Rob Underhill’s “Fever Dreams” began as a series of episodes for a “Creepshow” type anthology that never got made. Largely written by producer Al Julian (who appears in three of the four episodes (a la another anthology series that inspired him “The Alfred Hitchcock Show”), it’s been playing on and off unchoosy film festivals for several years.
The stories, written with his son Paul Julian, echo the kind of B-movie morality tales that were the specialty of B-level pulp publishers E.C. Comics. B-level versions of a B-ievel source material may require a whole new sub-basement category, though. And these pieces, confoundingly shot by Aravind Rabupathi (who is either too close or too low), seem a step above student film.
The first of them, “The Agent,” concerns an overworked agent (Don Sill) under pressure to come up with horror scripts for a show called “Chiller.” He’s either an alcoholic or has a compulsion for not finishing the bottles he starts, if his office and home decor are any indication.
And though he keeps tossing the scripts he says are terrible, he won’t take a look at the soiled one brought in by a guy (Jeff Briggs) dressed like a hobo for Holloween (in a fedora and rumpled trench coach hobos stopped wearing in the 60s). In fact, his character name is “The Bum.”
When the agent finally spies a couple of lines in it, he sees dialog and stage direction of what he’s doing and muttering to himself immediately beforehand. When he chucks it in a drawer next to a gun, we can clearly see what’s going to happen without looking at the prognosticating pages.