Does watching too many bad movies affect your dreams?

[loyal1]

I have been watching some disturbing movies lately and last night I had this crazy epic dream.  It was based in some town in Maine.  I was at some crazy club that was full of Goth and vampire like humanoids.  Very plush and contemp though.  I was coerced into getting a face painting...which meant I had a black face. ;/

The next thing I know I am looking around and my aunt is with me and I say to her. "I have a bad feeling about this place. We need to get out of here now."  We sneak out of the joint and when I tried to start my car...guess what?  yeah it didn't start...didn't even turn over.  But low and behold just when things were about to get tense the car starts right up and I jet out of there.

Everything was weird and dead.  It was like I was driving along some boardwalk...and I was racing out of this town...but there was a sign tthat saays dead end.  I reached the end of the dock with a screeching halt before my car wen t off into the ocean or river or whatever the hell it was.

I had to reroute and go back the way I came.  I was getting scared.

I stopped into a mall to get directions out...and it was like something out of eyes Wide Shut.  Everybody in the mall was having some weird cult sex...and when we walked in..ALL eyes were on us.  They kept at what they were doing mind you...but they didn't take their eyes off of us.  The next thing I know we are being escorted by some old guy who I am assuming was the head of this cult town.

And I woke up after that! damn!  

So what movies have I watched recently?  The Wickerman, The Hills Have eyes, Oldboy, Dead Ringers, Shattered, Session 9, Straigt Jacket, Dead and Buried.

[Doc Daneeka]

While movies very rarely affect my dreams, dreams often bring influence into my movies.

[Shadowphile]

I've had dreams affected by movies as well, usually when I go to bed right after the movie end and it's hot out.  I have vastly more vivid dreams when it's warm or hot....

[loyal1]

Huh...my air conditioning is out, so maybe that's why I have been having messed up dreams lately..lol.  Never thought of that.

[ulthar]

"Only f'n registered users may post in this forum."

Do we really need this?

If you have a problem with the way this site is admin'd, WHY ARE YOU HERE?

There is a reason for required user registration - a darn good one.  And Andrew avoided doing it for a long time; he was against it, actually.

[dean]

A year or two ago at uni I was doing 'research' for an essay I was writing on vampire myth in the movies, which basically had me watching almost every vampire movie I could lay my hands on at the video store.  For every Shadow of the Vampire there were two 'Forsaken: Desert Vampires' type films, so it's no suprise I started having odd dreams about vampires for the rest of that week.

I could swear I was going slowly insane...

[Mofo Rising]

All of my dreams have a distinctly cinematic feel to them.  This is because I watch too many movies.

My dreams also often feature zombies.  This is because I watch too many zombie movies.

So I dream in coherent storylines.  At least it's entertaining.  An interesting thing I've noticed, however, is that the story seems to start wrapping itself up just before I awake.  In fact, I usually wake up right before the climax.  It's very rare I get to finish any story started in my dreams.  My theory is that as the brain progresses from unconsciousness to consciousness it begins to wrap itself around the dream content, triggering connections as it goes.  Unfortunately the end of this process is that I wake up and miss the ending.

Not always though.  Just the other day I had a dream that was much like a French New Wave movie in look and feel.  I had just thrown a dead body onto the balcony of the people in the hotel room just below me.  Afterwards I decided to kill myself (don't worry, this "I" was just a character in my dream) by jumping off my balcony, some five stories up, into the bay surrounding the hotel.  I hit the water and my consciousness went flat.  I was dead; end of film.  Then I woke up.

Who knows?  My brother tells me he used to see me sleeping in bed with my arms propped up like I was reading a book.  I've read some pretty good books in my dreams too.  Now if I could only get somebody to publish them. . .

EDIT: Whoops!  Almost forgot why I decided to answer your post.  Your dream reminds me of this Mitch Hedberg joke: "I'd make a s**tty auto mechanic. People would bring their car in to me and say, 'My car won't start.' 'Well maybe there's a killer after you!'"

[Shadowphile]

I recall one dream where I was trying to solve some mystery or figure out some puzzle, I don't exactly recall.  What I do recall is falling through a panel in the floor into a pit with concrete walls.  I could not get out.  Therefore I could not solve the puzzle.  The dream ended at that point and I woke up, some time in the middle of the night.  I got back to sleep fairly quickly  but I have always thought it odd that as soon as i could no longer progress in the dream, it ended.

[LilCerberus]

I seem to recall those Imperial Stormtroopers from Star Wars often being a recurring theme when I was little. Not just my nightmares, but a few of my sweet dreams, as well as those kind of dreams that are just indescribably wierd.

Of course, from age six to eleven, I didn't particularly mind helping George Lucas nurse that cash cow. Heck, I actually recall feeling a little disappointed if I met someone more obsessed with all that swag than I was.

But the one dream that really sticks out in my mind, is one I blame on Cheech & Chong's 'Still Smokin'', a sort of anthology of short sketches from their live shows. As I recall, one of the sketches involved a 'porno for charity' event, which included a guest appearence from an Olympic Championship diddler (the gag was dumber than it sounds).

The upside was, I suddenly 'got' every hairy palms joke I'd ever heard in my life.
The downside was... THE DREAM.

Okay, so, you see, at the time I was one of those, uh, 'day laborers', so my employment was pretty sporadic, not to mention my hygenic habits. So anyway, in this dream, I get up every day & shower & shave & go to work. Then I dreamt I lost my job, & as I typically did when I wasn't working, I quit shaving... Only, in this case, it wasn't just my face! So, this dream has me sitting at a bar drinking, when I meet this gorgeous blonde (hey, it was a dream, okay). So, this girl smiles at me & extends her arm to shake hands, but being all stubbly (remember, not just my face), I suddenly find myself in an incredibly awkward situation.

Then I woke up & realized that I'd rolled over on my arm in my sleep again.

And that's why I quit drinking.

[Ash]

Speak of the devil!

I had a weird dream where I was held prisoner with a group of about 10-15 other people who made their way through this house of horrors.

Everyone in it had weapons but me...
I was handcuffed not at the wrists, but further down...near my forearms.
Don't ask me why...I just was.

They had to endure monsters & illusions attacking them while I was handcuffed the entire time and could do nothing.

Eventually, an old lady from nowhere beckned me toward her and she offered to pick my cuffs.
In my dream I could see dirt on the pick she used.
She succesfully picked them and I opened the cuffs, shook them off and watched them drop to the floor.
The cuffs made a loud THUD sound when they hit the floor.

I then woke up and it took me a few minutes to realize I was not in that dream any longer.

My forearms still felt as if cuffs had been around them for several hours and I actually rubbed them for a while.

Weird!

[loyal1]

You know what I find really weird..is that most all of us who have these type of movie like dreams seem to wake up just when it's about to get good.

I still remember one dream from like 8 years ago that really scared me...it was an epic type and I found my clone dronwed in the bath tub.  Creepy really.

[Shadowphile]

That would be creepy....

[loyal1]

It was...and I wrote about it when I woke up.  I am still trying to find it.  It was really screwed up, but I remember being invited to a house for some party.  The house was designed really cool with many stairs and spirals and half walls and the outside just incredible...like part of the house/living area was outside.

Things started to go really wrong, and it turned into some weird game of cat and mouse.  All these little passage ways and secret rooms in the house.

I can't remember it all in detail, but I do remember coming upon a bathroom...florescent bright with no windows.  I saw a hand and I remember being really scared to look in.  But I did and was looking down at myself...no mirrirs in the bathroom and wasn't even sure if that was the real me or a clone me or if I was somebody else.

I was thinking of writing a story based on it since I posted this.

[Shadowphile]

go for it...