Electric Dreams

Year releasted: 1984

by Nathan Rabin
April 12th, 2000

Released during the early days of home computing, when the public's notions of what computers could and couldn't do were poorly defined, 1984's Electric Dreams isn't the first movie to alert audiences to the threatening libidinal energy of computers. For example, 1977's Demon Seed exposed the sexual threat posed by a gigantic box of wires, robotic arms, and bad vibes, but few films explored the subject with as much demented glee as Steve Barron's 1984 film did. Opening with a sequence paying homage to such marvels of early-'80s technology as the calculator watch, Electric Dreams stars Lenny von Dohlen (Twin Peaks) as a nerdy architect who spills champagne on the keyboard of his new home computer, an act that causes it to develop a willful, independent personality. Von Dohlen begins courting his pretty cellist neighbor (Virginia Madsen), but he soon finds his newly empowered computer (wistfully voiced by Bud Cort and named Edgar) falling for her, too. As von Dohlen and Madsen fall in love, aided by music-video-style montage sequences set to music by Culture Club, Heaven 17, and others, Edgar grows increasingly unstable, taking control of everything from von Dohlen's television to his toaster. Tensions escalate, coming to a head in Electric Dreams' thrilling conclusion: Lured by Edgar's chilly rendition of a Bach composition, Madsen wanders into Van Dohlen's apartment. Moved to tears by its soulful work, Madsen lovingly caresses its keys, sending it, and the film, into orgasmic waves of primitively computer-animated ecstasy. Inspired by the computer's intense sexual charisma, Madsen flees and confesses her love to von Dohlen, who returns to his apartment to find his computer vulnerable and defeated. Realizing the futility of his tragic attraction to flesh and blood, Edgar willfully directs his computer soul elsewhere, but not before asking von Dohlen to hold him in one of the most moving displays of man-computer affection ever committed to film. In a final act of love, or vengeance, Edgar then unleashes the Phil Oakey-Giorgio Moroder techno-pop composition "Together In Electric Dreams" upon the innocent people of San Francisco, a fitting end to a cautionary fairy tale from an era before computers were revealed to be mundane, if powerful, tools rather than the long-anticipated arrival of Frankenstein-like man machines.