Entry Thirty-Five: Nightdreams (1981)

Nightdreams (1981)

Dir: F.X. Pope

A pair of scientists (including Andy Nichols, who was great as Max Melodramatic in Cafe Flesh) monitor a woman (Dorothy LeMay, a long-time adult actress whose sole "legit" credit is as an extra in Rutger Hauer's Blind Fury!) who is hooked up to an EKG machine as she masturbates.  She has a vision of a scary-as-fuck clown,  who pops out of a giant-sized jack-in-the-box and proceeds to eat her out.  She blows another clown while eerie lights flash red and blue and yet another clown laughs in the corner.  In a scene that will shatter any ideas you have of the world as being a good and just place, clown #1 stops eating her out and BEGINS FUCKING HER WITH HIS NOSE  (and yes, this is a XXX movie, so there ARE graphic penetration shots).  After our nasally-violated heroine cums all over the place, we cut back to the astounded scientists: "Her husband said she never had an orgasm!"  LeMay then admires her own ass in a mirror ("Such delicious cheeks!  And that perfect little asshole...sweet as a rose!")...and she starts beating off again.  She then imagines herself as a cowgirl having a lesbian tryst around a campfire ("Look at the bush on her!  I bet she's real wet underneath!  April showers bring May flowers!"), set to a cover of Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire," by future hitmakers Wall of Voodoo ("Mexican Radio").  These cowgirls, of course, are packing some serious heat in the form of giant, veiny dildos concealed in six-gun holsters. Next, in a scene that David Lean had to cut from Lawrence of Arabia, LeMay imagines herself in a tent in the desert with a bunch of Arabic dudes, one of whom she blows while another fucks her with a hookah (just kidding about the Lean thing)!  In the next scene (and I can't believe I'm about to write this), she begins giving a handy to a shifty, Peter Lorre-type in an alley when his penis comes to life and turns into a fetus while he makes noises not unlike those of E.T....

Y'know what?  I'm done with the play-by-play; I'm not gonna tell you any more.  I won't mention the Cream-of-Wheat mascot coming alive to receive a blowjob, or LeMay descending into hell to be eaten out by a demon (in a scene that looks A LOT like Ridley Scott's smoke-enshrouded visions of hell from Legend).  At this point, you've decided whether or not you want to see this movie (and, if you've made the correct decision, you're already searching your favorite torrent website).  This movie is GREAT and it's one of the last holdouts before XXX cinema became a completely shitty, shot on video affair.  With it's alternating garish and drab color scheme, juxtaposed high-class makeup and wardrobe with seedy locales and electronic music, the film plays like a new-wave fever dream.  It features gay and interracial couplings that still would have been considered "edgy" in 1981.  Director Pope is better known as Francis Delia, and would go on to direct music videos for the Plimsouls ("A Million Miles Away") and "Weird" Al Yankovic ("I Lost On Jeopardy")!  Co-screenwriters Rinse Dream and Herbert W. Day (AKA Jerry Stahl, who would go on to work on Twin Peaks and CSI and...um...Alf) returned the next year with the even-better Cafe Flesh.  For a bit of fun, try to imagine how the usual dolphin-flogging crowd might've reacted to this film during it's initial (pre-widespread VHS) release: they'd settle in nicely during the initial masturbation scene, get a good rhythm going on, then get to the clown scene and..."OH MY GOD!!!"   Anyway, check it out!