Hollywood is all over the subject of dreams and you can understand why. In dreams, you can get away with a lot of plot devices that wouldn’t be believable in the conscious world. Call it a dream and bam! Anything goes.

With that in mind, here’s a short list of movies about dreams that you should watch before you go to bed.

“Nightmare on Elm Street”: In this one, a dead and disfigured fellow named Freddy finds a way to terrorize the town’s young people by invading their dreams. The movie is comical in a lot of ways, but it’s also terrifying in its way. Freddy has complete mastery of dreams, after all, so if he gets you in there, you’ve got no hope at all. Hence the tagline: ‘Whatever you do, don’t fall asleep.’ I remember laughing like hell over this one when I watched it as a kid. I wasn’t laughing at bedtime, though. I had to stay awake to keep Freddy Krueger out of my head and Red Bull hadn’t even been invented yet.

“Inception”: Here’s another one featuring a group of dream masters who use their powers to steal the thoughts of sleepers or to put crazy ideas in their heads. Sounds delightful. I haven’t seen this one yet. Hopefully some sleepy hero learns the lost art of dream Kung Fu and kicks butt all over the . . . I don’t know . . . frontal lobes or something.

“Dreamscape”: This one is way back from the 1980s and was a good companion flick to “Nightmare on Elm Street.” Once again, we find a pair of jabronis who have been empowered with the ability to infiltrate dreams of other people. Dennis Quaid is more or less the good guy here. He only uses his ability for gambling and womanizing. On the other side of the cerebellum is some goofy little dude who is on a mission to use his dream abilities to assassinate the president. I won’t tell you how it ends because I don’t remember.

“The Cell”: A psychologist uses a scientific gadget to enter the dreaming mind of a deranged killer, finding among other things doll-like replicas of his victims. I’ve never seen this one, but the line “doll-like replicas of his victims” is chilling, so I’m putting on my list.

“Wizard of Oz”: Don’t argue with me, son. Dorothy totally dreamed the whole thing. Who can blame her? Did you see the size of that poppy field she rolled around in?