Electric Dreams: The Movie DVD Has Forgotten

D.C. Cab, Girls Just Want To Have Fun, My Bodyguard, Just One of the Guys, Midnight Madness:   That was just five examples of semi-obscure 80's movies that have made the leap to DVD over the years.  But why no love for Electric Dreams?  It's a fun, music-filled, geeky amalgamation of science fiction, technology and romance.  With our current economic climate, rising gas prices, depletion of the ozone layer, and lower standardized test scores, we can't afford NOT to have this classic 80's flick on DVD.

(NOTE:  Maybe it's time to remind readers that the this is an American blog.  Yes, I am aware Electric Dreams has been released on DVD in Europe and surrounding regions.  But I'm just a "Region 1" consumer with  "Region 2" aspirations.)

Electric Dreams tells the story of a dorky architect named Miles (Lenny Von Dohlen) who purchases a home computer to help him construct buildings out of jigsaw puzzle pieces (trust me, it makes a little more sense in the context of the movie).   In his spare time, he pines after upstairs neighbor and cello player, Madeline (Virginia Madsen).  Since having a computer in the 80's was the same as taking an unspoken vow of celibacy, he hides it from her.  All is going well with the ruse until he hacks into his company's mainframe and pours champagne all over it when it overheats.  Everyone knows that electricity and alcohol are the basic elements of the creation of life (take THAT, God!) and home computers are no exception.  Soon, the newly self-aware computer (who adapts the voice of Bud Cort for some reason) also becomes infatuated with Madeline. Even though it'll be almost 20 years until USB-powered genitalia would come on the market, it stops at nothing to sabotage Miles and win her for itself.

Hot "Girl-on-Computer" action!

While Electric Dreams drives to be a fairly straightforward  "love-triangle" romantic comedy, it's that quirky computer that real sells the movie to techno geeks such as myself.  You think your brand-new computer is the pinnacle of innovation and power?  Rubbish, my friend.  Pure, unadulterated rubbish!  The Pinecone computer (1984 model) has the following capabilities:

• Interacting with appliances and door locks
• Downloading terabytes of data over a modem in mere seconds
• 3-D modeling
• Paging you while you're at a concert, even when you turn the beeper off.
• Witty banter
• Emulating the musical stylings of Culture Club
• Viewing and recording live television
• Love
• Revenge
• Demonic Possession
• Self-destruction
• Full-color monitor

I bet your "oh so powerful" [snicker] computer can't do any of that.  Can it even write love songs while you're on out on a date?  I didn't think so!  Trash that shit!

Why would you hook up your toothbrush to the computer? That's just dumb!

The movie's injection of rock video into the plot, meanwhile, appeals to a completely separate 80's demographic.  To watch Electric Dreams is to watch MTV before the record companies and drunken frat boys told them what to air, with little snippets of story shoehorned in.  Do you like Giorgio Moroder, Philip Oakley, Heaven 17, Jeff Lynne, and Helen Terry? Then you have the scariest record collection imaginable.

Twenty-six years have passed since the release of this movie and fourteen years since DVD has come on the market.  Yet, still no Electric Dreams.  It's as if the people at MGM were ashamed they ever put their name on this film and are actively sweeping it under the rug like it was their own personal "Star Wars Holiday Special".  But there are those of us who still enjoy the sweet combination of pop music montages and "retro-futuristic computer fairytales" and would like to see this quirky film shown the digital treatment. Maybe then I can watch it, realize it wasn't as great as I thought and shut the hell up about it.

Allow me to play you out with an Electric Dreams "twofer":