Brilliant and touching

A Brilliant Conflict

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Many reviewers have never read any of the Stephen King short stories made into these 45 minute pieces of torturous boredom. My problem was I had very much enjoyed "The Road Virus Heads North." Seeing it there on the screen as a tedious emotionally-hollow piece of garbage was the final straw.I tried to get through the whole set but couldn't force myself to do it. Not everything King wrote was horror but he writes compelling stories and make you want to keep turning the page. These adaptations merely make you sleepy.For the five of the eight that I could get through: 1) Battleground: This is the only reason it is a 2 instead of a 10. This one was absent any dialog and was an entertaining visual battle between hit-man Renshaw and the green army men of his last victim, toymaker Hans Morris. Intense and worth a watch. The same can't be said of the others.2)Crouch End: A nod by Stephen King to his predecessor H.P. Lovecraft becomes second rate with terrible actors and bad visual effects. The newlyweds stumble into another dimension through a thin spot and encounter nightmarish things in this other place. There is nothing suspenseful about it and it goes on far too long.3)Umney's Last Case: The fictional private eye and the writer who created him switch places after the writer loses his son. Escaping from reality, the writer regrets his choice by the end while the private eye tries to get back into the fictional world with no easy routes back. In 2006, William H. Macy (who is great in so many other things) actually got nominated for this hammy role. Its a cheesy character in many ways and feels forced. It is a fair episode at best.4)The End of the Whole Mess: Howard Fornoy describes how his genius little brother, Bobby, destroyed the world. They altered the water of the world to make everyone more peaceful and end war BUT gave everyone Alzheimer's Disease as a side effect. TEDIOUS. The whole unwatchable episode (not sure how I got through it) focuses so much on describing the genius brother that the mass Alzheimer's Disease outbreak is barely shown.5)The Road Virus Heads North: An author (played by Tom Berenger)picks up a disturbing painting at a yard sale and begins to realize that the thing in the painting is following him and intends to kill him. They added a subplot involving a colonoscopy and iffy test results... By doing this and a slight romantic subplot, they take a hard edged story about a man running from a monster from "the basement of the universe" into a tiring tale of mortality with the thing pursuing being unimportant until the end. BORING, NOT SCARY.The Bottom Line: These did not transfer well from King's short stories. They were short punchy stories that were stretched too far in most cases. I know the End of the Whole Mess and Umney's Last Case weren't meant to be scary but the other three were supposed to be and failed miserably at it. They became the worst thing in horror: boring. If a story meant to frighten comes off as repetitive and boring it clearly isn't holding your interest as a good piece of horror does.Short stories CAN become good television BUT Nightmares & Dreamscapes fails to do this.

Warner do Brasil released on DVD the following episodes: 1) "Campo de Batalha" ("Battleground"): In Dallas, the hit man Jason Renshaw (William Hurt) breaks in the headquarter of a toys company and kills Hans Morris, the manufacturer and owner of the company. He returns to his fancy apartment in San Francisco, and later he receives a package of toys with soldiers, helicopters and heavy weapon. Suddenly he is attacked by the commando, and he tries to survive."Battleground" is a very silly and naive episode, without dialogs and with the character performed by William Hurt being attacked by toys. The explosions and shootout on the fortieth floor of the elegant building do not bother any neighbor. My vote is six.2) "Crouch End": The career devoted Lonnie Freeman (Eion Bailey) and his wife Doris Freeman (Claire Forlani) are in London in honeymoon. Loonie receives a message from the important client Squales inviting the young couple to have dinner with him in his house at Crouch End. While going to the dinner party, Doris is advised by the cab driver to return from Crouch End, which would be a thin spot in another dimension. Lonnie does not accept the non-sense explanation and have a weird experience with Doris."Crouch End" seems to be a bad homage to "Twilight Zone". The mysterious story has a great atmosphere, but an absolutely disappointing conclusion. My vote is six.3) "O Último Caso de Umney" ("Umney's Last Case"): In 1938 in Los Angeles, Clyde Umney (William H. Macy) is a divorce private eye successful with women. On the weirdest day of his life, he sees his world turning upside-down when he discovers that he is a character of a series of novels made-up by the writer Sam Landry. Sam is grieving the loss of his son and wants to swap position with Clyde."Umney's Last Case" has a stylish noir production and an original story (I believe this show was produced before "Stranger than Fiction"). I liked the whole story, but the conclusion is abrupt and seems that the original intention could be to be continued. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): "Nightmares & Dreamscapes Vol.1 – Pesadelos e Paisagens Noturnas" ("Nightmares & Dreamscapes Vol.1 – Nightmares and Nocturne Landscapes")

A miniseries of eight short TV films adapted from Stephen King's rather recent short stories. They are all in the style of the famous Twilight Zone serial but never as dark as the old model. In fact Stephen King in these short stories was trying to use different styles from what he is most known for, horror and terror. So most of the time he did not try to terrify his audience, at most horrify them, but often gross them out, and barely more. So hardly any real violence and extreme fantastic violence. Rather soft estrangement from standard life and the ordinary world of ours. We are thus surprised, disquieted, worried, but never anguished nor frightened. This softening goes along with a theme that is quite common: death and good old time nostalgia. The mind behind these stories has put quite a few years behind his forehead and his probably pot-bellied stomach. The vision is no longer that of a young child, a teenager or a young man who discard and rejects the wisdom coming from older people and for whom older people are danger, the devil, evil, something to get rid of before it dies in their hands. Here we have the vision of an older man, or woman, looking back at the world the way it was when they were young and they compensate the fact it is gone by making it evil. That old time and its characters do not come back into the present to haunt it. Rather the older people of today are transported into that old time of their youth. So it is not Sometimes They Come Back, but Sometimes They Drift Backwards. At time the danger comes from toys, hence children, the next generation, but the danger is seen from the point of view of the older man. The short stories and these short TV films are from an older author who is following the call that comes up from his muscular fiber. He has aged but without really deepening his vision. He has shifted points of view and the present vision is that of an older man probably produced and directed for television in the line of the baby boomers who are starting to get off the labor market and have a lot of time to spend and the desire never to let themselves die into and from inactivity, idleness. So let them have the good old stories about the good old time when they feared nothing but in which they would be absolutely frightened ****less if they had to go there again. Well done but rather too mild to be considered as horror or even fantastic stuff.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

The first episode set the bar quite high i thought. It starred William Hurt as a hit-man who is contracted to kill a toymaker. We are given very little information on his character or who is paying him to kill, indeed the episode is notable for having no dialogue at all. Returning to his modernist penthouse he is delivered a package containing toy soldiers, this gives him a smile but he dismisses it and goes about his business. But he is in for a night of hell, the soldiers are alive and are about to wage war, driving jeeps, shooting machine guns and bazookas and even flying helicopters!. The special effects are good for a TV show and it becomes quite tense as he dodges around the apartment using his wits to survive, sometimes getting the upper hand and other times not. I wont spoil the ending but suffice to say it was a clever little twist. This gave me hope for the rest of the series but i was in for a disappointment, the other episodes were all rubbish and i lost interest by the fourth one. Stephen King adaptations are always a mixed bag and these are no exception