Nightwish aka Nipples Ahoy! <Nah, just kidding> (1989)This little gem was hiding on the Netflix list (not listed under college horror) probably because 1. It's a professor and his four grad students (Maybe too high an education?) and 2. As a gem I'd say this was cubic zirconium. I really hate saying that too 'cause this movie stars (and even top bills) Clayton Rohner who, in the 80's and part of the 90's I really liked.
I still do, it's just that he did a lot of stuff then and I had a 'list', him, Rutger Hauer and Jeff Fahey and a couple of others that I kind of obsessed over movies with them in them, and I had missed this one. I wish I still had. Oh and nice rip-off of the catch phrase for Alien guys... duh.
This movie was so... blah that even the IMDB didn't even bother to get the right poster for it for their review - see, if you bring up Nightwish in images you're mostly going to see rock bands (especially of the band - wait for it - Nightwish) and apparently they got some poster of a concert instead of the movie. SALTS...
It started off as being almost interesting: Four students are helping a professor in the study of projecting dreams. Their goal is to try to actually die in one, to get to and experience death and also be able to wake up because this isn't NOES. That's when I noticed Clayton (who I hadn't known was in this) - the 'smart' girl (there's always one) Sara was in the 'dream tank' and her dream involved finding and running away from a zombie (who I looked at and kind of said heeeeyyyyy....) and sure enough boom, Clayton Rohner. Looking very good for a zombie too. But she got too scared (Of her own friends?) and 'failed' by not allowing herself to be killed.
So the professor suggests they take their 'experiments' out to the field and here's where the movie begins it's fast paced trip to nowhere. Suddenly we're not talking about dreams and projection, suddenly we're being handcuffed to the wall with a pentagram and a candle on the floor trying to bring forth a demon in this old spooky mansion. Wait a minute, did I miss something here? Unfortunately no. Here is where the movie suddenly decides it wants to be about everything (and I do mean everything): Ghosts, demons, aliens, dreams - the Parapsychology department (a specialty that doesn't exist in any college anywhere) is apparently trying to use science to either prove or disprove any of the above.
This idea was already done and done better in The Legend Of Hell House in the 70's, based on a story by Richard Matheson. And these guys prove nothing but that they can make a really dumb movie last for 92 minutes. Sorry Clayton, but even your character got pretty whiny towards the end (of course your character had one of his fingers cut off so...) and the overall tone was just sooo fake: The professor ends up being a maniacal figure who's been fired from universities for getting his students killed (Don't they go to jail for that?), the demon/alien angle doesn't pan out (or at the very least is way too silly to be credible in any form) and the acting goes from flat to just plain dumb.
In the end the smart girl gets killed - and we suddenly find ourselves back to the beginning of the movie in the sleep tank lab. Oh great, another mind you-know-what, one of those nothing-really-happened-it-was-all-in-her-head movies when she gets up, mumbles that she doesn't want to graduate that badly and tries to leave. The door opens... to another door. And another. And another. And.... is she dead or is she stuck in her dream or did we just waste 92 minutes not really caring what the hell is going on...
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