DREAMSCAPE (1984)

Dennis Quaid stars as a psychic who gets nabbed and taken to a clinic where they "count boners".   Max Von Sydow and Kate Capshaw (the poor man's JoBeth Williams) work there.  They are doing research on using psychics to go inside of, and interact in, other people's dreams.  Christopher Plummer is a government bad guy and Eddie Albert plays the President of the United States, who is having a lot of bad dreams.  George Wendt (Norm on the TV show "Cheers") has a role where he doesn't do much except look kinda like Damon Packard.  There's a little kid, and whenever there's a little kid in these movies I refer to the kid as an "Opie", named after Ron Howard's character in "The Andy Griffith Show".  This "Opie" has bad dreams and the dreams have the best thing about this movie - the Snakeman!  Mostly a cool puppet, also stop-motion animated, it's scary and awesome.  Sometimes you want to ask, "why did that character do that?", but that's okay, try not to think too hard.  It's fun, pretty fast moving and definitely better made than a lot of others.  Director Joseph Ruben had previously directed Quaid in the Meatballs rip-off Gorp (1980).  His next movie was The Stepfather (1987).