9. Two of the Weirdest Date Movies Ever - Somewhere In Time and What Dreams May Come
Love them or hate them, you have to admit that the fantasy romances at the heart of Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come arent your typical, happy-go-lucky chick-flick fodder. The first, adapted by Matheson from his own Bid Time Return, is a rather solemn, time-tripping love story about a man who basically wills himself through time via hypnosis (this was a favorite mechanism of Mathesons) so he can carry on a affair with a young actress sixty-five years his senior. A then young Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour were the lovers and Christopher Plummer the villain, and despite it being a rather melodramatic affair, Ive always had a soft spot for Somewhere in Time. Its so completely sincere in its mild-mannered kookiness that Im swept up despite myself. Much of that is down to the conviction Matheson injects at the script level. The second, What Dreams May Come, is also based off a popular Matheson novel and was similarly dismissed by most critics and audiences. A few, like Roger Ebert, called it out for having stunning visual design and great imagination, and its true, Vincent Wards art-house take on Mathesons deeply metaphysical story is worth seeing for the sights alone. Basically a more pensive and soul-searching take on the myth of Orpheus, Dreams follows Robin Williams deceased family man as he travels from Heaven to Hell to retrieve the wife he lost. Along the way, Ward and his fx artists and production designers envisioned environs based off Mathesons metaphysical conceit (insisted on as truth in the books foreward) that an individuals mindset and emotional state would dictate the world their soul relocated to after death. As such, we the audience get to indulge in images like the one where Williams wanders around his wifes artwork, the entire landscape dripping with wet paint. Theres also a grim, medieval depiction of Hell, complete with a rough-hewn floor of complaining human heads, one of whom is none other than Werner Herzog. Its a big, crazy mess and like Somewhere in Time, its not usually the kind of love story you see in Hollywood.