A frequently updated blog about the movies my mind shows me while I’m trying to get some rest.

I was in a car with my family.  I have to assume they were my family, because we all resembled each other.

The thing of it is that this family differed from my real-life immediate family in two ways:  the first is that my family had exactly two children: myself and my brother. The family I was sharing a ride with seemed to have a fluctuating number of people in it, anywhere from six to … well, a number that would have seriously exceeded the passenger capacity of your common-variety automobile.  Of course, this was one of those larger, late-70s style autos, which were much roomier, so perhaps that had something to do with it. My family had stopped using those kinds of cars by the time my brother was born, as had everyone else, since chassis designs had changed considerably during the 1980s.

The second dramatic difference was that, in my waking life, we were African-American.  We continue to be African-American to this day.  The people in the car – though I could not make out their faces exactly – were Caucasian.  They could’ve all passed for the parents and siblings of Kirk Cameron.  Unable to see myself, as no mirror was presented, I was left to assume that I, too, resembled the rest of the family.

I realize as I write the above paragraph that there may be those amongst my readership who have an interest in the study of race and social psychology.  Please understand – this dream should not be interpreted as me harboring a subconscious desire to be white.  I don’t wish to change my ethnicity any more than I wish to change into Kirk Cameron, and I ABSOLUTELY DO NOT WISH TO BE KIRK CAMERON.

The content of the dream was … disturbing, to say the least.  I’m not a big fan of horror movies or human tragedy, which is why I wasn’t enjoying my experience with the Camerons.  As I was sitting in the back seat, passenger side, I found that, somehow or another, we were involved in some kind of “soap opera horror tour”.

Much in the way one could go to Universal Studios and ride the movies once upon a summer, here we were experiencing the fun and excitement of driving through an outdoor mock-up of a neighborhood, a set meant to serve as the backdrop of a popular soap opera.  What soap it was for was not revealed.  My memory is shady here, but I believe that, at the end of the drive, we would be able to exit the car and actually tour the set of the show, replete with a chance to meet the cast.  Realistically speaking, this would not jibe with the shooting schedule of a soap opera, what with being interrupted by tourists all day.

The night of the dream, a friend of mine and I were in a movie theater, when we came across an advertisement for the Dark Shadows movie coming out this summer.  She thought it looked interesting. I had explained that the film was based on TV show of the same name, sort of a soap opera with gothic horror elements.  That might have been the inspiration for the night’s entertainment.

But as far as I know, Dark Shadows was never a gory program.  My daytime drama dream tour – different story.

Apparently, the tour was fashioned so that we would drive through the streets of this upscale fictional residence (name not provided) and watch as people were slaughtered, either by some evil entity, or even by us with our car.  The whole thing started with a chorus of the doomed singing about the tour and telling us what we would be experiencing, kind of like the singing heads of Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion ride.  The primary difference being that the singing heads were never torn to crimson-spewing pieces and left dead in the streets.  The exact details of this blood-n-guts suburban safari is lost to memory, but there were two distinct elements of it that clearly stick out in my mind:

1. I was disturbed.  Seeing innards haphazardly decorating the windshield of the family car is not something I appreciate seeing while trying to sleep.
2. My mother did not approve.

I know the latter because she sat in the back seat with me, a detailed and constant figure among the infinite number of backseaters who would appear and disappear at random.  I want to take a moment here and make a note about my mother:  she was the driving force behind the family car-trip vacations (though not usually the driver).  It was she who packed the bags, procured the snacks, made sure my brother and I didn’t suffer from motion sickness, and was the life of the entire experience, pointing out fun and interesting things along the way.  Niagara Falls, Mackinaw Island, Disneyworld, Canada – my mother secured these wonderful memories in my head, and I’ll always be thankful for that.

Here, though, she was not enjoying the excursion at all.  Knowing my mother for all of my life, I’m sure the real-life counterpart would be at least as disquieted by what she saw.

The whole thing ended on a joke.  I can’t remember what the joke was, but it had something to do with Freddy Krueger driving the car – I kid you not.  Thing is, Freddy wasn’t the cackling monster as he is portrayed in the movies.  Here, he seemed rather perplexed, as if he’d just learned that we knew he was the driver all along.

Then we took one of his earphones. Yeah, Fred Krueger was wearing earphones in my bloody dream, which one of us was able to just pop out of his ear, prompting a confused look on his mangled face.  Apparently he was so undone that he couldn’t bring himself to turn around and kill us.  Schooled by the Cameron family, I guess.