Nightmares Movie Review 274

Nightmares is a 1983 horror anthology directed by Joseph Sargent and starring Emilio Estevez and Lance Henriksen.

The first segment is called Terror in Topanga.It begins with a cop who is on a traffic stop when he hears something in the bushes. He goes to investigate and someone jumps out at him and kills him. Cut to Lisa(Cristina Raines) who decides to go out late at night to get a few things from the grocery store. Her husband doesn't want her to go out but she does so anyway. She runs out of gas and she has to go to a lonely gas station where she gets her car filled up. She is very nervous as she thinks that the killer could be around. The gas station attendant makes her very nervous and she begins to think that he might be the killer. He looks into her car and she sees him with a weapon but instead of killing her, he attacks the murderer who was in the back seat...

The second segment is called The Bishop of Battle. A teenager called J.J. Cooney(Emilio Estevez) is a video game fanatic and he is trying to beat a certain game which has been annoying him for ages. It is called The Bishop of Battle. He can get to a certain level and then he is stuck. He gets frustrated by it and he keeps trying. He is neglecting his schoolwork and the owner of the arcade has to tell him to go home.
He sneaks back in and starts to take on the game once again. He finally reaches the last level but he gets trapped in the game by The Bishop of Battle and is seen on the screen where he is stuck forever...

The third segment is called The Benediction. A priest, MacLeod(Lance Henriksen) has bad dreams about being bitten by a snake. He decides to leave the priesthood after the death of a young boy. He heads off in his car but notices that after a while, a black truck is following him. He doesn't think much of it at first, but then it gets closer and closer and it runs him off the road. He is worried that there is some nutcase after him for some reason. He can't see who is in the car. It crashes into him and the car turns over. He escapes but the truck isn't finished.It rams into his car and destroys it. It finally disappears. The cops come and McLeod tries to explain what happened, but there is no sign of the truck. They think that he fell asleep at the wheel. McLeod decides to go back to his parish after all..

The fourth and last segment is called Night of the Rat. This section begins with a family. The mother, Clair(Veronica Cartwright) is hearing scratching noises in the house. She thinks that it might be rats. She wants to call in an exterminator but her husband, Steven(Richard Masur) won't hear of it. He goes up into the attic and sets some rat traps. They find a dead rat the next day. Steven throws it out in the thrash. Their cat gets attacked and killed by something in the garage. Clair finds the cat and she knows that there is something very wrong. She calls in the exterminator. He finds that there are huge holes in the walls and some wires have been chewed. Steven arrives home and sends the exterminator home. The exterminator calls Clair and tells her that it could be a devil rat. Steven is angry. Finally one night, they hear noises and Steven goes down to see what it is. They look into their daughters room and see the devil rat sitting on her bed. The daughter tells them that it is looking for its baby who was killed in the trap. Steven gets the body and gives it to the rat who takes it and disappears into the night...