Medical mayhem double feature courtesy of Shout! Factory. Bad Dreams and Visiting Hours are re-released on DVD in a new two disc set.
If you think our health care system is in trouble now, check out the death care system courtesy of these two slashers from the 80's. Let's wander through the halls of these hospitals from hell, shall we?
Bad Dreams
How to make a lazy clone of Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors:
1 - Villian who is a burn victim? Check.
2 - Supporting cast of psych hospital patients? Check.
3 - Said supporting cast is committing “suicide” but the attractive lead girl knows better? Check.
4 - Doctor who is relieved of his duties for unorthodox methods? Check.
5 - Cast Jennifer Rubin, who played Taryn in Dream Warriors? Check.
6 – Throw in another Nightmare alumni, Charles Fleischer from the original, A Nightmare on Elm Street for good measure.
In an attempt to throw some originality into the mix, make your villain the head of a Jonestown-esque cult and instead of ladling up punch for the followers to drink, ladle up some gasoline and set everyone on fire! It’s too bad this intriguing opening is as interesting as it gets. Once the mass suicide scene is over and the lone survivor is found, this movie falls into a coma that lasts longer than our heroine’s.
After a thirteen-year nap Cynthia awakens to a world she isn’t terribly curious about and is quickly put into a mental ward under the care of Dr. Karmen who doesn’t seem to do much to help her acclimate to the new world around her. He is more concerned with dredging up the memories of that terrible day her friends and family were burned alive. At first the expected traumatic outbursts occur, with our heroine screaming and looking nuts, only to have them become visions of Harris killing the other patients. Predictably the hospital staff thinks these are suicides and doesn’t do much to stop them from happening further, and well, if they did there would be no story. So it continues on with Cynthia looking crazier and crazier and the patients becoming deader and deader.
I won’t spoil the last act of the film, but there is an attempt to create a “twist” ending but it doesn’t really work because there is nothing to hang it on that makes any sense in the context of the rest of the story. But if you have half a brain in your head you can figure out where it’s going to go even if you can’t figure out why or the how.
With all this negativity you would think I hated everything about this movie. Not so, I beg. Rubin gives a good performance with what she is asked to do, Lynch is appropriately menacing and almost seductive at times and Bruce Abbott as the good doctor hams it up in the right spots. The film itself looks good, and it’s technically well made, it’s just the script doesn’t get much right, and I found it hard to care about what happened to anyone beyond that opening scene of the love in/murder. And one last thing, this movie has nothing to do with dreams or nightmares. Stupid deceptive title, I mean cash in.
Film Score: 2.5
Visiting Hours
Continuing with the hospital of horrors setting, Visiting Hours is a fairly run of the mill slasher movie out of Canada. In the early 80’s the Great White North gave us several memorable genre movies such as My Bloody Valentine, Happy Birthday To Me, and Curtains. Starring Lee Grant, Michael Ironside, and Linda Purl, Visiting Hours adopts the “maniac killer stalking a woman over the course of one night and then followers her to the hospital” blueprint laid down by Halloween 1 and 2 and compresses them into one film.
Lee Grant is Deborah Ballin, a very opinionated TV journalist whose public persona tends to get her into trouble, but nothing so bad as about what’s to happen to her at the outset of the movie. Once the film moves into the hospital where Lee is a patient, we meet a nurse named Sheila Munroe portrayed by Linda Purl, who also becomes a target of Ironside’s creeper, named Colt Hawker (does this guy also perform in porn films to supplement his income?). The film takes an unexpected turn in pushing Linda Purl’s character’s story into the fore, thus alleviating the problems Halloween 2 had leaving Jamie Lee Curtis on a hospital bed for the bulk of its running time and gives us something else to care about instead of a bunch of random kills.
Although the film really is Lee Grant’s show on paper, it’s Linda Purl’s plucky nurse that really gets the audience through the film and Ironside’s creeper sure is creepy. I don’t think I will ever get the image of him near naked and wearing all that jewelry out of my head. Lee Grant does what she can in her limited role, and I can’t help but think there should be more of her in the movie if she is the intended center of it. William Shatner appears in a brief role that is completely useless, yet he is credited above Purl on the original poster. Go figure…
Visiting Hours isn't a bad film, and it's certainly the more watchable of the two films here. There are some nice suspenseful moments, but ultimately it just feels like a TV movie, especially the pacing of it. You can almost feel where the commercial breaks will go. Much like Bad Dreams, it's derivative of better films, but there are some bright spots here if you're willing to overlook the somewhat dull execution overall.
Film Score: 2.5
Overview of Set
Shout Factory has designed a nice package of these two hospital themed horrors with stylized versions of the original poster art for each film on the cover. Visiting Hours carries a radio spot and a trailer along with it, and Bad Dreams includes a commentary by the writer/director Andrew Fleming, brief interviews with actors Jennifer Rubin, Bruce Abbott, Richard Lynch, and Dean Cameron, a short special effects featurette, and an almost ten minute alternate ending!
In closing, I can't really recommend either film outside of watching them for curiosity's sake. Neither film really has much replay value for me, but the attempts are noble. And for slasher fans, Visiting Hours is somewhat of a cult item and has its fans. Bad Dreams on the other hand feels so much like a sloppy conceptual remake of Nightmare On Elm Street 3, that I cannot forgive it.
Disc Score: 3/5
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