Arrow Video conjures up the Palace British eighties horror obscurity DREAM DEMON for special edition Blu-ray.

Schoolteacher Diana Markham (Jemma Redgrave, HOWARD'S END) is having suffering from vivid and violent nightmares just weeks before she is to wed Falklands war hero Oliver (stage actor Mark Greenstreet). While she and her therapist (Susan Fleetwood, CLASH OF THE TITANS) are inclined to believe it is a virgin's Freudian fear of defloration – exacerbated by the filthy questions of harassing paparazzi Paul (Jimmy Nail, HOWLING II: YOUR SISTER IS WEREWOLF) and Peck (Timothy Spall, GOTHIC) – it might have something more to do with the sinister old house her father has just bought for them; especially when American orphan Jenny (Kathleen Wilhoite, WITCHBOARD) shows up searching for information on her birth parents who last lived in the house where she was also born. When Peck mysteriously vanishes after a nightmare in which he breaks into the house and chases Diana into the basement where he runs afoul of a man in flames, Jenny tries to help Diana dispel her fears only to enter into Diana's dream world where she alone is witness to past events involving an angelic little girl (Annabelle Lanyon, THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION) menaced by her abusive and possibly murderous father (Nickolas Grace, SALOME'S LAST DANCE).

Opening with a shocking and splashy decapitation scene, DREAM DEMON is one of a handful of more upscale variations on the NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET "nightmare logic" horror pics, having more in common with HELLRAISER or PAPERHOUSE – an Elm Street-ized adaptation of the children's novel "Marianne Dreams" from CANDYMAN director Bernard Rose than Andrew Fleming's BAD DREAMS or any of the Elm Street entries this late in the cycle. Coming off of BLACK MOON RISING and MALONE, director Harley Cokeliss – working from a screenplay with late stage input from British horror regular Christopher Wicking (CRY OF THE BANSHEE) – uses the episodic scenario to indulge in surreal touches, effects gags, and in-camera trickery without tying things together beyond the revelation of a childhood trauma. Newcomer Redgrave and Wilhoite play well off each other, as do Nail and Spall who are more responsible for some of the nastier turns of the plot than the gore set-pieces. While not as thrilling as it had seemed on home video, DREAM DEMON is still a well-made horror film from a country where they were in short supply in the eighties. Production company Palace Pictures had made a name for itself in the eighties as a British distributor of arthouse and genre pics as diverse as THE EVIL DEAD, CINEMA PARADISO, 9 1/2 WEEKS, and THE COMPANY OF WOLVES and had yet to give us Richard Stanley's DUST DEVIL and HARDWARE.

Completed and shown theatrically in the U.K. in 1988, DREAM DEMON did not reach American shores until 1993 as a direct-to-video release from Warner Bros. Unavailable since then, DREAM DEMON comes to Blu-ray from a new 2K restoration of the original camera negative by the British Film Institute (whose logo opens the film). Gone is the video transfer's mix of haze and noise stemming from the film's contrasty lighting, with the 1080p24 MPEG-4 AVC 1.85:1 widescreen image revealing a slick-looking production with some heretofore hard to see design accents that might make one wonder if Diana's dream world has crossed over with that of the HELLRAISER films (those corridor archways seem familiar). Two cuts of the film are included on the disc. The theatrical cut (89:22) and a director's cut (88:08) which does not add anything but instead curtails the ending to remove a comic coda involving Spall and Nail. The LPCM 2.0 rendering of the Dolby Stereo track has clear dialogue and its share of directional effects, but more apparent now than on video is the layered quality of the film's score mixing synth and sound design. Optional English SDH subtitles are included.

The director's cut includes an optional introduction by director Cokeliss (0:42) who also appears on a selected scene audio commentary (46:21) with producer Paul Webster (ROMEO IS BLEEDING) in which he reveals that the film was intended as a cheap cash-in on A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET but sat around for a couple years until Cokeliss became involved, with the two reworking it into a "horror movie satire of Princess Diana." The lively discussion includes topics like Wicking's touches, how the pre-visualization stage extended into the shoot with the design crew having to react as Cokeliss became inspired (although some comparisons to other fantastic films centered on a female duo like CELINE AND JULIE GO BOATING seem obvious, he did not see the film until sometime during production and interpreted the girls' journey as an acid trip). Cokeliss appears onscreen again in "Dream Master" (27:22) in which he rehashes some material from the commentary – although he also reveals that DP Wilson had been one of his instructors when he went to film school – but is also given visual aids in discussing the old school approach to the film's visual effects (the scene in which Diana's flat is flipped as in a mirror image was achieved no through set design but by flipping the film and creating a dupe negative of the emulsion side). Webster appears onscreen in "A Nightmare on Eton Avenue" (37:22) which also overlaps with the commentary but features some more background on him, including his working at the Scala theatre when Stephen Woolley (INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE) and Nik Powell (HIGH SPIRITS) formed Palace as a distributor and then was with then when they turned to production.

In "Dreaming of Diana" (16:00), actress Redgrave – daughter of actor Corin Redgrave (SERAIL) and niece of Vanessa Redgrave (A QUIET PLACE IN THE COUNTRY) – recalls her inexperience at the time, being fresh out of drama school with only stage credits and a couple television appearances, her audition for Cokeliss, guidance from her co-stars (particularly Fleetwood), her safety concerns on the film, Spall's ad libbing, and her interpretation of the film's sexual subtext. In "Cold Reality" (9:44), actor Greenstreet discusses having his head cast for the opening sequence, the conflict between by the rules "magical continuity lady" June Randall (THE SPY WHO LOVED ME) and Cokeliss, and his friendship with co-star Grace. Grace appears in "Sculpting the Part" (8:58) in which he discusses his concerns working with a child actress and details of his character that did not make the final cut, as well as stunts he refused to do including the fire suit bits. In "Angels and Demons" (9:20), actress Lanyon recalls as a child her agent being more concerned with her doing Ridley Scott's LEGEND than DREAM DEMON, the bothers of the wig created for her character and the full body cast, as well as what became of the film's angel statue prop.