By NICK CATO (Headpress; 2026)
NIGHTMARE (1981), from director Romano Scavolini, isn’t anyone’s idea of quality entertainment, but it is one of the scuzzier examples of 1980s slasher cinema, a film so profoundly bleak and nihilistic it nearly attains its own critic-proof category. You can certainly criticize the film’s many artistic shortcomings, but you can’t deny that it hits hard and compels attention in a way most other slasher pics don’t.
DARK DREAMS provides an admittedly “obsessive” look at Scavolini’s film. It’s not dissimilar to the books of Danny Stewart, who offered passionate defenses of undervalued films like THE BLOOD OF HEROES (1989), HELLRAISER III (1992) and SOLDIER (1998), with the major divergence being that author Nick Cato doesn’t try and persuade us of NIGHTMARE’s brilliance. As he puts it, “It isn’t my objective to convince the reader NIGHTMARE is a great film, or that people are missing out on something the rest of us ‘get.’ This book is basically a tribute to a film that has refused to leave me alone.”
Cato claims to have initially seen the film on a NY area double bill with MOTHER’S DAY (1980), and “simply couldn’t get it out of my head.” His obsession is manifested in a detailed scene-by-scene breakdown of NIGHTMARE, in which he’s frank about the film’s shortcomings, admitting one performer “isn’t exactly the best actor there is” and questioning Scavolini’s utilization of the “call is coming from inside the house” splatter movie cliché: “Did people tend to have separate landlines in their homes back then? I guess so.”
Also provided are equally detailed character breakdowns and analyses of the various gore sequences, for which Tom Savini was credited, but, as Cato is careful to delineate, was actually involved only in an advisory capacity. Rounding things out are reviews of the DVD and Blu-ray releases, a photo gallery and several interviews.
The latter are significant because so few of NIGHTMARE’s cast or crew members have thus far been willing to speak about the film. There’s a lengthy chat with Kathleen Ferguson, who played a small role in the film and dated its line producer Bill Milling, who’s also interviewed. So too is FANGORIA and RUE MORGUE editor Michael Gingold, who wrote a 2023 novelization of the film, and GRINDHOUSE PURGATORY publisher Pete Chiarella (a.k.a. “42nd Street Pete”), who claims to have gotten ahold of a cannister of cut footage from NIGHTMARE that he sold.
Further insight is offered by reprinted reviews of the film, all but one of which are negative, and several “Guest essays.” One of them, written by Jerome Reuter, calls NIGHTMARE “the most underrated slasher title of all time—Scavolini might not have struck gold, but it’s a film that certainly carries weight.” Gary McMahon frames the film as part of the “Video Nasties” panic that gripped the UK in the early 1980s, while Andre Duza admits the film dredged up some disturbing childhood memories, and Philip LoPresti has my favorite take on NIGHTMARE, proclaiming “The film revels in its own filth, but that’s what I love most about it.”