No one had ever heard about Heather DeLuca until producer Avi Poolos made her crimes the center of New Line’s big-budget Deadly Dreams in 1989. With effects by Screaming Mad George and Rick Baker, this big-budget (by New Line standards) movie had a Hollywood gloss and made buckets of money. But for fans, the faux-­romantic goth atmosphere and the glossy, shallow glitz felt heartless. Deadly Dreams is the Las Vegas of slasher movies. As reporters began to investigate the original crimes, what they turned up was what appeared to be the sad case of a school custodian accused of pedophilia, an unrelated series of suicides, and three accidental deaths that all happened to be linked by nothing more than simple geographic proximity. And as for Heather DeLuca? She seemed to be less of a Final Girl and more someone who had avoided an assault charge with a self-­defense plea. It all looked like a publicity department fabrication created out of whole cloth, and fans felt betrayed. M

—“The Dream King Conspiracy” by Blaze Sullivan, Fangoria, March 2003