Killer Double Feature: Bad Dreams and Visiting Hours

Shout Factory has a series of DVD titles that feature two films on one disc. Many are action double features or Roger Corman Double, Triple or Quadruple features. This disc is titled Killer Double Feature. It contains two movies: Bad Dream and Visiting Hours.

Bad Dreams I can remember seeing in theaters when I was eleven years old with my friend and his mother. Back then, ti scared the crap out of me. I remember that the TV spot for the film was all over television. It was a film that got a theatrical push in 1988 and actually grossed more than twice its budget. The film is about a girl, Cynthia, who wakes up from a coma in a psychiatric hospital almost thirteen years after surviving a mass suicide where cult members doused themselves with gasoline and lit themselves on fire. However, things start to take a turn for the worse when patients in the hospital begin to kill themselves and Cynthia begins to suspect that the leader of the cult is still around and has come to claim her.

Visiting Hours is a film I never saw before. It is about a TV Journalist who goes on a crusade to expose and stop domestic violence. However, she has sparked some rage in some people, especially one man who brutally attacks her. She survives the attack only to have her assailant’s violence escalate. Now, not only is she in danger, but so are the people around her as this violent pursuer will stop at nothing until he kills her.

I really didn’t care for either of these films. Bad Dreams I remember as being a boring horror film when I was kid, but the burnt killer creeping out of the ceiling tiles in the hospital used the scare the shit out of me. Not so much anymore. Visiting Hour just doesn’t have enough action to keep my interest. Maybe because it’s an older film that just seems to fit in with all the other psycho killer films and it really just didn’t catch my interest as a stand out slasher film.

Overall, the disc is nicely put together with a ton of special features for Bad Dreams such as Audio Commentary, interviews with Cast & Crew, and two behind-the-scenes featurettes. Both films also had trailers and TV spots included in the special features. This is a disc you may want to pick up only if you are a fan of one or both of these films. The transfer of both films is nice, but unless you’re a fan of the films, this is one you may want to skip.

- Horror Bob