Dream No Evil (1970) User Reviews

Odd regional horror existing in its own plane of reality

[yourmotheratemydog715 · 6/10 · 29 December 2020]

DREAM NO EVIL is the perfect example of regional, independent features being far more interesting than Hollywood films from the same age. When studios and producer moguls get involved in a film, they ask questions. "Where are these people? How does any of this advance the plot? Why are they doing an Irish jig now?"

DREAM NO EVIL doesn't want to answer those questions, steadfastly refuses to, and is all the more interesting because of it. Notice I say "more interesting" and not "better": this misses the majority of shots it takes, the narration eviscerates the mood, and the shots and performance are stilted. But an undeniable charm still radiates, as long as you're into this kind of thing.

Could work as the B-side of LET'S SCARE JESSICA TO DEATH or MESSIAH OF EVIL for a double feature of outside-reality Americana horror.

I dream of daddy with the bright red scythe.

[BA_Harrison · 6/10 · 24 July 2019]

At the centre of Dream No Evil there is a fairly simple story about psychosis, in which the main character, Grace MacDonald (played as an adult by sexy redhead Brooke Mills) conjures up a make-believe world in which she is reunited with her long-lost father. It's the off-beat manner in which writer/director John Hayes tells his tale that makes the film so unique and compelling.

Dream No Evil opens with Grace as a young child in an orphanage, convinced that one day her daddy will come and take her away. He never does, and Grace grows up to become a mentally fragile young woman working as an assistant to preacher Rev. Paul Jessie Bundy (Michael Pataki) in his circus-style roadshow, and engaged to Jessie's brother, Dr. Patrick Bundy (Paul Prokop). When Grace gets a call from an undertaker/pimp for elderly hookers (Marc Lawrence), telling her that he has found her father, she drives to the funeral parlor/brothel, where she sees her daddy's corpse. No sooner has Grace wished that her old man was still alive, and up he hops off the slab to kill the mortician.

Grace leaves Jessie's travelling show to live with her father (Edmond O'Brien) on a ranch, but dear old daddy's murderous urges prevent her from finding happiness. Jessie gets his head bashed in when he tries to seduce Grace and local cop Sheriff Mike Pender (William Guhl) is impaled by a scythe (a hilariously bad scene). As events unfold, a voice-over makes it abundantly clear that it is Grace who is the real killer. When Patrick turns up to tell Grace that he's leaving her for his co-worker Shirley (Donna Anders), the loopy lass goes crazy with an axe.

There's no gore to speak of in this horror oddity (or nudity for that matter), and the performances are merely adequate (albeit suitably strange), but Hayes' bizarre directorial style and the film's occasional surreality make it required viewing for fans of psychotronic movies: Grace's panty-flashing Irish jig is a marvel to behold, and is followed by one of the strangest slow-motion scenes I have ever witnessed. Grace's bedroom transformation comes out of the blue and Shirley's bloody roast duck supper is peculiar to say the least. While I would hesitate to call Dream No Evil a good film, I would definitely call it an interesting one. Give it a go: you might like it.

"Um, Shirley, your duck is bleeding very badly."

[ebeckstr-1 · 6/10 · 15 October 2021]

If David Byrne made a movie combining elements of European art cinema, Southern Gothic, a dash of Polansky, principles of Bertolt Brecht's estrangement effect, Eraserhead, and Irish Ceili Dancing, it would be this movie. It has to be seen to be believed. And be seen it must. I'm not kidding. You have to see this movie. Tubi is your friend.

Dream No Evil is made with such earnestness that you can't help but admire it. It's not a horror movie so much as a psychological drama with psychokiller elements (speaking of David Byrne). If you are a fan of bizarre, surreal, or just wackadoodle cinema, put this one at the top of your list. I understand the negative reviews, but if you don't take it too seriously this is a very entertaining movie.

Flawed but definitely worth a look

[lazarillo · 15 September 2008]

A young girl grows up in an orphanage, always insistently believing that her father will someday come and get her. She's eventually adopted and as a young adult goes to work in the circus-like act of her revivalist preacher foster brother (Michael Pataki). She dons a skimpy costume and does a dive off a high platform, supposedly representing the fall into hell. While the good preacher/foster brother has a little bit of a thing for her (located in his pants), she also has a boyfriend, a local sawbones. But she refuses to sleep with him, prompting him to finally give into the temptation of a pretty female medical student. In one town the revivalist act comes to, she hears news of her father. But after going to see the the local pimp/town mortician (don't ask) played by Marc Lawrence, she arrives to find her father (Edmond O'Brien) dead on a mortician's slab. She cries and wishes him back to life, and he suddenly arises and murders the mortician. Later she ends up living with her (dead?)father in a deserted house on the outskirts of town (where she does bizarre Irish jigs why he plays the squeezebox to entertain the occasional visitor). Unfortunately, his murderous ways also continue.

This movie is a lot like "Toys Are Not for Children" or the director John Hayes' own "Baby Rosemary" (which was basically an urban XXX version of this PG-rated rural Gothic film). Like those movies, it's a surprisingly touching film of a young girl's longing for an absent father that results in adult sexual dysfunction and eventually outright psychosis. There's obviously something wrong with the girl--she sees her room in the abandoned house as being warmly decorated with a canopy bed, for instance, when in reality it's a bleak and barren room with only a filthy mattress. This might be more of a "Repulsion" type film than a undead type film. I'm really not ruining anything saying this, however, because the film itself includes an annoying voice-of-god narrator who ruins ANY mystery or suspense by explaining EVERYTHING for the viewer. This is the one crippling flaw in what is otherwise a pretty good film.

Michael Pataki was a regular in John Hayes' films including his best one, "Grave of the Vampire". O'Brien and Lawrence were long-time character actors (the latter ironically later directed and starred with his own real-life daughter in "Pigs", a similarly downbeat horror film about a sexually dysfunctional and murderous father-daughter pair). As for Hayes, there is a great interview and retrospective of the career of this obscure but interesting 70's low-budget auteur in British writer Stephen Thrower's excellent tome "Nightmare USA". This is a flawed film, but still definitely worth a look.

Watchable

[wilburscott · 3/10 · 14 June 2002]

This was one weird film. I recall seeing it on late-night TV as a kid, and then I rented it when I was in college. At least there are some decent actors in the cast (including Lawrence, who's slimier than a sack of snails). Worth a look on a slow evening.

Not What Dreams Are Made Of

[jacobconnelly-47681 · 4/10 · 11 September 2019]

I pride myself in being able to sit through some pretty awful movies. To me, low budget doesn't always equal garbage. There are a lot of hidden diamonds on the rough out there that the world passed by because they weren't marketed well or never got solid distribution. I'd hoped Dream No Evil would be one of those movies, but it's anything but. It's a tedious, slow journey into absolute nothingness.

A young orphan girl who suffers from bad dreams is eventually adopted, but she still longs to, one day, meet her real father. She grows up and becomes a flamboyant preacher's assistant in their church act which seems much more circus than the churches I've attended. She falls for a guy, she meets her real father, and then she goes insane and starts chasing people with an axe in the last 5 minutes of the film.

There's not a lot of logical story progression in Dream No Evil. There's an odd, fairy tale-esque voice over throughout that seems to have been added to help better explain what the hell is going on, but it's about as useful as buying a hooker for a nun. Character motivations come and go and you never know why anyone is doing anything.

I'm sad to report that Dream No Evil is a film better left buried.

Watch No Rubbish

[Coventry · 3/10 · 18 February 2010]

"Dream No Evil" is a very odd and understandably obscure early 70's shocker that never really seems to kick-start. It's a combination of confusing story lines, lack of excitement, unappealing characters and really low-budgeted production values. Grace is searching for her father and this is slowly becoming more than an obsession. As a child in the orphanage already, she was screaming "Daddy!" in her sleep, much to the annoyance of the nuns in charge. As a grown up but heavily catholic girl, she found the ideal way to seek her father. Grace and her future brother-in-low run a traveling church/circus. I kid you not, it's a church AND a circus in ONE! Here's how that works: the brother-in-law preaches the word of God to a bunch of deeply religious villagers and, in order to literally demonstrate his "bad people descend to hell", Grace dives down from a great height. All this serves exclusively to illustrate that you shouldn't give in to sins like lust and premarital sex. That's awesome! Unfortunately, that's about the only awesome thing about "Dream no Evil". At the same time, this movie also contains, hands down, THE most boring death sequence ever filmed; when the undertakes gets stabbed in the back in the mortuary. First, it takes him multiple long seconds to realize he has been stabbed. Then he *slowly* backs up against the wall, stands there for a few seconds again, only to move towards a chair and sit at a table. Then, yet another few seconds later, he pulls a jar full of embalming fluid over his clothing and finally drops dead on the floor! Yay! How can you have any hope to have stumbled upon a hidden 70's exploitation gem if even the murder sequences are dull and tedious like this? "Dream No Evil" is easily one of the most pointless films I ever sat through, regardless of the obvious atmospheric and creepy potential. Grace finds her daddy, eventually, and he turns out to be an aggressive tyrant. Or is he? Maybe it's all just a dream? Who cares, seriously? There's a narrator with a very sleep- inducing voice trying to talk into the plot and structure, without success I may add.

Your duck is bleeding really badly.

[melloyellobiafra · 7/10 · 25 March 2009]

The DVD of this movie that was released as part of the Psychotronica collection encourages you to mock this movie. And heck you can mock it if you want to, I'm not here to judge how you view movies. I am here however, to tell you whether or not I liked it and why.

So yeah, I liked this movie. Why? Well, Brooke Mills is worth watching no matter what she is doing for one. What she's doing here is giving it her all to play a seriously screwed up woman in search of her father. Good stuff indeed.

Another reason I enjoyed this flick is that it is one of those low budget wonders where everything seems to take place in some weird uncharted part of America where everything is just a little off. Some people call that schlock, I call it home.

So watch Dream No Evil or don't, it makes no difference to me. If you do watch it I think you'll like it.

Oh Gahwd

[gpeltz · 7/10 · 4 April 2020]

Yes Spoiler Alert down the road. Unexpected, to be sure, An off screen narrator fills in the blanks connecting this phantasmagoria of possible situations, running through the mind of a young lady coming of age. I was expecting, (and hoping for exploitation) and got a touch of it. and more. It had the feel of the early seventies; A certain "Russ Meyer" brand of spontaneity, as evident in his 1975 movie, "Supervixens", a story that could lead anywhere. This movie Directed by John Hayes who also wrote it. was fun viewing as it shifted narrative directions. It was made with care, It was well shot and edited. The ever beautiful Brooke Mills is easy on the eyes. Edmond O'Brien provides a strong male lead, in an otherwise quirky cast. It is, after all, in the dream world of a disturbed young lady. It is the blending of reality and dream world that makes this one more intriguing as it progresses. The blood never looks like blood. a welcome imaginative touch. A fun waste of time for the home bound viewer. Seven out of Ten "Let Daddy take care of it" Stars.

An offbeat horror mood piece

[Woodyanders · 8/10 · 30 May 2008]

Troubled young Grace MacDonald (well played by ravishing redhead Brooke Mills) works as an assistant for itinerant carnie faith healer preacher Reverend Jesse Bundy (essayed with tremendous rip-snorting gusto by Michael Pataki) and can't get over her obsession with finding her long lost father. Grace eventually runs across her pop Timothy MacDonald (a fine, robust performance by Edmond O'Brien), but he turns out to be crazy, overprotective and dangerous. Or is Grace just imagining that her dad is still alive? Writer/director John Hayes relates the compellingly quirky story at a leisurely pace and does an expert job of creating and maintaining a creepy, surreal, dreamlike atmosphere. Paul Hipp's bright, lush cinematography and Jaime Mendoza-Nava's spooky, melancholy score further enhance the pervasive mood of abstract eeriness. Moreover, there's nice supporting performances by Paul Prokop as Grace's kindly, concerned fiancé Dr. Patrick Bundy, Marc Lawrence as a sinister undertaker who works as a pimp on the side, and Arthur Franz as a helpful psychiatrist. Despite a heavy languid air and the often murky plot (a grimly sober narrator occasionally chimes in to give the oblique story some much-needed coherence), this intriguingly ambiguous picture somehow manages to cast a strangely hypnotic spell on the viewer. An interesting oddity.

Evangelists, high-dives, and daddy issues in the Inland Empire

[drownsoda90 · 7/10 · 27 December 2021]

"Dream No Evil" focuses on Grace, a woman who was orphaned as a child and adopted by a traveling circus/Evangelist act. Grace harbors a deep yearning to find her birth father, with whom she is deeply obsessed. Her fixation on finding her biological father leads her into an increasingly grim situation.

While it's clear that "Dream No Evil" has taken many notes from "Psycho," it is far more bizarre than Hitchcock's film could have dreamed of being. This low-budget effort is shot in a style reminiscent of 1970s TV movies, and it boasts a significant amount of atmospheric, dusty Inland Empire desert locales that are strangely captivating. Set against them are bizarre characters doing bizarre things, such as the lead, Grace, jumping from a high-dive as part of her adopted family's religious circus act, or hiding out in an abandoned farmhouse and regressing to her childhood self.

Befitting its title, "Dream No Evil" is in fact dreamlike--nightmarish, even at times. Screenplay-wise, the film is fairly straightforward, and the twist can be seen from a mile away (it is all very neatly tied together in the end, in a similarly didactic "Psycho"-esque way), but it is still fairly watchable despite this. While it is not high art, "Dream No Evil" is a minor but intriguing oddity. It certainly won't shock, but it will captivate with its weirdness. 7/10.

70s psychological thriller.

[boundlaw · 6/10 · 12 September 2022]

I wanted to like this film more than I did. Sadly, the grindhouse filmmaking missed more opportunities than it took.

Brooke Mills carries this little film with her mesmerizing beauty. I simply could not take my eyes off her. Her performance is good, as is that of Edmond O'Brien as her father. But although the basics of a decent story are there, the script left so little to work with that they relied upon her mere presence onscreen. Great as that may be, it simply is not enough.

This film is a fun diversion and time capsule of the early 70s. Enjoy it for what it is, and try to overlook a weak script and journeyman directing that failed to deliver on what could have been.

Pure strangeness

[BandSAboutMovies · 8/10 · 27 June 2019]

Arrow Video's American Horror Project is dedicated to "its mission to unearth the very best in weird and wonderful horror obscura from the golden age of US independent genre moviemaking." The second volume - the first had Malatesta's Carnival of Blood, The Witch Who Came from the Sea and The Premonition - lives up to that bold challenge.

John Hayes began his career producing and directing short subjects, even getting nominated for an Academy Award for 1959's The Kiss. In addition to those roles, he often wrote his own films and occasionally appeared as an actor in movies like The Shaggy D.A. and his own End of the World.

After his initial full-length movie, The Grass Eater, he made Five Minutes to Love, a Rue McClanahan (yes, from The Golden Girls) starring film all about Poochie, a woman who lives in a junkyard. Also known as Hollywood After Dark, it was picked up by exploitation godfather Kroger Babb. He also directed Jailbait Babysitter and several adult films, such as Pleasure Zone and Hot Lunch.

Hayes is probably best known for two movies he made in 1974: Grave of the Vampire and Garden of the Dead. Hopefully, people will soon add this film to that list, as I absolutely loved it.

Grace (Brooke Mills, The Big Doll House, The Student Teachers) grew up in an orphanage where she dreamed of the day her father would return, forever living outside the other children around her. When she grows up, she goes to work with her adopted foster brother Rev. Paul Jessie Bundy (Michael Pataki, amazing as always), who has turned his father's church into a circus. For her part, she wears a sexy costume before jumping off a high platform into water to symbolize Satan falling into Hell. He also uses her to faith heal others - indeed, the movie was made as The Faith Healer - while hiding his lust for her.

She's already dating their other foster brother, Dr. Patrick Bundy, yet refuses to have sex with him. He gives up and starts dating another medical student. If this seems strange that brothers are at war over their sister, well, stay tuned.

The church makes it to a town where she hears word of her father (Edmond O'Brien, who started his career as a magician trained by next door neighbor Houdini before appearing in plays at Orson Welles' Mercury Theater and films like The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Seven Days In May and The Wild Bunch). This brings her to the combination funeral home/brothel of an undertaker (Marc Lawrence, who was in a ton of movies, but I'll always think of him as being in Night Train to Terror) who has her father dead on his mortuary slab. She wishes him back to life and he rises to murder the undertaker in a completely frightening scene that creates one of several breaks in the film with reality.

The one issue I have with the film is that its narrator reveals the big twist early. The destroyed house on the edge of town that Grace lives in isn't the comfortable home that's in her mind and her father doesn't exist. Who knows what the people who came there to see her dance to his squeezebox songs really saw.

This movie is the kind of crazy film that I text people about in the middle of the night because I don't believe that it can be real. But it is - it gloriously is - and now I'm here exclaiming that you should go out of your way to see it.

In 1976, Hayes directed Baby Rosemary, which is an adult remake of this film. That's probably one of the few - if only - times I can think of when the same director created a XXX and mainstream version of the same film, albeit six years apart.

A terrifying expose of a deranged, murderously inclined psyche!

[Weirdling_Wolf · 10/10 · 8 April 2021]

I have been an ardent admirer of the delightfully deviant, uniquely inspired genre filmmaker, John Hayes ever since I had the goodly fortune to enjoy his ominous, sporadically goofy, grievously Gothic oddity 'Grave of The Vampire' (1972). 'Dream No Evil' is arguably Hayes's most exquisitely eerie expression of his altogether singular filmmaking artistry. Not unlike fellow indie marvel, Robert Allen Schnitzer, I sincerely feel that these quality Blu-ray restorations will draw worthy scrutiny upon this somewhat unfairly neglected cinematic iconoclast, whose wonderfully off-beat, idiosyncratic visions are manifestly unlike any other filmmaker.

'Dream No Evil' opens tersely in an orphanage wherein a terrified young girl, Grace McDonald (Brooke Mills) has a screaming nightmare, crying out desperately for a father who may or may not still be alive, or if alive, may have simply abandoned her. While Grace grows up into a beautiful, physically healthy young woman her morbid obsession over her absent father warps her objectivity, ultimately sending her on a hallucinatory pilgrimage into a waking, techinicolor nightmare. Ice-cold corpses reanimate at will, intricate dreams become terrifyingly real and her darkly incestuous fantasies are so vividly rendered, she is wholly consumed by make believe. Grace's morbid fantasies prove to be anything but harmless, as they all too frequently say, be careful what you wish for!

The calamitous rupture in her tormented psyche is deftly orchestrated by Hayes, and the heady, evocative milieu of a barnstorming, roadside preacher with all its attendant hysteria is no less memorably staged. The inimitable, Michael Pataki imbuing the barnstorming role of Rev. Paul Jessie Bundy with all the unfiltered zeal such a flamboyant misfit requires! Dream No Evil's delirious final act is a suitably terrifying expose of a deranged, murderously-inclined psyche, both morbidly fascinating and existentially repellent at the same time. Grace's astonishingly angelic beauty, lustrous red hair and lissome charms belie an uncommonly vibrant, 3-dimensional, preternaturally destructive madness, 'Dream No Evil' remains a luridly immersive Freudian phantasmagoria one is unlikely to forget!