Nightmare

Nightmare was released in 1981, right in the middle of the slasher boom of the 80’s. Thankfully, it was one of the better slashers to be released during that wave. Nightmare follows a mental patient in New York. He escapes from a mental institution where doctors have been giving him experimental drugs to try to cure, or find the cause of, his psychosis. We follow this patient as he makes his way down the East Coast, leaving bodies in his wake. We also see some of the things he dreams about, and we begin to understand why this person is as screwed up as he is. When the patient finally arrives at his destination, he appears to be fixated on one particular family. This is when we are introduced to a kid named CJ, who appears to be dealing with his own issues at a very young age. So why is this psychopath interested in this one family? Well, you’ll just have to watch it yourself to find out since I am going to recommend this movie. Nightmare pretty much follows the standard slasher blueprint, but the biggest difference is we see the killer throughout the movie. We follow his journey. We see his face. He doesn’t want to kill people, but he can’t help himself. You almost sympathize with the killer. Speaking of the kills, this movie has some really impressive gore and kill scenes considering the budget. There is a lot of gore and blood, but at no time does it feel forced or gratuitous. It flows with the movie, and only intensifies the scenes in which they appear. It very effective use of gore, and the rest of the movie is good enough where you don’t feel the dialog and story is just a vehicle to get you to those scenes.

Psychological study of a psycho-slayer traveling from Manhattan to Cocoa Beach

A man with obvious mental issues is deemed well by his handers at the asylum and so he's let loose in New York City whereupon he falls back into his murderous ways and naturally travels to Florida in order to see some former family members.

“Nightmare” (1981) is serious psychological horror, like "Don't Go in the House" (1979), except that this is a slasher. The psycho escaping the sanitarium with the ultimate goal of killing former relatives recalls “Halloween” (1978), but this is way bloodier and has superior women, including Danny Ronan (Kathy), Sharon Smith (Susan) and a few others.

It’s a little tedious here and there, but I thought it was generally entertaining for this type of flick. Some people criticize if for being confusing, but this is due to the artsy style, written/directed by an Italian filmmaker. The plot (described above) is actually pretty simple. Everything makes sense by the end with a little filling-in the blanks.

The film runs 1 hour, 37 minutes, and was shot at Manhattan and Times Square, but mostly in Florida, including Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach, nearby Merritt Island and Cocoa, not to mention the Orlando Airport.

GRADE: B-/B