Beyond Dream's Door

Beyond Dream's Door (1989)

It takes its victims and hides them in your nightmares.

Ben Dobbs is a lonely college student who has never had dreams of any kind. This all changes for Ben and he start having a series of sequential and terrifying nightmares that become true in his waking life. As he reaches out for help, he is also expanding the net his nightmare demon is spreading for new victims. Ben’s challenge is to survive this new surrealistic world Beyond Dream’s Door.

Date of release
1989-04-07
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (23)
Runtime
1h 20m
Genres
Horror, Fantasy
Director
Jay Woelfel

Casting

Interesting facts

Beyond Dream's Door is a 1989 American supernatural horror film written, directed, and scored by Jay Woelfel, and starring Nick Baldasare, Rick Kesler, Susan Pinsky, and Norm Singer. The plot follows a college student who desperately tries to unravel the meanings behind his horrific nightmares as they begin to intrude upon reality and endanger those around him. Since its release, the film has garnered a cult following.

Production

Beyond Dream's Door originated as a 21-minute shot-on-video short film created by Jay Woelfel in 1983 while he was a student in Ohio State University’s now-defunct Cinema Department. Woelfel drew inspiration from H. P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Out of Time, but chose not to adapt it directly, believing it was not yet in the public domain. An ex-girlfriend's father once remarked to Woelfel that he didn't dream, which was a catalyst for the concept.

The script was developed around the trapdoor room, which was being used as a storage space on the second floor of the now-demolished Haskett Hall at Ohio State University. The trapdoors were not hinged and had originally been used for structural engineering tests. The style and tone was intentionally artistic to appeal to Woelfel's instructor.

The role of Ben Dobbs was played by Rick Kesler, whom Woelfel had met while working as a crew member on another film. Kesler, in turn, recruited Nick Baldasare—his co-star in a regional stage production of Deathtrap—to play the role of Eric Baxter.

The short was entered into a contest at California State University, Fullerton, where it won first place.

Woelfel graduated in 1985, and was seeking a way to break into show business. His friend Scott Spears encouraged him to expand the Beyond Dream's Door script into a feature film. Around that time, A Nightmare on Elm Street had just been released to tremendous success, and the franchise would continue to grow in popularity, proving the commercial viability of horror films centered around dreams.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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