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A Hard-Rocking, Blood-Splattered Cheesefest! Dreamaniac (1986) Review

I am and always will be a rocker. AC/DC is, without a doubt, my favorite band, and I love all movies with some hard rocking in it. One example of this is the 1986 hard rock ghost story Trick or Treat, which is one film that you should really be seeing. That same year, a very, very low-budget effort was also released directly to video. I managed to take a look at it, and decided to watch the first couple of minutes to see whether I liked it or not, and if I didn't, I could just turn it off. Well, to quote Jerry Maguire, "it had me at hello"...

Dreamaniac 1986 Review As the film starts, we get to meet Adam, a failing mucian in college. Adam lives by himself in an old house, and decides that in order to get his career going and get the women, he should resort to the dark arts. He starts practicing black magic, and conjures up a sexy succubus named Lily. Lily tells Adam that she'll give him fame and riches, as long as he brings her people to feed off of.

The next day, Adam's friends arrive at his house, along with his ster and girlfriend, to party down! However, Lily decides to crash the party, much to Adam's surprise. Lily then begins to dispose of each party guest one by one, with Adam doing some of the killings as well. Now, it's up to Adam's ster and girlfriend to destroy the succubus and save the day! http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xo1Nx0Im1J0/Tc9POA9AevI/AAAAAAAAF68/f-e_PxZ1b7Y/s1600/dreamaniac3-450x337.jpg" class="photoborder" /> Dreamaniac was directed by David DeCoteau, who would go on to direct my personal favorite of the Puppet Master franchise, Puppet Master III. It was funded by posbly the greatest low-budget movie company ever, Empire Pictures, and was released by Wizard Video. In fact, Wizard did a great promo for Dreamaniac by pairing it with another Wizard release, Headless Eyes, and having you take a "Terror Test". You'll find the video at the bottom of this page.

While I should have liked Dreamaniac more than I did, it ended up with some major problems. At times, it's pretty slow, and while some deaths were pretty darn gory, others were bloodless. If all of the deaths had the amount of blood as, say, the drill death, I would've been one happy clam after the credits rolled. The movie also features probably the most annoying character I've come across in any horror film: Jamie. He's not even annoying in an entertaining way; he just drives me crazy! The fact that everyone's acting is poor just adds to the cheese of the film. The reason Dreamaniac grabbed onto my attention from the get-go is because it opens with some great rock muc playing during the credits. As already stated, I love rock muc and this theme was just great. However, the rest of the film doesn't live up to the hopes I had set, with the ending being just awful. Even with that in mind, I still enjoyed the movie a lot. It was very cheesy, with some entertainingly bad dialogue and gallons of blood. The Wizard Video box proudly proclaims, "Too Gory for the lver Screen", and when there are moments of gore, they don't fail to live up to this statement. However, too many slow moments and a very weak ending degrade it to a

. I'd say you should definitely watch it, but it's not something you'll adore to pieces. http://youtu.be/kWd25gvx4As