Tales from the Darkside (TV Series) Dream Girl (1986) User Reviews

silly and senseless; how NOT to do surrealism

[framptonhollis · 4/10 · 17 September 2017]

I love the bizarre and bewildering, but only when it is done right. When I sit down and watch a horror movie or series or whatever, I wish to be at the very least entertained, and the same goes for when I sit down and watch a surrealist film. Often, the best films of these genres do far more than entertain, they also enlighten and excite and engage and inspire and so on and so on. Unfortunately, all this surrealist horror episode does is confuse, bore, and nothing more. Some of the visuals are at least mildly interesting, and the set design is mostly appealing, but other than that this messy and pointless episode is just a pain to sit through. The funny moments are not funny, the scary moments are not scary, the mysterious moments may be mysterious...but they are only mysterious because I don't know what I'm watching anymore or why I'm even watching it. The main mystery here is why anyone thought this boring clusterf*ck of unfunny silliness was any good at all and why it was included in the same series that graced us with episodes like "In the Closert" (a legitimately creepy and engaging mystery story) and "The Last Car" (another oddball episode that actually does absurdist comedy and surrealist horror RIGHT!). You should probably skip this one for your own sanity.

Filler material

[Leofwine_draca · 3/10 · 5 June 2015]

I'm surprised at just how many filler episodes there are of TALES FROM THE DARKSIDE. DREAM GIRL is a case in point; it involves five characters working at a theatre who find themselves trapped in a bizarre reality which has come about thanks to the vivid imagination of one of the stagehands.

What this all boils down to is a quirky situation in which the various characters react and engage with various odd events. The trouble is, these episodes are completely alienating for the viewer, who must sit through 20-odd minutes of nonsense before being confronted with a lukewarm 'explanation'. Needless to say the budget is non-existent and the acting is very poor. Next please.

Tales from the Darkside--Dream Girl

[Scarecrow-88 · 3/10 · 28 April 2013]

I think in the case of "Dream Girl" that there's this concept that looks clever and inventive on paper, concerning the members of a stage play (director, writer, leading actress, member of the crew) disappearing into the dreams of the janitor and at the mercy of his own stories, but doesn't quite succeed due to budget and overall execution of the material. I just never felt it works although intentions were for the best. It is certainly an odd duck, with Carolyn Seymore stuck in a "slutty European waitress" outfit and curly wig a lot of the time, having to wait on "twerp" Otto (Lou Cutell) and Shannon Kriska's fantasy girl Otto has on his arm (against her will, of course). Jon Cedar is hassled by Otto because his writer, Syd Grossinger insulted the janitor (telling him he would never amount to nothing) so he is belittled with subservient dream roles. Dawson Mays rounds out the cast as a crew member who once worked on a cruise line and was responsible for Otto's current unflattering janitorial gig. When Carolyn is added to the dream group, the strength in numbers threatens Otto's "stage plays", undermining all he has accomplished through their mistreatment in his make believe dream-world. While watching it, I admired the attempt but thought the budget was just too poor to truly give the idea the ultimate support it needed to work. The title of the episode says it all really in that it doesn't even describe the story told, and the use of foggy wind to describe Otto's power over his cast (it tells us that he's taking control of, or attempting to stop, the characters in his dreams) is laughable. Perhaps that was the intent. What really left me rather wanting was Carolyn's discovery that her and the cast could rattle awake Otto and escape his dreams once his sleep (absent dreams) didn't involve them...rather limp way of letting them escape their predicament. But their reason for even being in this predicament is never explained that well. Just a rather baffling, daft episode of Tales from the Darkside.

I have no idea what I just saw other than it's not very good.

[poolandrews · 3/10 · 13 April 2008]

Tales from the Darkside: Dream Girl starts as play director Andrea Caldwell (Carolyn Seymour) finds herself inside the lowly caretaker Otto's (Lou Cutell) twisted dream in which people they both know & themselves act out his fantasies. However Andrea realises this & together with her trapped friends decide to turn the table on Otto...

Episode 14 from season 2 this Tales from the Darkside story was written & directed by Timna Ranon & Dream Girl is another really weird & surreal twenty odd minutes worth of telly. I don't really know how to describe this episode much less make comments on it, I just didn't get it & that ending just left me baffled. Also one has to say that the boy Otto has a very, very limited imagination. I mean don't most people dream about winning the lottery or becoming a James Bond style secret agent & saving the world or Hilary Clinton posing for Playboy, OK maybe that last one is just me... It's short which is the only thing it has going for it since I just don't see who these light hearted surreal Disney style fantasies are meant to appeal to, they certainly don't appeal to me that's for sure.

Like most Tales from the Darkside episodes this takes place in a single locations but unlike most Tales from the Darkside episodes Dream Girl actually has five cast members instead of the usual four! The production team really spoiled us here. Carolyn Seymour seems to have gone on & become a video game voice artist.

Dream Girl is yet another disappointment, there's no horror, there's no monsters, there's no tension or atmosphere & a really silly story that goes nowhere.

Failed oddball episode

[Woodyanders · 4/10 · 11 October 2013]

Bitchy theatrical director Andrea Caldwell (shrilly played to the snarky hilt by Carolyn Seymour) finds herself stuck in a surreal dream world created by browbeaten stagehand Otto Sehrog (a hammy and colorful performance by Lou Cutell). Several of Andrea's colleagues find themselves trapped in this ever-changing alternate reality as well. The key problem with this episode is that writer/director Timna Ranon never manages to make the baffling story come together in a coherent and satisfying way; instead the jumbled plot just runs around in repetitive circles without ever going anywhere. Moreover, Andrea makes for an irritating and unsympathetic main character whose strange plight is impossible to care about. The other characters are too underdeveloped to elicit any concern, too. On the plus side, fetching blonde Shannon Kriska does provide some mighty tasty eye candy. However, the open-ending conclusion proves to be quite frustrating and overall this one qualifies as a confounding mess.

The worst of the first 38 episodes!

[gridoon2024 · 2/10 · 6 October 2015]

I have been watching "Tales From The Darkside" in chronological order for the past few weeks, and the show hasn't quite lived up to my expectations. There were two terrific episodes early on ("The Odds" and "Slippage"), "Levitation" has an ironic ending, "Ring Around The Redhead" and "Comet Watch" are cute, but most of the others are average little tales - not so bad that you could say you wasted 20 minutes watching them, but not so memorable that you could recommend them to others, either. So none of them after "The Odds", which was episode #5, inspired me to write a comment about it....until episode #38, "Dream Girl", which is the worst I've seen so far: a pseudo-arty farrago. Or, as one character in the episode puts it, "Would I ever write such lousy dialogue?". The only thing "dreamy" about it are Carolyn Seymour's legs! 0.5 out of 4 stars.

Maybe my least favorite episode

[shellytwade · 1/10 · 26 January 2022]

I truly hate this episode, I don't know what it is wait yes I do ,it's complete nonsense that somehow thinks it's genius writing. It's like a David Lynch movie done by a grad 7 class for a year end assignment. Truly nonsensical and I think you could only appreciate this if you knew someone in the cast.

The Nightmare

[claudio_carvalho · 3/10 · 7 April 2022]

The theater director Andrea Caldwell learns that the playmate Didi, the electrician Joe D'Amico and her friend Syd Grossinger have vanished. Out of the blue, she finds all of them being humiliated by the janitor Otto Schrog, who is now a powerful man. Soon she finds that they are trapped in his dream and they need to wake him up to get rid of the situation.

"Dream Girl" is an awful episode of "Tales from the Darkside". The silly plot is neither funny nor scary and does not make any sense. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Dream Girl"