- After she's been attacked in her apartment, Cathy starts reliving the event in her dreams. She seeks help at a sleep disorder research center, but in doing so she encounters some unexpected results ...—Homme A. Piest <piest@pobox.leidenuniv.nl>
- Struggling musician Kathy Gardner (Kristy Mcnichol) has had her life ruled by her father (Paul Shenar). Her boyfriend (Justin Dees) offers her to join his jazz combo, which she accepts. Later, when moving into her new apartment, she's startled by Danny (Joseph Culp), looking for his ex-girlfriend. He later returns, using his spare keys, and assaults Kathy. Unable to sleep due to nightmares of the incident, Kathy's approached by Michael Hansen (Ben Masters), who's studying the dream movements of animals. However his experimental "DREAM" therapy Induces Kathy to act out her nightmares and darkest fears.—Barry J,"Gravesend" Kent UK.
- Flutist Kathy Gardner was raised in privilege in Washington, DC by her wealthy, domineering, widowed father, Ben Gardner. In one of her first acts of independence from her father, Kathy decides to join Kevin McCann's jazz combo for a long term club gig in New York City, the two who embark on a relationship, rather than follow Ben's plan of accompanying him on a extended trip to Japan. In New York, Kathy is physically assaulted in her apartment late one night by an intruder. While Kathy is already prone to vivid dreams, usually fantasies on something in her reality, those dreams change to nightmares, always of the events around the assault. Looking for some relief in no longer being able to sleep without the trauma of the nightmare, Kathy turns to many different professionals for help, including a sleep clinic. While the administration of the sleep clinic tells her that it is not a counseling service that can provide assistance to her, Dr. Michael Hansen, a low level researcher at the clinic who overhears her story, believes that he may be able to help her, despite his research to date only being on animal subjects. While Kathy does get some relief from Michael's treatment, she, in turn, begins to trust him implicitly as he gets further into his experimentation on her, which leads to a potentially deadly situation as Kathy's dreams/nightmares blur with reality, especially as it relates to one specific item associated with the assault.—Huggo
- Kevin McCann (Justin Dears), a conservatory music teacher, praises Kathy Gardner's (Kristy McNichol) flute solo and invites her to join his jazz quartet in New York City for the summer, offering a friend's Greenwich Village apartment that she can sublet. Kathy declines because she and her father plan to travel to Japan.
At a concert with her father, Ben (Paul Shenar), and friends, Claire (Gayle Hunnicutt) and Martin (John McMartin), Kathy stretches the truth and says she has been given a scholarship to attend a master jazz improvisation class in Manhattan and will also have the opportunity to give concerts. She claims the class starts in a week, and Claire tells her not to pass up the opportunity. On the way home, Martin warns Claire not to interfere. Claire claims she was only trying to be supportive. Martin responds that her support did not help Kathy's mother and it will not help Kathy. Claire tells him that she does not regret her actions. Ben's possessiveness made his wife seek out lovers. When Ben threw her out, she got drunk and was killed in an accident. Claire blames Ben completely for her death. Later at home, Kathy tells her father she will be happy to go to Japan, but he mulls over the situation, and gives his permission for her to go to New York City.
A few days later, Kathy moves into the sublet and accidentally meets Danny (Joseph Culp), looking for his girlfriend, Maggie, the previous tenant.
Kathy's first club date is a success and Kevin accompanies her back to the Village apartment. Kevin breaks some mugs showing off his limited juggling skills. After they clean up the broken shards of pottery, they kiss and make love. In the morning, Kathy announces that Kevin must leave before her father comes for breakfast. As Kevin leaves, he tells her they should be living together.
Kathy has a peaceful dream set in the Victorian era in which she and Kevin, wearing a straw hat, enjoy a boat ride on the lake. She wakes to the sound of sirens in the street, warms up some milk in the kitchen, and notices that her front door is unlocked. When she attempts to reset the chain, Danny appears and dangles a set of keys he claims his girlfriend Maggie gave him. He holds a switchblade to Kathy's chin, and announces that he is going to "fuck her," but wants to know where Maggie is. When she claims not to know, he threatens to hurt her. She throws the boiling milk in his face and grabs his knife and stabs him in the back.
Later, as the police interrogate Kathy, her father arrives and asks for a few minutes with his daughter. After hearing about her ordeal earlier, he advises her to change her story because she stabbed an unarmed blind man in the back, and the police may not believe it was in self-defense. He tells her to say that she blacked out and when she regained consciousness, she was standing over Danny holding a knife. She knows it was self-defense, but she complies. After Kathy finishes the police report, her father temporarily sets her up in a hotel room. Soon, Kathy announces that she is going to finish her master class and returns to her apartment. Kevin agrees to move in.
At night, sirens outside wake Kathy up. She walks into the kitchen and hears clanking pipes. Later, she wakes from a nightmare about Danny, and Kevin comforts her. She visits a sleep doctor who claims her nightmares will subside with time but refuses to write her a prescription for sleeping pills. She visits a sleep research center seeking relief, but the doctor thinks she would have better luck seeing a psychiatrist. After overhearing her conversation, another researcher named Dr. Michael Hansen (Ben Masters) admits that although his research normally involves animals, he thinks he can help her. In his lab, he attaches electrodes to Kathy's body. After he calms her, Dr. Hansen records her verbal recollection of her nightmare. Afterward, he shows Kathy the data he collected and is struck by how vivid her dream state is.
At the club, a record producer named Vaughn Capisi (Matthew Long) approaches Kevin about recording an album in London, England.
At night, Kathy uses Michael's technique as she goes to sleep. She remembers her nightmare out loud and stops it at a safe point. She rolls over to look at Kevin, but sees Danny instead. When he grabs her face, she slaps him repeatedly. As she wakes, Kevin is in bed next to her.
The next day, Kathy recounts her experience to Dr. Hansen, who wants to refer her to a psychiatrist. She protests that she cannot start treatment with a new doctor because she has to go to London to work on an album. She asks Dr. Hansen to help her again. This time he gives her a technique to make changes in her nightmare. As he observes Kathy sleeping, he watches for signs of distress. In Kathy's dream, she escapes her captor, but then her dream becomes a nightmare. Dr. Hansen wrestles her to the floor and she wakes up. He asks her about the original attack, and she recalls how Danny dropped his knife. She picked it up and stabbed him. She confesses that she never felt so good as when she stabbed Danny. Dr. Hansen assures her what happened is a normal response. Kathy agrees to another session under the electrodes. This time, Kathy's nightmare switches to her Victorian era dream of boating on the lake. Both she and Dr. Hansen are happy that she is able to change the outcome of her dream.
Soon, Kathy visits her father in Washington, D. C., before she travels to London. When her father refuses to see her after learning of her plans, she returns to New York City early to find Kevin in bed with another woman. She makes an unplanned visit to the sleep lab. She discovers that Dr. Hansen has taken a drug to help him act out his dreams, and she has caught him in the middle of an experiment. When he sees her, he thinks he might be dreaming until he touches her shoulder and determines she is real. He rewinds the videotape of his experiment and realizes the drug stops the normal paralysis that occurs during dreaming, but he cannot remember his dream.
Kathy volunteers to wake him at the right moments so he can document his dreams, but it becomes clear that his dreams are not vivid enough to break the paralysis. When he explains that he has submitted a proposal to do the experiment officially, Kathy agrees to take the drug and undergo the experiment. In her dream state, Kathy wakes up after hearing the siren and goes to the kitchen. She believes her dream stops and she is back in the sleep lab, telling Dr. Hansen the experiment is not working. She rises from the bed and bangs on the locked door. Soon, she discovers a menacing-looking Dr. Hansen in the room with her. He grabs her and has a scalpel in his hand. She breaks free, but he pushes her down on the bed and fondles her. She struggles as he rapes her. She wakes up, blames Dr. Hansen for not stopping the experiment sooner, and leaves. Dr. Hansen realizes that he forgot to give her an antidote that would restore her body chemistry. Dr. Hansen visits Kathy at her Village apartment, but Kathy is already on a plane to London.
In the hotel in London, Kathy wanders the hallway in a dream state and realizes that Dr. Hansen forgot the antidote. When she is unable to reach him, she calls her father. Meanwhile, Dr. Hansen travels to London to save Kathy. Ben Gardner's secretary tells Kathy that her father is in London and she meets him at his hotel. When Kathy tells her father about her experiences with sleep doctors and the sleep lab, Ben Gardner's solution is to get her the sleeping pills that were first recommended. It will buy them some time until they return home and can sort out her problems. Dr. Hansen telephones Capisi recording studio and discovers that Kathy is with her father.
As Kathy waits for her father to return, she goes to sleep and dreams she is in her childhood bedroom. She hears a knock at the door and sees a lamp from the Village apartment. She walks down a long corridor and stops at a fruit basket with a knife on the table. She puts the knife in her pocket. She opens the door for her father, but it is the Village apartment door. Her father greets her in a tuxedo carrying her prescription. The prescription turns into a flower rose and her father disappears. Danny appears before her with a switchblade. Her father hands her the pills, but she sees Danny dangling the apartment keys. She stabs Danny with the knife hidden in her pocket, runs to the balcony, and crouches on the railing. Dr. Hansen watches Kathy from the balcony of a neighboring room. She sees a bird flying and reaches out to join it, but Hansen catches her before she plummets to her death. They hug and Kathy smiles back at her father.
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