Every remotely experienced horror fanatic becomes skeptical when the words "dreams" or "nightmare" feature in the title of a cheap & obscure late-80s slasher. Back then, every aspiring director wanted to cash in on the success of Wes Craven's "A Nightmare on Elm Street" and do 'something' with dreams/nightmares.

Kristine Peterson's "Deadly Dream" seemingly fits this description, but it honestly deserves a bit more praise and credit. This certainly isn't a hidden treasure or an undiscovered gem, but it does have a couple of worthwhile moments. The opening sequence, for instance, is quite heave and depicts the brutal murder or a mother and father - on Christmas day - by a hunter with a vicious animal skin mask, who goes by the name of Norman Perkins.

Norman Perkins! Get it? I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of another character named Anthony Bates, but he never showed up. Anyway, the murders are bloody and brutal, and little Alex who witnessed the massacre of mom and dad still struggles with mental issues more than a decade later. Alex has dreams and visions of Norman Perkins stalking him with his eerie mask. Then, inevitable, follows the clichéd and derivative middle section. Is Perkins really chasing Alex, or is he only dreaming it? Or maybe he's being pranked by his idiot best friend or driven loco by someone else entirely?

The middle section is quite dull, but the overall running time is luckily quite short, and there are still noteworthy moments, like the gratuitous nudity provided by Juliette Cummings and the many appearances of that really cool skin-mask! The climax also still holds a few neat (albeit predictable) twists in store. Overall, worth your time if you're an 80s horror fanatic.

This movie could have been a quite good thriller have it not been for the rather dull first hour and a very inept conclusion. But the ending is not totally predictable as one other writer wrote because the movie begins like a thriller but ends like a horror.

Acting is quite good and shines up in a few places. A lurking fear is felt through the whole movie but there should really have been a better punch in the shock department. It's like the director couldn't decide if he would do a psychological thriller or a horror/slasher.

Young Alex parents was murdered during Christmas eve by a business competitor who shot himself after that, or so we are told after about one hour into the movie. This is a rather cheap trick to make the viewer wonder if Alex is imagine the murderer's appearance or if he's real. It is also probably a trick to make the movie longer. You see, Alex is not only dreaming about the killer, he also hallucinates seeing him. This could have been done much more exciting, because the mask the killer wears is frightening. Problem is that Alex really sees the killer, and therefore is not mentally ill. This is where the script lacks because it becomes unrealistic and clumsy staged. Later in the movie we are introduced to his brother though, who at first seems rather caring about Alex but later we find out about his real intentions. A triangle-drama is suddenly appearing and the whole thing finally becomes rather laughable.

Well, the premise is good. I mean it's naturally that a kid who has his parents killed in front of his eyes and then told by the killer to run or be shot works up a tendency for mental illness and becomes unstable. Any kid would have become traumatized by that. If the movie had been done by a more skilled director who could work with the story in a more exciting way and made the movie run at a faster pace, this would probably have been really interesting I think. Now it's only a rather dull mishmash.

A promising premise, but not all that successful in gelling everything together hampered this twisted, grim little unknown psychological thriller. It's strange and disjointed as the narrative moves back and forth where our main Alex is plagued by visions of his past where as a child he witnessed his mother and father brutally gunned down by a hunter wearing a skinned wolf mask. However what's screwing with his mind, is that he believes he's seeing the hunter for real despite that he's parent's killer shot himself soon after the murders. The plot is made-up of a collection of recurring flashes and bad nightmares, each one more jarring then the first. But these nightmares just seem too real. Is Alex just losing his sanity (as outside his nightmare he's seeing the masked killer) or is there something more devious going on. The slow-winding material is quite knotty, but simply too vague despite the predictably of the circumstances. It's all familiar; soapy dramatics tied amongst a shady web of paranoia and deceit with a twist upon a twist, although one of those revelations comes midway through it. The momentum can be quite bumpy (as some sequences can feel drawn out to only pad out what might have been better suited as a short film or a TV episode for such shows as "The Twilight Zone" or "Tales From the Crypt"), where the suspense only lasts in short bursts (due to the idea of dreams and reality blurring together) and from that the chills / shock tactics come to the forefront. There are solid bunch of performances; Mitchell Anderson is suitably fitting as the neurotic Alex. Juliette Cummins and Thom Babbes are acceptable as his worried girlfriend / and friend. Xander Berkeley keeps a bitter attitude as Alex's older brother. Director Kristine Peterson's sober handling didn't entirely do the production any favours, as while capable it just lacked the liveliness that was needed. "Deadly Dreams" is an interesting, but leadenly flawed low-budget oddity.