I would never would want to be a psychic and want to go into dreams from people I work with. Haven't seen this since the 90s. Got to love the 80s Synthesizer score. Tubi has this listed as a horror movie but it's more of a suspense thriller with a little horror I guess. I do love me some Max Con Sydow. Definitely pushing the PG-13 rating. Kinda cool practical effects on certain scenes . Interesting concept of Dennis Quaid being psychic and going into people nightmares to help them sleep. It's a 5.3/10 just ok movie. Definitely the poster is so misleading this isn't a knock off Indiana Jones movie at all.

Extra marks for some rather bold statements made here. Despite the somewhat schlocky exterior. An 'if you know, you know' type of thing. If you don't, this probably won't mean much to you.

Nightmare on Elm Street as an action film. Not as good but fun.

How do audiences give this a rotten score? So innovative for its time. Dreamscape walked so Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Inception could run!

I grew up watching this on a VCR in the ‘80's. Very fun underrated sci fi thriller. Long before the Matrix, this film came up about entering a dream world, and if you die there, you die for real. The dream sequences are so 80's special effects and exciting, but few and far in between. But the rest of the film comes with a great story involving corrupt governments using this technology and Dennis Quaid fighting to expose it. Definitely worth watching for a fun 80's night if you've never seen it.

Based on an outline that Roger Zelazny wrote, his novella "He Who Shapes" and the novel The Dream Master, this wasn't made with any other input from the author. At least he got paid! The story is credited to David Loughery, who wrote the fifth Star Trek and I still wonder why God needs a starship. The script is from Chuck Russell, who would go on to make A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors and The Blob. Director Joseph Ruben made The Pom Pom Girls, The Stepfather, The Good Son and Sleeping With the Enemy. He knows how to make entertaining trash and I say that in the kindest of ways. Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) might be a psychic, but he doesn't want tested any more. Not after all the poking and prodding in his youth by Dr. Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow). But when Novotny saves him from some low level goons who want to use Gardner's psychic powers, he starts listening to how he's now involved in government-funded psychic research. What really gets Alex on board is one look at Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw). The goal is to send people into the dreamscape. There's some exposition about the Senoi natives of Malaysia thinking that the dream world is as real as our own and you know me, I'm always here for movie BS. Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly) is the only person who has entered the dreamscape, but he's a daddy and old lady murdering maniac, so luckily Alex can get in and help little kids get over their bad dreams. Horror novelist Charlie Prince (George Wendt) — who wrote a book called Stab, so is this Scream universe canon? — tells Alex that he's just a weapon to be used by Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer) to kill the President (Eddie Albert) and preserve the military industrial complex. Yeah, a lot happens. The end of this movie is wild. Alex is inside the President's post-nuclear terror dream, as mutants hunt the President and Tommy Ray has nunchuks and can also be a snake man before Alex takes the form of Tommy's dad, tells the final boss that he loves him and then the leader of the free world stabs the bad guy from behind, killing him, because even the most hopeful of Presidents still ordered drone strikes. Then our hero goes into Blair's dream and straight up kills him so he can be with Kate Capshaw. The second PG-13 movie ever released — after Red Dawn — this is also the second movie that Kate Capshaw would be in in 1984 where a man's heart is ripped out of his chest. You know, I love this goofy movie. The effects are dated, there's fog everywhere and the poster is totally trying to make you think Raiders of the Lost Ark. It's one of the first movies I ever rented and watching it again, it made me so happy knowing that I can just put it on at any time.

I will definitely give this movie some points on Originality, but the story is very average. The special effects are very outdated. Dennis Quaid is not a good actor and this movie shows off those talents. Max Von Sydow and Christopher Plummer help keep this movie together, but this is not a must see movie from the 80's.

Christopher Plummer is a very good at being bad. In the 1984 film, Dreamscape, Plummer is Bob Blair, the head of a covert intelligence agency. He's also the head of a project where talented psychics enter other people's dreams to help them confront their worst nightmares. The late Max Von Sydow and Kate Capshaw are part of the project. They recruit Dennis Quaid's Alex Gardner. Quaid spends a lot of time running in the film. There's a chase scene where Quaid is running from agents. He grabs a dirt bike and rides across a horse race track. David Patrick Kelly from The Warriors, among other roles, is pretty cold as Plummer's main enforcer. He's like a psychic Oddjob from Goldfinger. The special effects are all '80's - they're dated. The cast is quite talented. There are a few leaps in logic, but the story is pretty decent.

Great cast in a low budget movie that's not worth the price of admission unfortunately.

Between 2.5 and 3 stars. It has a powerful idea, but only scractches it (in opposition to whcih, years later, Inception will do)

Underrated genre bending 80s movie with a young Dennis Quaid in full form playing his usual smirky good guy role that made his fortune throughout the decade. Stellar cast including Max von Sydow and Kate Capshaw, but is David Patrick Kelly performance as murderous villain and his interplay with Quaid that really shines in the movie. Joseph Ruben directs with capable hand and handles surprisingly well a crowded plot line that mixes elements of sci fi-horror and action thriller with a comedic vibe. Imagine a very successful mix of David Cronenberger and Chris Columbus. Such efforts allow the self-indulgence of the special effects to get a pass.

An 80's journey into the psyche and imagination. Completely B-movie material but fun. Not as fun as They Live! And probably won't hold the attention of a millennial or GenY. But maybe nostalgic for GenX who enjoyed the campy 80s.

Dreamscape: 5 out of 10: Not to be confused with Innerspace (The one with Martin Short) Dreamscape has Dennis Quaid as a psychic mind reading never do well kidnaped by a government agency to work in their dream program. A great cast and premise are let down by a poor script and story as well as some underwhelming action beats. The Good: The cast here is great across the board. Max von Sydow and Christopher Plummer? Why you are just one, Christopher Lee, away from a trifecta of awesome. Dennis Quaid is at maximum smirk level, Kate Capshaw is surprisingly sexy and you even have George Wendt in a cameo of sorts. The premise of being able to enter peoples dreams and change their minds or fix their psychosis is a fun one that has been revisited over the years by better properties. (Or even the same year by Nightmare on Elm Street.) The Bad: All movie universes have rules. The rules can change throughout the movie as a major plot point (See The Matrix) but overall good stories work within the rule set that they themselves set up. Dreamscape is all over the place. It is established Dennis Quaidâ(TM)s character is psychic which allows him to enter other peoples dreams. Can he also see the future? The movie is unclear. Obviously reading peoples minds would not help him win money at the horse track. Yet the film sets him up as doing just that. (Poker player is a much more obvious choice.) They also have him being chased by track people for I assume winning too much which makes zero sense if you have any inkling about how betting at a large state-run horse track works. On the other hand, if he can see into the future why would he make the idiotic choices that he does? Câ(TM)mon to think of it if he can read minds why doesnâ(TM)t he realize who the bad guys are well before the audience. (In all fairness you donâ(TM)t hire David Patrick (Warriors, come out to play-i-ay.) Kelly to be a good guy. Can you die in a dream? The entire plot revolves around a planned assassination during a dream but the opening dream sequences clearly show that you are not killed in a dream. The movie seemingly changes its own rules halfway through. The Ugly: What is Christopher Plummerâ(TM)s endgame in this thing. Here has a tool to enter peoples minds and change the way they think (Inception) and instead he is thinking all Freddy Kruger complete with claymation snake monster. Even if he succeeded one can clearly see it would not work out the way he wanted it to. In Conclusion: Great cast basically wasted on tepid sci-fi premise. Special effects are of the time so I can excuse them but the action sequences wouldnâ(TM)t be out of place in a lighthearted Quincy episode. The charisma of the leads isnâ(TM)t enough to carry the tepid romance and the excellent chops of the bad guys are helpless against their lame-brained scheme. Passable curiosity piece and time capsule but it never really rises above its own averageness. Dreamscape (Rifftrax edition): 4 out of 10: Janet Varney and Cole Stratton guest star as riffers and it does not work out well. Dreamscape provides plenty of material for a really good riff, unfortunately, our guest riffers leave most of it on the table. What they do bring to the table is some very low hanging fruit punctuated by lots of silence. There is also seemingly no real connection or banter between the two where one feels they recorded their riffs separately. Honestly, they add nothing to the movie and are at best a distraction.

Thinly written characters with no personal problems outside the plot. No real antagonist for most of the movie, so the absence of conflict just causes the story to sag. Then the finale goes on forever.

Still interesting, though the special effects are obviously not up-to-date

This is one of those 80s movies I watched on VHS over and over again and dearly loved. Dennis Quaid plays a cocky young psychic who's recruited for a scientific study to enter into the dreams of another person. Their hope is to assist people experiencing traumatic nightmares by entering into their dream and helping them overcome whatever it is that is plaguing them. One such dream is a young boy experiencing nightmares about a "Snake Man" tying to kill him. According to this film's "rules," if you die in a dream, you die in real life. One psychic was already "lost" after going into the boy's dream. That sequence is one that was burned itself into my own young brain and was quite scary back in the day. Watching it now, it's still nicely scary and I also very much enjoyed the German Expressionist influenced production design elements of the nightmare sequence, along with the awesomely retro claymation Snake Man. But the main plot is about the president of the United States having nightmares about ending the world with nuclear war and those nightmares are influencing his real-life decisions. Now enter another cocky young psychic, an excellent David Patrick Kelly, who is (SPOILER ALERT) being sent by an evil Christopher Plummer into the dreams of the president and kill him, so it's up to Quaid to stop him. The battle between Quaid and Kelly in a surreal dream world remains suspenseful, exciting, and visually interesting, even if the special effects are wildly dated. "Dreamscape" was directed by underrated director Joseph Ruben, who also directed underrated thrillers like "The Stepfather" and "True Believer," and it was co-written by Ruben and Chuck Russell ("Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors" and "The Mask"), so it's a smart talented group of filmmakers behind the camera. Also behind the camera is cinematographer Brian Tufano, who'd previously shot "Quadrophenia" who would later go on to shoot on films like "Trainspotting" and "Shallow Grave." Top all that off with a surprisingly strong supporting cast that includes Max von Sydow, Eddie Albert as the president, Kate Capshaw, George Wendt, Larry Gelman, Peter Jason, and Chris Mulkey, along with a fun synthesizer heavy score by Maurice Jarre, and you get a highly enjoyably retro 80s sci-fi film that's pretty hard to resist.

A little dated and it wasn't as amazing as I expected it to be, but a captivating film with an interesting concept nonetheless. (First and only viewing - 7/21/2018)

Somehow...this was pretty good...

Dreamscape is a disappointing film. It is about to help people who experience recurring nightmares. Dennis Quad and Kate Capshaw give horrible performances. The screenplay is badly written. Joseph Ruben did a horrible job directing this movie. I was not impressed with this motion picture.

I wasn't too impressed with the film. its about a psychic who gets involved with a project to get inside of people's dreams and he uses his power mostly for good. but the other psychic is evil and he uses his power to help a bunch of government dicks try to kill the president. but the good guy gets in the presidents dream and saves him. it probably sounds better than it is because i was fairly bored watching it and i barely made it til the end.