Bad Dreams
Issues #1-5
Written by Gary Winnick
Illustrated by Gary Winnick
Covers by Gary Winnick
Red 5 Comics
Release Date: April 23, 2014
Cover Price: $3.50

Mary wakes up in a dream world with her teddy bear and no memory. In the surreal, whimsical, and bizarre world of Bad Dreams, Mary soon finds herself set on a journey to free Mother Night from her imprisonment, so sleep can once again return to the dreamworld. She is joined by Nimrod, Sir Spanks (a Night Mouse Knight), Spide, and Shroom… all who seem to know just a little bit more about her than she does.

Bad Dreams is a surreal, all-ages comic. It has all the right mixes of fantasy, fairy-tale, mythology, and mystery thrown into the mix. Mary, our protagonist functions as a kind of everyman (or everywoman) who is inexplicably pulled into a conflict that she’s not really involved with. She must continue forward, though, because a mysterious and vindictive woman is after her and will stop at nothing to prevent the Mother Night’s release from her imprisonment.

Bad Dreams
Blu-ray Double Feature
Director: Andrew Fleming
Cast: Jennifer Rubin, Bruce Abbott, E.G. Daily, Richard Lynch, Dean Cameron
Scream Factory
Rated R | 84 Minutes
Release Date: February 18, 2013

Directed by Andrew Fleming (The Craft), Bad Dreams sounds like a Nightmare on Elm Street rip-off, and it kind of is.

The 1988 film stars Jennifer Rubin (A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors) as Cynthia, lone survivor of a cult’s mass suicide, who awakens from a coma 13 years later. Like Elm Street 3, Rubin’s character is in a mental institution surrounded by troubled kids who are plagued by bad dreams.

And like Elm Street 3, Rubin’s character is haunted by a burned boogeyman. In the film’s prologue, we learn that the members of the love cult Unity Fields sought “the ultimate joining” by dousing themselves with gasoline and committing mass suicide. Now the cult’s leader (Richard Lynch, Invasion U.S.A.) has returned to claim his final child.