Title: Deathdream
Year of Release: 1974
Director: Bob Clark
Length: 88 mins
Starring: Richard Backus, John Marley, Lynn Carlin, Anya Ormsby
Also known as Dead of Night and, The Night Walker, Whispers, King of the Grave, Night Walk, The Veteran, and The Night Andy Came Home (possibly making it a frontrunner for some kind of award for the film with the most titles), this brooding, mid-seventies masterpiece produced and directed by Bob Clark (who later shot to fame with the immortal frat comedy Porky’s before being killed in traffic accident in 2007) was ‘inspired’ by the classic 1902 WW Jacobs short story The Monkey’s Paw. It tells the story of Andy Brooks (Backus), an American GI serving in Vietnam. When he is shot by a sniper and falls to the ground dying, he hears his mother’s voice reminding him he promised to come home. The family is informed of Andy’s death, but sometime later he turns up on their doorstep, still wearing his uniform. The family assume the death notice was a mistake, and are elated to have Andy back. However, he just doesn’t seem the same. Something is definitely off. He is withdrawn, grumpy and sullen, and has taken to hanging out in the local graveyard. The family put this weird behaviour down to PTSD (though they don’t refer to it as such as it wasn’t a widely acknowledged condition back in the seventies) and assume Andy will return to his normal self eventually. When the father Charles (Marley) mentions that they thought Andy had died he replies, “I did,” which should have been a massive clue. After a brief awkward silence, everyone assumes Andy was joking and bursts into fits of giggles. Of course, we the viewers know that Andy wasn’t joking.
The turning point comes when Andy brutally strangles the family pet in front of a bunch of terrified kids. Something guaranteed to stop any party in its tracks. Whilst drowning his sorrows at a bar, Charles discusses his son’s problems with a doctor friend. During an impromptu check up at his office, the doctor is unable to detect a heartbeat or pulse. Before he can say, “By jove, I am unable to detect a heartbeat or pulse!” Andy swiftly kills him, and uses a syringe to inject some of the doctor’s blood into his arm suggesting that Andy has been turned into some kind of vampire that needs the blood of others for sustenance. Things come to a head when Andy goes to a drive-in with some friends, feasts on his date, and is revealed to be the monster he has become. He is chased off and returns home one more time for a final showdown with his father, which doesn’t go as expected. The climax sees him return to a grave he’d dug himself. Poignantly, in some versions, the final scene shows his mother then telling police, “Andy’s home. Some boys never come home.”
There’s a lot to unpack here. You can make a case for looking at Deathdream from any number of angles and drawing any number of conclusions. It focuses heavily on the often fractious relationship between father and son and the role of the doting mother (played here by Academy Award-nominated Lynn Carlin) who will always protect her offspring no matter what he does. Yep, even if he turns into a murderous bastard. This sparks yet more questions. Did he always have these tendencies or did the army bring them out? The analogies are easy to see, as is the obvious refrain of being careful what you wish for. What I found most interesting is the role the Vietnam War plays in the film, which could have been any war, really. At its core, Deathdream is a study of the human psyche and what the trauma of war can do to it, not to mention the common military practice of making monsters out of men. This, I suppose, is necessary in order to make them effective soldiers. But what happens when they are sent home and expected to fit seamlessly back into society? It has long been suggested that historically, not enough has been done to help ex-servicemen and women assimilate and mental health issues are often seen as signs of weakness completely at odds with the macho environment they just left. Deathdream, I think, shows us what happens when ‘monsters’ come home.
These themes are explored further in an exhaustive contemporary review on Canuxploiation.com which says, “Although effective as a flat-out horror film, Deathdream was also one of the first films to be critical of the Vietnam War, focusing on the lingering effects of the conflict on soldiers returning to America. The stress disorders and drug addiction that many veterans experienced are alluded to, but more importantly, this film is filled with sense that the war has changed not only Andy, but the entire country.” Taking a more pragmatic approach, Glenn Erickson of DVD Talk wrote, “The reason Deathdream works is its superior dramatic staging. The actors are excellent, especially John Marley and Lynn Carlin.”
Deathdream seems to be undergoing something of a renaissance in recent years, accumulating an 83% positive rating on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes and being spoken about at length (and favourably) on influential sites like Macabre Daily, Wicked Horror and Dead Central, whose only complaint was that there was, “Too much horror in one film.”
Trivia Corner:
Richard Backus was cast as Andy because he was able to create a ‘silent stare of intense hatred’ on demand for the casting agent, the creepy facial expression coming into play frequently during filming. Christopher Walken, who ironically went on to make his name in Vietnam flick The Deer Hunter, was also considered for the role.
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