Deathdream [DVD] [1974] [Region 1] [US Import] [NTSC]

Deathdream (AKA Dead Of Night, The Night Andy Came Home) is a great little intelligent horror film.
Whilst George Romero was scrabbling around for another good idea to follow on from his seminal, brutal and scathing Night Of The Living Dead, Bob Clark seized the opportunity to amplify the sense of disillusionment and nihilism of Romero's masterpiece with this tale of an ordinary boy who comes back from Vietnam to his family profoundly altered. You see, Andy's dead and has become a murderous ghoul who needs to inject human blood to stave off the inevitable necrosis and preserve his boyish good looks.
His arrival as a monosyllabic shadow of his former self perplexes his family (who had been told he was dead), then leads to a total disintegration of their relationships with each other.
Deathdream plays with themes of the effect of Vietnam on combatants, the generational strife their trauma created with older Americans who didn't distinguish Nam from WW2 and Korea, the drug addiction some returning GI's succumbed to and a ghastly Oedipal power struggle between Andy's overprotective mother and more distant father.
A great cast plays out this melodrama with conviction, and it's all wrapped in a delicious horror coating with Andy slowly becoming more menacing (at one point he strangles the family dog in front of some neighborhood kids) homicidal and zombielike (great make up effects by Tom Savini in his first film outing.)
A real gem, it feels harsh to only give 4 stars, but I'm doing so in recognition of the fact that grainy low budget early 70's Nam allegories aren't going to appeal to everyone.

In Vietnam, a young soldier called Andy is gunned down and killed. His family receive a letter informing them of his death, but his mother completely refuses to believe the news. Later that night Andy's mother rocks back and forth saying she knows he's still alive, as he promised he wouldn't die. The family wake in the middle of the night when they hear noises coming from downstairs, they soon discover Andy has come home apparently unharmed. Putting the letter of his death down to a clerical error, they celebrate his return. Over the next few days, it starts to become clear that something is very wrong with Andy.

Richard Backus is chilling as Andy, he's so cold and detached it's disturbing. This was his very first acting role and it's hard to imagine anyone else in the role, though I believe Christopher Walken was the director's first choice. For some reason he didn't have a particularly good career, and seems to have gave up acting in 1992. John Marley adds some real star quality as Andy's father, Charles. It's his character that first starts to suspect that something's wrong with Andy, he's torn between the love he has for his son and the horror of what he's becoming. Marley was nominated for an Oscar the year before for his performance in Love Story, he also appeared in The Godfather earlier the same year as Deathdream. Lynn Carlin is also excellent as Andy's mother, Christine. No matter what Andy does, she absolutely refuses to believe that anything is wrong, this leads to some really good scenes between herself and Marley. Carlin was another who was Oscar nominated for her film debut in 1968 called Faces, a film in which she starred along side her Deathdream co-star John Marley. Deathdream is brilliantly directed by Bob Clark, this was his second film in as many years that he made from an Alan Ormsby screenplay, the first being the rather boring but entertaining Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. A few years later Clark would go on to make his masterpiece, the outstanding horror film, Black Christmas. He later made the Sherlock Holmes/Jack The Ripper classic Murder By Decree, the teen sex classic Porky's and one of the most loved Christmas films of all time with A Christmas Story. He then made the Dolly Parton/Sylvester Stallone film Rhinestone, it's a terrible film and was a huge flop and almost ended his career. He never recovered and sadly was making films like Baby Geniuses and The Karate Dog before his untimely death in 2007 when he and his son were killed in a car crash. I believe Clark is one of the most underrated director's of the 70s and early 80s, and Deathdream is one of his best.

The music is fantastic in Deathdream, very few horror film scores have been as effective as the one here, his following film Black Christmas also had a great score. The music composer was Carl Zittrer and he did the music on most of Bob Clark's films up to and including A Christmas Story in '83. There isn't much blood and gore as the film chooses to build the atmosphere through great acting and music, but when effects are needed as the film reaches it's conclusion, they're done extremely well. The makeup department on the film consisted of screenwriter Alan Ormsby and a very young Tom Savini who had just returned from Vietnam as a combat cameraman. Savini is one of the great makeup artists and special effects men around, Deathdream was the film that gave him his first shot and he soon went on to achieve a great level of fame and success, especially for his work with George A. Romero. Deathdream also has quite a bit of humour in it, Black Christmas did the same thing but was more successful in using it. It sometimes feels a little forced at times and over the top, but the rest of the film is so bleak and chilling that it's definitely needed just to break the tension now and again.

The dvd from Blue Underground is very good, the picture quality isn't as good as a lot of their films, but that'll be down to the source material rather than a fault from Blue Underground. It's very grainy in parts of the film, in other scenes there seems to be some type of pulsating where it goes lighter to darker, there's probably a name for it but i'm not the most technical of viewer. It looks absolutely fine most of the way through, now and again it even looks superb. The dvd is region free so will play on UK machines, why Amazon can never list the actual region code on US dvd's is very annoying. The film has some good extras, there's a 10 minute interview with Tom Savini who always gives entertaining interviews, a 12 minute interview with Richard Backus which was good, alternate opening titles, extended ending sequence, theatrical trailer, and poster & stills gallery. The real stand out is the 2 commentary tracks, the first from director/producer Bob Clark, the second with screenwriter Alan Ormsby. Both are very informative and a good listen. Despite all the extras there are no subtitles.

Deathdream was unavailable in the UK until recently when it was relesed under the title Dead Of Night, it's been released as a double feature with Clark and Ormsby's earlier film Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things. That doesn't have any of the extras that are on this version, so this would be the version to go for.

!!!WARNING. MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS!!!

When the Brooks family sit round the dinner table, a false jockularity masking an unspoken fear, there is a knock at the door. A knock that they had been dreading for some time. Charlie and Christine Brooks are informed that their son Andy has been killed whilst fighting in the Vietnam War. Christine just cannot believe that this is the truth, and her prayers are answered when late into a dark night a visitor comes to the Brooks' house. Andy has returned from the war, but soon the celebrations turn sour, as Andy is a very different person from the one that left to fight for his country.
'Be careful what you wish for' seems to be the moral of this superb low budget 70's horror film, a highly succesful updating of Poe's 'The Monkey's Paw'. This is a tremendously adult affair , made back in the era when horror films were made to scare the audience rather than to aim a knowing post modern nudge towards the jaded audience. It's a film that explores the reactions of middle America towards the Vietnam conflict through the eyes of this one family and their fragile emotions towards the return of the prodigal son. Long hidden tensions within the family erupt to the surface when unpalatible home truths come to light.
John Marley is excellent as the tortured father Charlie who fears the worst but cannot bring himself to act on his fears. Lynn Carlin is equally good as the mother who wishes her son back. The real star however is Richard Backus who is terrific as the haunted, angry Andy, a difficult part that requires a lot of physical presence and non-verbal expression of emotions.
The two standout sequences are the scenes that bookend the film. The afore-mentioned family reunion, and the horrific climatic scenes at the drive-in. There is also a great bit in the middle of the film, where Andy delas very abruptly with the family pet in front of an audience of incredulous children.
There are plenty of great extras on this Region 0 Blue Underground release. Two entertaining commentaries from director Bob Clark and script writer Alan Ormsby, and some entertaining featurettes too.
An essential purchase for fans of 1970's horror, or just horror film fans in general. 5 out of 5