). This accidentally unleashes the literal woman of his dreams, a sexy succubus named Lily. A suitably evil-sounding name if you ask me. She goes down on him for a bit before biting his pecker off. Just kidding, it was another bad dream.

Guests arrive. Chief among them are Jodi, the preppy girl, and Francis, the raging bitch. Considering how many women in this film have male-sounding names, one has to wonder if this was a repurposed gay sex film DeCoteau never got around to making. Jodi is currently dating Francis’s ex-boyfriend, Brad. Francis isn’t thrilled and plans on stealing him back. I don’t remember anyone else’s name at the party. I’m not sure they were even given names to begin with. I only remember Lily. That’s right, folks! She’s real, and she’s hungry for blood.

This party fucking sucks, by the way. There are pot brownies in the kitchen and a dead cat in the attic. That’s about all it has going for it. Soon enough, the phone stops working, and the power goes out. Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the home stereo system from playing the film’s diegetic soundtrack, an endless synth-pop loop that had me grinding my teeth in discomfort. It takes 29 minutes for someone to get stabbed in the head. The next victim isn’t offed until 10 minutes later. We spend less time watching people die than we do watching them snort cocaine, eat popcorn, use the bathroom, touch up their makeup, eat chips, slurp punch directly from the bowl, and sit on beds. And over all of that horrendous, irritating narrative sludge, the goddamn music loop drones on. Neverending. Like my misery.

Francis successfully seduces Brad, but he only makes it to the fifth pump before running out of steam. Definitely a man worth fighting over. A minute or two later, Jodi throws up on them after finding them in bed together. So hilarious! An attractive woman busts out the whipped cream for a little fun with a meaty guy, but because this is a DeCoteau movie, guess whose nipples have whipped cream licked off of them? A man in his tighty-whities is electrocuted to death. He violently shakes to and fro, his cotton-clad package jiggling six inches from the camera. A man is stabbed in the back. A woman is stabbed in the front. Variety! Another pecker is bitten off. Recently deceased partygoers come back as zombies for some reason. A man is decapitated with a power drill.

All of that sounds amusing, but it’s as much fun as watching an infant choke to death. Actually, that would be less physically painful to sit through. My copy of DREAMANIAC looked like a 12th-generation VHS rip. Once the lights went out, the eye strain set in. The whole film was a blurry, pixelated mess. I had to strain my brain too. The film consistently rejected any attempts I made to figure out what was happening and why. And it never gets any better, just dumber and dumber, until we reach the final shocking twist of this remarkably awful movie. You kids ready?

There never was a succubus. Gasp! Shock! Lily was just a neighborhood girl who sleepwalks. That’s right. The woman murdering people left and right, drinking blood, and chewing off dicks? Just a sleepwalker. Her boyfriend walks into the murder house, stops Lily from stabbing Jodi to death, and just mutters “yeah, she does this from time to time” before heading back home.

You get it? She was dreaming. She was dreaming that she was a maniac. Do you get it? A dream-maniac. DO YOU GET IT?!

You know, I should’ve just watched gay porn. Far more stabbing, thrusting, and sudden spurts of fluids. Probably equivalent acting. Oh, and I forgot. It turns out the movie was all a dream. Or something. Whatever. Kill me.