The Daily Dig: Nightmares (1983)

An all-star cast isn’t quite enough to make “Nightmares” a cult classic, but there is value in the film’s simple storytelling.

An anthology of horror loosely based on urban legends and the supernatural. Let’s dig into 1983’s NIGHTMARES, directed by Joseph Sargent!

As I See It

An anthology usually has some tendrils that connect the stories or a wraparound that ties them all together. There is no such connective tissue here.

We open with a traffic stop where a young woman escapes without a ticket, only to see the officer punished for his leniency. That would be the villain of our first story getting all stabby with an awkward silence (hold for literal crickets). The lack of a score made the kill toothless.

This entry is little more than a PSA to quit smoking, but we do get a brief appearance from Fear frontman Lee Ving as the escaped lunatic.

Ah, the good old days of arcade hustling. I’m down for any film that incorporates old school gaming (it wasn’t old school when it was produced). Emilio Estevez stars as gaming prodigy J.J. Cooney. He hoodwinks some local hoods out of twenty-five bucks in the early eighties Tecmo fixed shooter, Pleiades, before running off with his buddy Zock (Billy Jayne) to take on the Bishop of Battle, a contrived game that has a supposed thirteen levels.

The thirteenth level is reported to have only been reached by one chap from New Jersey, but that’s all conjecture. Emilio has a typical fight with his parents before running away to break into the arcade to reach the elusive final level himself.

From here, we get a bit of Tron-like action as some archaic, 3-D vehicles escape the game and battle it out with Emilio. This sequence was reportedly very expensive and created on what’s called an ACS1200, which most likely was a Franklin Ace 1200. The things you can do with 48 KB of RAM!

Chapter three was my favorite installment.

Lance Henriksen stars as a priest who’s had a crisis of faith and decides to venture away from his parish to “find himself”. A near-fatal encounter with a Chevy pickup and an unseen driver has the suspected effect, driving him back home. For such a silly premise, I always find myself liking killer car films.

This one had one of my favorite action sequences I’ve ever seen as the car erupts from the ground like a Graboid from Tremors. Such a cool stunt.

A mythological rat that can’t be destroyed? Sign me up! My penchant for natural horror has not eroded, even after watching chapter four. There was no miniature set used to film the enlarged beast. I would categorize it as superimposing the rat to make it look larger than the humans, but there is probably a more technical film term that I’m at a loss for right now.

This is the silliest of the four stories.

Not a home-run film, but two for four ain’t bad.

Famous Faces

Emilio Estevez (J.J. Cooney – Chapter 1) needs no introduction. Repo Man, The Outsiders, The Breakfast Club, Young Guns, The Mighty Ducks… come on! This guy has been an important part of film for so long.

Lee Ving (William Henry Glazier – Chapter 1) is the singer of the legendary punk band Fear, who may be most infamous for their raucous appearance on Saturday Night Live in 1981 thanks to an invite from the late John Belushi and brought some DC punks north, including Minor Threat’s Ian MacKaye, to mosh and destroy the set. He also played Mister Body in the film adaptation of the popular board game Clue.

Moon Unit Zappa (Pamela – Chapter 2) is the daughter of the brilliant avant-garde musician Frank Zappa.

Billy Jayne (Zock) played Buddy in Just One of the Guys and was in the Stephen King adaptation Cujo.

James Tolkan (The Bishop of Battle – voice – Chapter 2) was Mr. Strickland in the Back to the Future franchise, Stinger in Top Gun, Wigan in WarGames, and Detective Lubic in the live-action adaptation of He-Man, Masters of the Universe.

Lance Henriksen (MacLeod – Chapter 3) played Ed Harley in Pumpkinhead and Bishop in the Alien franchise.

Richard Masur (Steve – Chapter 4) was Clark in John Carpenter’s genre-defining remake of The Thing, and Phil Sultenfuss in My Girl.

Veronica Cartwright (Claire – Chapter 4) was also in Alien, but has some other heavyweight credits in the horror genre: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978) and Hitchcock’s The Birds.

Of Gratuitous Nature

Writer Christopher Crowe worked on the TV series Darkroom, from which these stories were rumored to have been cut, though it is also claimed otherwise. He was also one of the writers for the film adaptation of The Last of the Mohicans. With all due respect, these stories seem like he was practicing or operating within a structure and wasn’t able to get inspired enough to make them his own. They languish somewhere between “too much for TV” and a meager attempt at a full swing of horror.

Heartthrob

I’m a hardcore kid at heart. That’s why, besides just featuring singer Lee Ving as the killer in chapter one, I was pleased to hear some first-wave hardcore play through Emilio’s Walkman. A couple of Fear songs, a couple of Negative Trend songs, and a couple of Black Flag tracks will do the ears just right.

Ripe for a Remake

Chapters two or four could have been fleshed out more. Some of the content is so dated that it would be hard to bring into modern times, even with the retro obsession that has permeated the culture for the past few years.

Spawns

No progeny to report.

Where to Watch

Shout Factory released a Blu-Ray in 2015, and as of publishing, there are fewer than one hundred available. Tracking this one down on streaming is going to prove challenging, and you’ll have to hunt for alternative sources.