Why Do I Dream Those Dreams Review: A Weird 1930s Time Capsule

If you have about ten minutes and want to feel like your brain is slowly melting in a warm tub, then yes, Why Do I Dream Those Dreams is probably worth your time. But honestly, if you hate old, creaky shorts where people randomly burst into bird noises, you should probably run far away from this one. 🏃‍♂️

It is basically a very loose, very cheap take on the Rip Van Winkle story. Only this time, Rip's dream is filled with some of the strangest musical acts of the early 1930s.

The whole thing starts with Melvin J. Gibby looking like he fell out of a dusty theater closet. He falls asleep, and then the "vivid dream" starts, which is just an excuse for a bunch of variety acts to happen on a stage that looks like it was decorated with leftover cardboard.

Enter The Varsity Three. They do their little harmony singing thing, and honestly, their sweaters are more interesting than the song itself.

But the real star here—and I use that word very lightly—is Purv Pullen. Purv does these bird whistles that are so loud and piercing they made my cat jump off the couch. 🐱

He just stands there, making these incredibly intense bird sounds while looking directly at the camera with this wide-eyed, slightly terrifying grin. It goes on for what feels like five minutes, though it was probably only sixty seconds.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Why Do I Dream Those Dreams (1934) through its definitive frames.

I kept waiting for some kind of narrative payoff, but this isn't exactly 20,000 Years in Sing Sing. It does not have that kind of dramatic grip, obviously.

Actually, the pacing reminded me a bit of the random stop-and-start energy of Dolly's Vacation, where things just happen because the camera is rolling. The movie just sort of... stops when Rip wakes up.

There is this one shot where Beatrice Hagen is supposed to look ethereal and dreamy, but she just looks incredibly bored. You can see her eyes darting to the side, probably checking if the director is about to yell cut. 🙄

The set design is so flat it actually makes the actors look like they are two-dimensional cardboard cutouts. At one point, a tree in the background noticeably wobbles when someone walks past it.

I love little errors like that. It makes these ancient shorts feel so much more alive than the polished CGI stuff we get blasted with today.

So yeah, it is not a masterpiece by any stretch. Tom Armstrong wrote this, but it feels less like "writing" and more like jotting down a few ideas on the back of a napkin during lunch.

If you are in the mood for something deeply weird and very short, give it a spin. Otherwise, you might find yourself wishing you could sleep for twenty years too.