Census Bloodbath: Won't You Take Me To Twunkytown?

Year:
1986
Director:
David DeCoteau
Cast:
Thomas Bern, Ashlyn Gere, Sylvia Summers
Run Time:
1 hour 22 minutes

Plot: Aspiring heavy metal musician Adam (Thomas Bern) makes a deal with a succubus named Lily (Sylvia Summers). According to multiple plot synopses online, this deal is to make him better with women. The audio on the absurdly shitty VHS transfer used for the movie's official DVD release was too muddy for me to hear exactly what he asked for, but that request doesn't really make sense to me, because he already has a cool punk girlfriend, Pat (Kim McKamy of Evil Laugh). 

Whatever it is that he actually asks for, he ends up being enslaved by the succubus, who shows up at a sorority party thrown by Pat's sister Jodi (Lauren Peterson) and begins killing people left and right. She is somewhat indiscriminate when it comes to the gender of her victims, but she does try to seduce as many of the men as she can before eliminating them.

Analysis: Let me introduce you to Dreamaniac director David DeCoteau, if you've never had the pleasure. He is a gay icon, and a director with many fascinating behind-the-scenes stories to tell. The only problem comes when you get in front of the scenes. 

His movies, from Sorority Babes in the Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama to A Talking Cat!?!, are usually shoestring budget productions that are produced at breakneck speeds to capitalize on whatever the latest trend is. It's fascinating to hear him speak about how he does what he does, but usually the answer is "let the camera roll on an actor walking around for 10 minutes without cutting."

Another fun thing about the man is that, between mockbusters like Hansel and Gretel: Warriors of Witchcraft and 90210 Shark Attack, he has built entire franchises (1313, The Brotherhood) out of watching twunks wandering around in their tighty whities and having nasty things happen to them. Because of his filmmaking approach, however, the results are usually terminally boring. Nevertheless, you gotta admire him.

Anyway, very few things get between David DeCoteau and a quick buck, so I can't say that I was surprised to find him in the director's chair for one of the first slasher movies to capitalize on the popularity of 1984's A Nightmare on Elm Street. 

Dreamaniac came still early enough in the slasher timeline that it was merely retitled (from Succubus) and given a new poster, rather than fully ripping off Elm Street storywise, in the manner of something like Bad Dreams. This means that, instead of forcing us to watch an insipid Freddy Krueger imitation quip his way through scenes (à la Slimeball Bowl-O-Rama), DeCoteau has instead leaned in on what would soon become his standby narrative mode: twunk-watching.

Almost without exception, the male characters in this movie doff their tops, pants, and even underwear in the pursuit of maximal titillation, while the women among their number mostly make do with low-cut dresses and sexy lingerie (if I recall correctly, there is only one female character who goes topless in this movie, which is a rarity for this level of slasher sleaze).

While we did get some other inexplicably male-flesh-heavy 1980s slasher movies (like Girls Nite Out and The Majorettes) from time to time, the fact that Dreamaniac was also directed by a gay man, written by two women, and stars a nonbinary actor (Lauren Peterson) makes it more or less unique among the slasher sludge of the 1980s.

Its queer sensibility extends way beyond its obsession with male flesh. Without this group of people behind the camera, I don't think the resident mean girl Francis (Cynthia Crass) would have half as many deliciously cutting things to say, for instance. There are only a few rare moments of actual homoerotic subtext (that said, the men in this movie are unusually incurious about what sex with their dates might be like), but there is an overall sense of playfulness that I think would be lacking if Dreamaniac was made by cishet male filmmakers.

Having women pen the screenplay also gives the movie an additional layer. It's hardly a feminist text, but it ultimately leans much more Slumber Party Massacre than I might have expected, especially with its dual final girls and a few well-placed drill-related moments.

Having said mostly nice things about this movie, so far, I don't want to be mistaken for saying it's some kind of long-lost masterpiece. David DeCoteau's less exhilarating filmmaking instincts do shine through on occasion (including the loooooooong opening credits sequence where the names of the cast and crew appear on the screen one by one by one in an implacable, stately march), and the acting ain't all that great for the most part. Plus, despite a few major exceptions, the kills are fairly tame and unoriginal.

However, it succeeds far more often than it fails. And most of the times it does fail, it does so in a zesty way, like the closing sequence that randomly posits that (SPOILER ALERT) the events of the movie are the contents of a novel written by the real-life Adam. This sequence includes a joke that winks at the fact that the movie is called Succubus. Which, of course, it isn't. Don't you just love that?

Killer: Lily (Sylvia Summers)

Final Girl: Pat (Ashlyn Gere) feat. Jodi (Lauren Peterson)

Best Kill: Adam's death is gruesome. Pat uses the world's longest drill to sever his head, and we get a gnarly insert shot of his flesh ripping in the process.

Sign of the Times: Everything that is said or worn is incredibly 1980s, but a small moment is what really caught my eye this time: Adam fiddling with his guitar while watching a kaiju movie on his tiny portable rabbit-ear television evoked a very realistic vibe of a bored dude at home that would look entirely different if it took place in 2025.

Scariest Moment: The opening establishing shot of Adam's house lasts like 40 seconds, and I worried that this would be another interminable David DeCoteau joint.

Weirdest Moment: One scene in the kitchen keeps panning past the fridge, which has four different canisters of Quaker Oats on top of it.

Champion Dialogue: “I remember Brad. Big-hearted, and it stops there."

Body Count: 10; give or take a smothering that I think was committed on Lily and was thus unsuccessful, but the visuals were too murky to tell if it was accidentally perpetrated on a different character.

1. Cat dies offscreen.
2. Valley Girl is stabbed in the top of the head.
3. Ace is electrocuted while tied up, then later impaled through the eye.
4. Foster is stabbed in the back of the neck while drinking from the punch bowl.
5. Jan has a poker jammed into her chest.
6. Brad has his dick bitten off.
7. Francis has her throat slit by Adam.
8. Jamie is garroted.
9. Adam is decapitated by Pat with a drill.
10. Real-Life Adam is clawed in the throat.

TL;DR: Dreamaniac is a gleefully cheesy softcore slasher with a welcome queer sensibility.

Rating: 6/10

Word Count: 1173