Welcome back to the ROX-TV website. As always, we appreciate you tuning in to see what we’ve been up to. Mostly we’ve been following the shockwave from HEXXX’s “Tales of a Cursed G” release and like I anticipated, the album overshot the hype and then some. I’m not kidding, it’s a great rap album period. The video drop (which kicked off on 8-9) on YouTube has been felt and the people are responding. The track, which features Shaggy 2 Dope from the Insane Clown Posse is an instant classic that will be heard for years to come. It’s been up on YouTube for about 3 weeks now and will be shattering 100,000 views in the next few days. A hundred thousand homies can’t be wrong. If you haven’t watched the video…do that. If you haven’t purchased the album…do that. If you haven’t got off your dead ass and seen HEXXX at a show…I bet you will regret it someday. Me? I’m covered homie. I’ve seen him perform at Chicano Fest 1, The Outpost Wicked Warlords tour, caught him as a surprise guest at Hallowicked in Detroit, Juggalohio, the Gathering of the Juggalos, and even at the Token Lounge in Westland. Every show has been on point, and I’ve never walked away with anything but good memories. But the deal with memories is that you have to make them. You can’t look at pictures from a show you went to in 2023, if you didn’t go. Sure, not going in the moment sucks a little…but the real pain of regret is when you said “no thanks” and some time pours in like it always does…eventually…someday…you will be bummed out. Don’t experience regret for a life unlived, you can start any time. There is no need to surrender to the plainer sides of life, at least not just yet. Get out there. It’s worth it.

So anyway, after veering into the weeds because I can’t see the road either, let’s keep moving. Tonight, we were going to talk about one of the coolest movies most people have never seen. The 1980’s immortal nightmare called “Dreamscape“. The movie was amazing and has lived on throughout the decades, refusing to be forgotten, because of the depth and vision the movie kicked in. I call it a horror movie, but it has more angles than that. At times, there is some cheap five and dime romance for the ladies (or whoever), but the tense moments, strange action sequences, and a really great cast all meld together to form an unforgettable eighties movie. It’s stuck with me since I was a kid. That’s the reason I’m writing about it today. Some items have that superpower ability to etch into our minds or leave an impression so strong, it never fades away or vanishes. That’s what movies like “Dreamscape” and Phantasm” hold for me. These movies were short on production cash, long on vision, and are a testament to what can be done with some innovation. It’s that age old saying…”thinking outside the box” that has earned both of those movies a seat in the movie theatre of destiny. I’m cool with that. So, as is customary around the ROX-TV field of operation…I will smoke copious amounts of ganja while simultaneously trying to watch and write about a movie. It sounds like a bad idea from the get-go, but we seldom pass on a worthy challenge…so let’s jump right in and fuck shit up. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give to you…my brain waves in writing…now on with the movie!

Dreamscape

Released: August 15th, 1984

Cost to create: Six million dollars

Return: Twelve million dollars at the box office

Cast: Dennis Quaid, Max von Sydow, Kate Capshaw, David Patrick Kelly

Run time: One hour, thirty-nine minutes

 

Before I get started there is just something I have to comment on. I have always understood that this movie was a little wonky as far as what it was trying to be. Was this an action film? Kind of I guess, there are chase scenes, fights, and some fast moving shit…so I suppose it could be an “action” film. But…there are times when it feels like a cheesy comedy wrapped up in a cheap suit. The laughs and sexual innuendos are humorous mostly, but definitely dated as far as how men and women used to hit on each other and what not. Is this movie a comedy? Not exactly. The romance bit is viable and shows up throughout the movie…but probably not enough to call it a “chick flick”. I’ve heard Sci-Fi tossed around a time or two…and I guess all I can say is maybe.

“How else do you expect me to warm up the old whammy”

If you look up the definition of “sci-fi” it basically tells you it’s a “speculative fiction…that deals with imaginative and futuristic ideas pertaining to technology and advanced science” or something along those lines. I didn’t see it at first, but after reading that little blurb from the oracle internet…I do suppose there are some sci-fi elements at play here. The whole gig with investigating and inserting a second party into someone else’s dream would meet that requirement. The dream lab or whatever the good doctor calls it, looks like something out of the future (even if the actual function seems bizarre). For some reason in this exact moment, I feel like the dream lab has some similarities in design or atmosphere in relation to “The Lawnmower Man” (Author’s Note: The Lawnmower Man was a weird trip that came out in 1992 and featured a movie, which is oddly similiar to Dreamscape in that it was a little difficult to classify. I think Dreamscape wins out of these two for sure, but whatever blurp memory I just had…it was only a sliver…and I’m unsure at the moment how the movies linked in my mind. I think it was the imagery of the dream lab chairs and perhaps when the Lawnmower Man goes digital? Could be the dope talking)

So anyway, yes…this movie is a bit hard to classify. Fuck man, look at the different posters they featured during the releases. Each one looks like a different movie, with one of them really shamelessly looking like the cover poster for “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”. The poster with the president’s wife running, the one with the giant Cobra overhead…that looks like it could be a poster for some low budget non-descript karate movie. I can see it. Perhaps a bizarre number called “The Final Countdown” and it could be about illegal tiny car racing in the mountains. Whatever the case, they had too many creative designers on the project. There is nothing wrong with settling for one good image and shipping it. I mean hell, it’s a poster, what else was expected? The whole movie in still frames. No.

So, from the get-go, this movie is odd because of its many facets and avenues that all seem to meet in the middle. The middle is represented as Alex. Does that make sense? Shit that shouldn’t touch is doing so because Alex is fucking around with lots of levers. The man frequents the track quite a bit, betting on the ponies and using his magical powers to pick the winner. Not a bad set up if you ask me. But it gets complicated quickly. It turns out that Alex was a top notch mental/physic ninja when he was a teenager. He started working with Dr. Novotny but after fleeing the program and never sending word…Dr. Novotny’s research was definitely screwed over. Alex and Novotny are eventually reunited, with the help of another odd street…the federal government. It turns out that the work Novotny had been doing was deemed valuable by National Intelligence. The trick was neat and the feds wanted to use it against the president. Talk about a twisting story line. In between all that, Alex finds time to help a little boy kill a monster, befriend an odd ball writer turned hack journalist…the dude from Cheers…what’s his name? He battles and out wits the bookies at the track, who strangely enough all become friends towards the end of the movie, provided that Alex fixes a few races for the Irish thug. He wants winners, Alex agrees, and then they team up to obstruct agents of the government. There is the ongoing love flirt thing happening during this time with Kate Capshaw aka Jane DeVries. The track underworld touches the dream clinic, which touches the White House and the government. This movie makes for some interesting bedfellows anyway.

The movie starts out with this “dreamy” music and sound. It’s like you’re going to sleep or just waking up I guess. Next, the viewer is transported to a horrific intro. The President of the United States is having a nightmare about nuclear war with Russia. This movie dropped during the final chapters of the cold war with Russia, so that is right on the money for the climate of the country in 1984. As with all things from that time period, the time was extended on everything because people had attention spans back then. I will say this about the opening scene. This scene has stuck with me my entire life, probably due to my age and the presentation I witnessed. It was heavy imagery for sure. Nuclear War was a very real threat in the 1980’s. It had only been a few decades since the nuclear crisis with Cuba and Russia. The best boy’s cartoon from that time was “G.I. JOE”. The best toys at Toys-R-Us were guns. Do you think the United States was waiting to see if shit was going to get real? No. America was mobilizing for war, even if it was veiled as entertainment for children. I remember as a kid having plastic AK47’s and M16’s that looked like the real thing. They were plastic, but from ten feet in the dark, you couldn’t tell. A lot of liquor stores in the 1980’s got emptied with nothing more than a three-dollar toy from Toys-R-Us. Go figure.

The movie starts out at the track and Alex is having his troubles. This sequence ultimately sets into motion, a chain of events that will deliver Alex from the racetrack to the very top of national security. If Alex hadn’t been a greedy dick and split a cut with the guys who ran the track, he wouldn’t have had to run from them, pissing them off, which sent two thugs over to fuck him up. Alex coming out of the condo, sees the ass kicking coming down the street and suddenly jumps into a car with two undercover agents posing as college “people”. Alex’s fate is locked in at that point, altering his life forever. Maybe that was the plan all along though. You’d have to consult the Great Architect. He didn’t want to pay, so he had to go. And we really don’t know how this story truly ends up.

I think some of the highlights from this film are when Alex gets to the dream clinic. He starts taking an interest in a kid suffering from nightmares at the clinic. This sets up a scary encounter with the kid’s imagination. The fucking Snakeman is the real deal here, and I can’t say enough about the set builders. The house is off centered, the windows and doors are all comical in nature. Exaggerated just like in a dream…it’s a nice touch. I think when Alex and the kid start off for the wooden staircase to nowhere…that hits another special point for me. The imagery of this scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. Even today, when those scenes happen, I can’t look away. Another high point of the film is David Patrick Kelly’s appearance as Tommy Ray Glatman. You may remember him from a little movie from the 1970’s called the “Warriors”. He was the guy who played Luther, the guy who shot Cyrus and blamed the Warriors. It was this devilish bastard. The same guy was also born in Detroit and graduated Cum laude from Detroit Mercy. I’ve been a Warriors worshiper since I was a kid, and I didn’t know the main bad guy was a local Detroiter. Go figure. The character “Tommy Ray” is an evil one, with a bizarre interest in karate, martial arts, and killing people in their dreams. Alex and Tommy never really get along because both of them were their own direct competition (see how that works, the anger and pushback is almost always coming from competition). 

Natural enemies sharing one roof…how long before that shit falls apart? About forty minutes or so. Anyways, the final showdown between Alex and Tommy is as good as it gets. The movie that wasn’t sure if it was an action flick, a romance, a comedy, a sci-fi, or a porno…finally wraps up in grand fashion. Alex wins the day and gets the girl. The bad guy is dead and there is nothing more to do…or is there. The last scenes show Alex and Jane boarding a train and getting the hell out of dodge. The only problem is they both notice the ticket collector from one of the dreams they shared while chasing after each other. Alex goes dirty and enters Janes dream, that’s when this cat showed up. So now, the movie is ending and this guy is back again. It really begs to question, who or what is that entity…that can show up in the dream world or the real world? The love birds brush it all off, but I can’t help but sit here and wonder. Who the fuck was that guy? I’m sure if I smoked enough hash, I will get to the bottom of it and when I can articulate that into useable words…I will do so. Thanks for tuning in to this drifting article, where the true purpose is not always known, but chased after just the same.

 

Good Night Moon…

Mike Shepard

Where the Wild Things Are