For When You Just Want to Summon a Succubus: Dreamaniac

I had planned on watching Special Effects, but upon seeing Dreamaniac on my Instant View queue, I just couldn't pass up the opportunity for an obscure Natalie Portmanteau: Deathdreamaniac (apologies to those unfamiliar with Shanrock Trivia terminology). Here is the Netflix synopsis of Deathdream:

Heavy metal songwriter Adam (Thomas Bern) ignores his devoted girlfriend, Pat (Ashlyn Gere), because he's obsessed with Lily (Sylvia Summers), a seductive woman haunting his dreams. When he uses black magic to bring Lily to life, he discovers too late that she is a murderous succubus. Although Adam is held spellbound by Lily, Pat fights back against the creature when she begins slaughtering the drunken college students partying at their home.

There were no illusions that this was going to be a good movie, but I was hoping that the heavy metal aspect was going to have a little more influence than it does. I think Dreamaniac uses the fact that he writes heavy metal lyrics as an excuse to make him into black magic in order to summon the succubus. And you know Adam's way into heavy metal because he wears a Def Leppard t-shirt throughout the first act of the film.

The film opens with an epic synth score that gets pretty close to the best work that Goblin did for Dario Argento's films. Clearly, the filmmakers new it was awesome because they put it over credits on a black background without a pre-credit scare. Unfortunately, the music throughout the rest of the films sucks and is one of the many aspects that sucks all life out of the movie (well, the life that the succubus hasn't taken, at least).

I was mildly surprised at how well the dialogue was written even though none of the actors are really good enough to deliver it. There were some legitimately funny lines that got lost in the mouths of the actors as well as some funny set-ups that were screwed up by a complete lack of comic timing. The writer, Helen Robinson, did all right for herself even though she blatantly stole the cocaine sneeze from Annie Hall (what else did you steal, Helen?). But don't get me wrong. There are some pretty idiotic script elements. If the succubus was trying to tear Andy apart in his dreams, what does he think is going to happen when he summons her? And why did one of the murder victims come back as a zombie but not the others? And what's up with the (spoiler alert for a shitty movie) fake ending where Andy was actually writing a pulp novel of what we've just seen and the tag at the end of it? It makes no sense.

The biggest issue with Dreamaniac (aside from everything else) is that it doesn't go far enough. Everybody is hooking up with everyone else, yet the movie isn't remotely sexy or titillating. There's plenty of murder and mayhem, but until the end, very little blood spilled and much of it is cut away from (seriously, we don't get to see either of the times the succubus bites a penis off?). I think someone could make a very fun a vicious low-budget remake of this. It's really not far off from being a great party movie (though it's not very close, either). Some decent actors and death set-pieces are all you need.

Writing this piece made me fascinated with the director, David DeCoteau (if that's his real name). I parenthetical because the dude has at least nine aliases on his IMDB page. It looks like he uses some to traffic in the soft and hard core porn world. I'm also jealous of anyone who was brought in under Roger Corman's wing.

Finally, at first I thought Clint Howard was going to be in Dreamaniac based on Netflix' picture with the film (which is quite small):

It's only when I looked at a bigger image that I realized it's not him, which was a disappointment, but also very confusing since no one in the films looks anything like that bald killer: