Bad Dreams is a 1988 American supernatural mystery slasher film co-written and directed by Andrew Fleming and starring Jennifer Rubin, Bruce Abbott, E. G. Daily, Dean Cameron, Harris Yulin and Richard Lynch.

The plot follows a woman who awakens from a thirteen-year-long coma and finds herself being stalked by the ghost of a cult leader who led a mass suicide by fire that she survived as a child.

Only one young woman named Cynthia Weston, a child at the time of the fire, refuses to commit suicide and barely survives the burning of the house where Unity Fields' cultists lived.

After awakening in a hospital, Cynthia is plagued by horrific flashbacks of her childhood at Unity Fields, and is forced to attend experimental group therapy sessions for borderline personality disorder at the facility, led by Dr. Alex Karmen.

A male and female patient who are lovers are later killed by walking together into the blades of an industrial fan in the utility room of the hospital, which Cynthia also attributes to Harris.

Awakening from sedation after the incident, Cynthia finds Harris sitting in her room, calling her his "love child," and urging her to commit suicide.

Shortly after, Harris apparently visits Gilda (a clairvoyant patient who asked Cynthia to fight the person who is haunting her, and to stay alive) in her room.

Knowing that all of his schemes have failed, Berrisford pulls the stolen revolver and pretends to commit suicide, but quickly points the gun towards Alex.

Before he shoots, Cynthia finally confronts her fear of Harris, realizing that Berrisford is a totally different person, and reacts by charging and pushing him over the ledge to his death.

Bad Dreams was shot on location in Los Angeles, California over a period of eight weeks, with production beginning on October 26, 1987, and concluding in mid-December.

[1] According to "Bad Dreams" writer/director Andrew Fleming on the DVD commentary, the choice of the end title song was the greatest drama in the whole making of this film.

Fleming wanted to use a live version of the song “Burning House of Love” by "X," while 20th Century Fox executive Ralph Sall suggested “Sweet Child o' Mine” by then-unknown band "Guns ‘N Roses", thinking it would be cheaper and a possible hit.

[3] Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a half-star out of four, writing: "I praise the production only to suggest that these people should be better employed in worthier projects.

"[4] Vincent Canby of The New York Times gave the film a middling review, calling it a "a breezy, bloody kind of amalgam of The Breakfast Club and A Nightmare on Elm Street...