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. It was produced by Gale Anne Hurd. 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. Bad Dreams was released on April 8, 1988, and grossed $9.8 million at the box office on a budget of $4.5 million. However, it was criticized by horror fans and critics alike because of its similarities to A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), even taking into account that Jennifer Rubin was a supporting actress in A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987). Plot In 1975, a cult called Unity Fields commits mass suicide by fire at the behest of its psychopathic leader, Franklin Harris. 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. Nevertheless, she lies in a coma for thirteen years. 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. Karmen is not sure that Cynthia belongs inside the group's dynamic, but his peer and mentor, Dr. Berrisford, convinces him to help Cynthia to gradually accustom to urban life in a world that has changed a lot in thirteen years. Eventually, Alex sympathizes with Cynthia's story and tries to help her overcome her fears and feelings of estrangement. Cynthia is disturbed by a vision she has of Harris drowning Lana, another patient, in a baptismal ceremony; moments later, Lana is found drowned in a swimming pool. Cynthia's visions become more vivid, and Harris begins to appear to her with his flesh burnt. When her roommate, Miriam, is discharged from the hospital, Cynthia has a vision of Harris in the elevator with her; however, the doors close before she is able to warn her. Miriam is found dead on the sidewalk in front of the hospital, having leapt from a window in what appears to be a suicide. Alex reassures Cynthia