Nightmare

Nightmare, also known as Nightmare in a Damaged Brain doesn’t know what it wants to be. It has the lingering kills and lurid trashiness of a giallo, but the structure of a slasher.

Guess that makes sense. After all, Italian director Romano Scavolini brought with him paisan peninsular sensibilities. The year checks out too. This filming of Nightmare straddled the 70s and 80s.

Like other Italian horrors, 1981’s Nightmare makes use of The Big Apple, however, instead of exploring urban seediness like The New York Ripper, it veers off to a warmer locale, almost like it was a cannibal film.

Patient George Tatum is getting treated with an experimental drug. He’s a psychopath plagued by nightmares about chopping up his parents (including his mom’s head/entrails, appearing in gruesome fashion at the foot of his bed) and the experimental pills are meant to prevent recidivism.

Director Romano Scavolini was apparently inspired by a newspaper account of CIA drug experiments, and Nightmare leads the viewer, via Tatum, outside of the mental hospital and onto 42nd Street. When Tatum hops in a car and skips town, neither the half-way house nor his attending physicians know where the heck he is.

Uh oh. Escaped mental patient on the loose! That’s the subject of more horrors than we can count.

Then, in languid, almost pastoral scenes, Tatum takes the I-95 south, through the Carolinas and down to the Sunshine State. But it’s not a scenic getaway. He has to get down to murderin’.

Nightmare appeared on the Video Nasties list, and has all the sleaziness that comes with the territory.

A killer with mommy issues is a common trope, from Psycho, through to Maniac and Friday the 13th. And speaking of the latter two, it was rumored that Tom Savini was involved in the practical effects (something the maestro vehemently denies). Anyone looking at it, can see that while the kills are over-the-top, they lack the precision and artistry Savini would bring to bear.

For Nasty completists.

*** (out of 5)

[Check out our podcast discussion of Nightmare in a Damaged Brain!]

Solarbabies

In a far distant dystopia (weirdly, in the Year 41), the world’s water resources are being tightly controlled. And it’s up to the the rebellious young residents of an orphanage/prison, the Solarbabies (not the Aquababies, mind you) to do something about it, and wrest control away from the villainous, jack-booted Eco Protectorate.

Yep, we’re in post-apocalyptic territory again. Except this time, it’s youth-friendly.

Still, Solarbabies has all the genre’s hallmarks: an oppressor class, enslaved people keeping society (what’s left of it) functioning; a quest for a water-drenched paradise; terror-drome combat sports; an antediluvian oracle who makes Dumbledore look spry by comparison; dune buggies, and of course, a barren, sandy wasteland.

Solarbabies (1986) has two pop culture cash-ins: The Walkman, (whose popularity peaked between 1987 and 1997) sported by young star Lukas Haas (Witness) and a cast of roller skaters. How this footwear is appropriate for a desert landscape is never explained, but luckily, the Eco Protectorate, for all its turpitude, has paved much of the misbegotten landscape for easy escape.

In a nutshell: the powers that be are fighting over a supernatural omniscient orb, Bohdai, who can make it rain like it’s a gentleman’s club.

Somewhere along the line, we veer into Mad Max territory with a bunch of indentured servitude water processors (who are predominantly Aussie) and the Solarbabies get assistance from the Eco Warriors to help turn the tide…this may sound like a cheesy premise, but the inconvenient truth is, this mega-bomb is a hella-fun flick!

With a budget of $25 million plus, this dud earned back under $2 mil.

And the flick wasn’t exactly the toast of critic town, with the likes of the Washington Post saying, it’s “a hilariously bad movie that doesn’t make much sense and isn’t much good when it does.”

Much to our delight, Solarbabies is a rip-off extravaganza, with nods to E.T., The Road Warrior, Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia, and Rollerball. Director Alan Johnson keeps things movie with chase scene after chase scene (and even an Dukes of Hazzard-style gorge-jump for good measure).

*** (out of 5)