Usually identified for her work in horror and exploitation films, Linda Blair also made a few unusual detours throughout her career. Released straight to video the same year she made Repossessed and Zapped Again!, the Australian production Dead Sleep is more in keeping with Blair's dramatic made-for-TV work earlier on like Born Innocent and Sarah T. - Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic, essentially a tale of nefarious medical malpractice spiced up with a third act that goes into thriller territory. It's also one of only two directorial efforts for onetime cinematographer Alec Mills (who shot both of the Timothy Dalton 007 films), made back to back with his eccentric slasher film, Blood Moon.

At the Elysian Fields private hospital, new American nurse Maggie Healy (Blair) is impressed with the head physician, Dr. Heckett (Bonner), who espouses the merits of lengthy, deep induced sleep to cure a wide range of psychological and physical ailments. The patients are kept in a very Coma-like room which should be a clue right away that something's amiss, and the treatment is augmented with intense electroconvulsive methods that will supposedly help speed their process along. Despite assurances that anyone involved can be awakened and sent home whenever their loved ones desire, multiple people start suffering from severe effects including death -- which puts Maggie's own life in jeopardy when she tries to stand up against her boss.

Apart from some topless nudity, this one very much fits within the template of a made-for-TV thriller with Blair giving her all in a solid performance that escalates to a lurid finale. The whole thing is ostensibly inspired by 24 real-life deaths at Chelmsford Hospital in Sydney during the '60s and '70s, though it's been clearly fictionalized and modernized complete with a soapy subplot involving Blair's love life. This being an '80s Aussie production, it also comes with the obligatory Brian May music score and has enough weirdness to make it a curious footnote in the Ozploitation catalog.

Unfortunately it wasn't treated all that well over the years with a crummy, very outdated master used for its sole U.S. DVD from Artisan. Finally it did get a sterling presentation in 2025 as a Blu-ray special edition from Severin, complete with a fresh and very colorful scan provided by Studiocanal. The DTS-HD MA English 2.0 mono audio sounds good and also has optional English SDH subtitles. In addition to a short and amusing promo trailer (also in HD, incredibly), you get two new featurettes starting with "Sleep Demon" (15m22s) in which Janet Fife-Yeomans, co-author of Deep Sleep: Harry Bailey And The Scandal Of Chelmsford, breaks down the real-life case, its importance in Australian culture, and the elements that were picked up and used in this film. Then the visual essay "The Right Side Of The Stethoscope" (16m18s) contextualizes this film within the larger framework of studies of medical abuses and attempts at justice ranging from The Verdict to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest among many others.

Reviewed on July 26, 2025