Dead of Night

Year: 1972

Duration: 01:28:03

Directed by: Bob Clark

Actors: John Marley, Lynn Carlin, Richard Backus

Language: English

Country: Canada / UK

Also known as: Night Walk, The Night Andy Came Home, The Veteran, Muerte de la noche, Deathdream, Soif de sang, The Night Walker, Crimen en la noche, Painajainen, Le mort-vivant, Kynigito thanatou, Halálos álom, La morte dietro la porta, Mannen är farlig, Skräckens stad, Deathdream, Whispers

Description:

At the height of an unnamed war  (presumably Vietnam), the Brooks family finds its tranquil dinner interrupted by news that their golden boy son, Andy (Richard Backus), has died in combat. The father, Charles (John Marley), finds the blow harder to bear when his wife, Christine (Lynn Carlin), immediately slips into a denial bordering on insanity and pleads for her son’s return. Much to everyone’s surprise, Andy shortly turns up on the doorstep in his uniform, looking quite alive but apparently shell shocked. Andy ignores visitors and refuses to talk about the war; more shockingly, he even kills his beloved dog in front of the neighborhood kids. Charles packs Andy off to the family doctor, who makes the horrific discovery that Andy’s vital functions are completely nonexistent. Before the doc can tell anyone else, zombie-Andy stabs the physician to death and siphons off his blood into his own undead bloodstream. Soon the police begin to interrogate Charles about the murder, but Andy takes off with some friends for a night at the drive-in no one will ever forget.

Scripted under the title The Veteran, shopped around as The Night Walker, premiered as Dead of Night (the title used for the source print on this DVD), reissued as Deathdream, and shown on TV as The Night Andy Came Home (whew!), this unsettling fusion of post-war drama and bloodcurdling drive-in chills is the vital but least-seen middle installment of two different trilogies for its director and writer. Helmer Bob Clark and writer Alan Ormsby first joined forces on the 11-day, Florida-shot cult favorite, Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things, and stayed in the Sunshine State for this far more polished, serious effort. Clark went on to direct the seminal slasher classic Black Christmas, while Ormsby penned and directed the Ed Gein-inspired Deranged. All of these films share the same queasy, chilling atmosphere, aided by nerve-wracking, experimental scores by the underrated Carl Zittrer. Deathdream is an excellent bridge film between Children and Black Christmas, carrying over the decaying, grimy atmosphere and gallows humor of the former while introducing the quirky, nicely shaded character studies and subtle eye for detail of the latter. (Note the amusing commentary of the copious background posters and public notices, which would later be put to brilliant effect in Black Christmas.) On its own terms Deathdream works beautifully as a spare, efficient shocker with a potent undercurrent of loss and melancholy over the real-life atrocities inflicted on everyday families. Still best remembered for waking up with a horse’s head in The Godfather, Marley is more subdued than usual as the grieving father and forms a solid emotional anchor for the film, while Cassavetes vet Carlin is believable as the distraught mother and pulls off one hell of a scene at the film’s climax. Other strong points include the all-too-vivid make-up effects, which avoid overt gore but still raise the hackles; Ormsby and a very green Tom Savini were responsible for the effects chores here and pulled off some of the scariest moments in zombie cinema. The sight of Andy during the notorious drive-in scene, for example, is not easily forgotten.

As well as it holds up, Deathdream still has a few flaws. The incongruous wartime opening (with a different actor confusingly playing Andy, for reasons explained in the DVD commentary) is all-too-obviously shot on the cheap in the Florida woods, but more importantly, the character of Andy is kept at arm’s length from the beginning of the film, keeping empathy with him at a minimum. We’re left to assume that he must have been a great guy based on what everyone else says about him, but Clark’s decision to present Andy as completely hollowed-out keeps audience involvement with his plight at a minimum. It’s not a crippling flaw, but had Clark decided to allow a few flickers of the former Andy to appear at the beginning, his subsequent descent into utter rot and savagery at the end might have packed even more of a wallop.

One side note: Horror literature fans will recognize that this film is basically an updated riff on that old chestnut, W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” which was filmed by the BBC in its annual series of ghostly Christmas stories. The tale went on to inspire a number of other horror stories, including Stephen King’s Pet Sematary; however, the most frightening variation to date remains Richard Matheson’s “Bobby,” the final story in a 1977 TV horror anthology entitled – coincidence or not? – Dead of Night..

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