Box Art Review #11
Nightmares (1983)
Directed by Joseph Sargent
Starring Emilio Estevez, Lance Henriksen, Veronica
Cartwright
I seriously love horror anthologies. From TV series like
Twilight Zone, Outer Limits, Tales from the Crypt, Masters of Horror, Tales
from the Darkside, Monsters, Night Visions, Fact or Fiction: Beyond Belief,
Dark Room, (and even kids’ shows like Are you Afraid of the Dark, Goosebumps,
Eerie Indiana, The Haunting Hour, etc) to movies like Creepshow, Cat’s Eye,
Tales from the Darkside (the movie), Body Bags, and Quicksilver Highway to name
a lot. So I’m always surprised and excited when I find one I haven’t seen yet,
especially if it’s from the 80s, like Nightmares. What really sold me, aside
from Emilio Estevez of course, was the eerie trailer and poster.
Unfortunately, as with most anthology films, it’s only about
half good, so I’m just gonna talk about the parts that are worth seeing.
Emilio Estevez plays a teenager who’s obsessed with arcade
games and has to battle a game villain in real life. It’s kind of like that
episode of Are you Afraid of the Dark where the kid gets sucked into the
pinball game. As far as scares go, it’s pretty lame, but if you’re a fan of
unintentional humor and ironic cool factors, this shit is pure 80s cheese and
it’s rad as hell. First of all, the segment has a soundtrack with a pretty
respectable punk lineup that includes FEAR and Black Flag. Plus 80s Latino
gangbangers, terrible 80s fashion choices, and laughable 80s vector graphics on
the haunted(?) arcade game. Maybe it’s just me, but Emilio Estevez is just fun
to watch in everything he does.
The very next segment is the best in the film. Lance
Henriksen plays a priest who quits his priesting duties after a crisis of faith
only to be attacked by a mysterious black truck on a desert blacktop. This
segment is totally Stephen King territory; the man writes about killer cars
fairly often with Christine being the prime example, and a disillusioned priest
is a major character in his shared universe dealie. It borrows strengthening elements
from other road horror movies like Duel and The Hitcher too. The best part of
the whole movie (spoiler alert) is when the truck just fucking explodes out of
the ground after pulling a Tremors move tunneling under the ground Bugs Bunny
style. It surprised the fuck out of me. I love this whole segment, it’s just
perfect, and the best part is that Henriksen plays it so straight and dedicated
as if this were a serious Oscar-bait drama.
Even though the other two segements aren’t anything special,
all four stories boast excellent acting and tense atmosphere. Definitely check
this out if you’re into anthologies.
The Cover
The Nightmares box art is sort of a rarity in that what’s on
the cover is actually in the movie.
Check this trailer out where they reproduce the effect on
the cover (or maybe it’s vice versa).
Just wanna say, that dude’s voiceover rules; he’s already
got the deep, guttural creeper voice, but then they add on some kind of voice
effect that makes it sound like he’s talking to you from another dimension that
exists entirely under murky black water. Yeah. It rules.
So anyway, the cover, you got your vast desert wasteland lit
by a neon purple light somehow which is cool, and those eyes are spooky, sure,
but those hands are what really sell it. The speedlines around the fingers and
the distance between the hands and the eyes allude that this nightmare creature
is reaching across the vast wasteland to fuck your shit up. It’s really cool,
it’s really simple, and it’s a really clever way of marketing the idea of a
nightmare. Also, you gotta love the parallel between the cracks on the ground
and the lightening in the sky.
Really though, the best part about the whole package is the
tagline. I love how the title is centered (well, mostly) and then beneath it
the ellipses implies that you were just reading the beginning of a sentence up
there. …Is this year’s sleeper. is kinda presumptuous, especially given the
film’s relative obscurity even in horror circles, but it’s also a great pun .
The Movie:4/5 (Mostly for Emilio)
The Cover:4/5
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