Skip to main content

The Castanets

Sometimes I have dreams that are just so out there they are hard to forget. They puzzle me, so I try to piece together where certain elements came from. In this particular case, this dream sounds like the makings of a question for the AV Club in their weekly "Ask the AV Club" section. Meaning, those questions that begin with something along the lines of, "I remember seeing a movie when I was a kid that was from the late-'70s, early-'80s . . ."

About two months ago, shortly after viewing Lost Highway for the first time, I dreamt I watched a movie from the Seventies called The Castanets. With a visual style akin to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre with its dark blues and light browns, its story followed a pair of murderers who went across the South on a killing spree. The murderers' faces are never shown and most of the murders are seen from their perspective, similar to Black Christmas and Halloween. A young Tommy Lee Jones plays a sheriff who's on their trail, but never catches them.

Sounds like an almost-forgettable film from the Seventies featuring a future superstar, right? Maybe, but what's so strange is that it seemed like a real movie, with credits and everything. I literally thought I was watching this on DVD on my TV.

To see if this was real, I poked around Google and the IMDb. Google had nothing, as did IMDb and there's nothing like it on Tommy Lee Jones' resume. So the mystery remains. The only thing that ties in with my life is the title: there's a band with that name and I've received e-mails about them. But I have yet to check them out.

You could say I shouldn't bring this up on the blog and save it for a screenplay or something. Well, it would be impossible to make this film the way I saw it. Plus, how can you have a young Tommy Lee Jones when he was born in 1946? The visual style is the key dealbreaker though; it's something straight out of the Seventies, a decade that was almost three decades ago. You can't make a film look like it came from the Seventies no matter how hard you try.

Never before or since have I had a dream like this. And please don't read into the fact that this dream movie had murder in it. Most of my dreams involve meeting people I've never met in places I've never been to. Just the other night I dreamt I met a friend's father at a house I'd never been to in a part of New Orleans I've never been to.

But I'm curious for those of you that watch a lot of movies. Have you ever had a dream where you swore you were watching a movie?

Comments

Rj said…
A good movie from the 70's about a killing spree is "Badlands". The crimes happen up north though, but in rural areas.

If you want another good movie that has POV in it, check out "Dark Passage" featuring Humprhey Bogart(a personal fave), which experimented with being shot from his perspective for the first part of the film as he is running from the cops.
The Devil's Rejects comes pretty darn close. In fact, Rob Zombie tried to make it all on gear available in the late '70s, but it proved cost-preventative. Which makes me sad, really.
Nunya said…
yes, i once had a dream that was totally a movie. it was not a movie within the dream, the dream itself was the movie. a thriller. it was very long ago, and though i remembered it very well for a long time, i can't remember it anymore. just one scene with me standing on a street corner under the streetlight.

Popular posts from this blog

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Catherine Wheel

Originally posted: Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 Despite managing to release five proper albums, Catherine Wheel was one of those bands that always seemed to slip past the mainstream rock crowd. Yes, they got some nice airplay in their day, but people seem to have forgotten about them. You may hear “Black Metallic” or “Waydown” on a “classic alternative” show on Sirius or XM or maybe even on terrestrial radio, but that’s about it. For me, they were one of most consistent rock bands of the ’90s, meandering through shoegazer, hard rock, space rock and pop rock, all while eluding mainstream pigeonholing. Led by the smooth, warm pipes of vocalist/guitarist Rob Dickinson (cousin of Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson), Catherine Wheel featured Brian Futter on lead guitar, Dave Hawes on bass and Neil Sims on drums. They weren’t a pretty-boy guitar band, but they weren’t a scuzzy bunch of ragamuffins either. Though the band hailed from England, Catherine Wheel found itself more welcome on American air

Best of 2021

  Last year, my attention span was not wide enough to listen to a lot of LPs from start to finish. Too much went on in 2020 to focus on 10-15 albums, so I went with only a couple to spotlight. Well, 2021 was a little better, as I have a list of top four records, and a lot of individual tracks.  (I made a lengthy Spotify playlist ) So, without further ado, here’s my list of favorites of the year: Albums Deafheaven, Infinite Granite (listen) Hands down, my favorite album of the year. I was not sure where Deafheaven would go after another record that brought My Bloody Valentine and death metal fans together, but they beautifully rebooted their sound on Infinite Granite. The divisive goblin vocals are vastly pared-down here, as are the blast beats. Sounding more inspired by Slowdive, the band has discovered a new sonic palette that I hope they explore more of in the future. It’s a welcome revelation. I still love their older material, but this has renewed my love of what these guys do.  J