'Dream No Evil' (1970) - John Hayes.

 

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!