Winning big at Los Alamitos Racetrack, Alex Gardner (Dennis Quaid) is chased out of the stadium by some goons who want in on his unique ability to pick winning horses. He accepts a ride from a couple of government agents, who transport Alex to “Thornhill College,” where some people want to meet with him.

Paul Novotny (Max von Sydow) is a scientist who worked with Alex when he was 19, before Alex tired of performing telekinetic parlor tricks and disappeared. Dr. Jane DeVries (Kate Capshaw) is studying patients afflicted by nightmares. Bob Blair (Christopher Plummer) is a government figure funding their secret project, which has discovered how to insert the psychically gifted into the dreams of patients.

Alex declines, particularly after witnessing one of the project’s two psychics wheeled away after entering the nightmare of a young boy. Novotny offers to introduce Alex to an IRS audit if he refuses to participate, and he changes his mind. He successfully projects himself into the dream of a steelworker, and becomes an active participant in the man’s nightmare of falling.

Alex later enters the dreamscape of the terrified boy, where he helps him conquer his fear of the boogeyman. The project’s remaining psychic is a weasel named Tommy Ray Glatman (David Patrick Kelly) who doesn’t work well with others. Dr. DeVries continues to spurn Alex’s advances, but he discovers he can project himself into the subconscious without any special equipment, and wrecks sexual havoc in the doctor’s dreams.

A horror novelist played by George Wendt warns Alex that Blair intends to use the program to train assassins. The President (Eddie Albert) is plagued with nightmares of nuclear holocaust, and has notified Blair he intends to sign a disarmament deal with the Soviets. Blair transfers the President to the college for dream therapy, where he plans to use Tommy Ray to enter the President’s nightmare and kill him.

Directed by Joseph Ruben and written by David Loughery and Chuck Russell & Joseph Ruben, Dreamscape was one of the first films given the PG-13 rating (Quaid & Capshaw’s sex scene had to be tamed down to avoid an R). The independent production wasn’t a hit in theaters, but went into heavy rotation on cable, so heavy that Christopher Plummer remarks that the two movies people mention when they see him are The Sound of Music and this one.

Dreamscape has its merits. It was a terrific idea, and the script does a good job exploring the three basic motifs of dreams: falling, the boogeyman, and sex (these seem to be universal and not limited to just me). Von Sydow and Plummer are both brilliant, and the casting of David Patrick Kelly was a stroke of genius. One of the great character actors of the ’80s, he plays an even better psycho here than he did in The Warriors.

Ignoring how dated the film’s wardrobe, hair and special effects are, or how cheesy Maurice Jarre’s electronic score sounds today, this still isn’t a good movie. The characters don’t have any depth or nuance, which might have been okay, but Quaid and Capshaw are too good looking to be believed as grad school nerds.

The first hour has tremendous promise, but doesn’t really build on it. A sci-fi picture dealing with dreams could have gone anywhere, but instead, this one features the same cloak and dagger stuff we’ve seen a thousand times. It’s all right, but the filmmakers missed a royal opportunity to make a classic by limiting their imagination here.