Michael_Elliott
Dead of Night (1974) *** (out of 4)Bob Clark's somber horror tale about parents Charles and Christine Brooks (John Marley, Lynn Carlin) who learn that their son Andy (Richard Backus) was killed in Vietnam. A short time later they are shocked to see that Andy has returned home. The mother accepts her son but the father seems to think that there's something not quite right.Clark's DEAD OF NIGHT, also known as DEATHDREAM, is one of the more unique horror films from this era because not only does it work as a horror movie but it's also quite effective as a drama. Obviously being 1974, the Vietnam war was still a hot topic and the film's screenplay by Alan Ormsby perfectly borrows from The Monkey's Paw story while also throwing in a few twists and of course there's the updating of the setting.I think Clark deserves a lot of credit for the visual style and atmosphere that he created for the film. The film really does a great job at capturing this small town and I really loved the dark look that he gave it. Obviously this is a fairly sad story about a dead soldier returning home to his parents and Clark's direction is right on the mark. The story is told in a rather slow fashion but this too really helps build up the atmopshere and the overall look of the film.Another thing that really works well is the drama. Seeing how this dream come true of having their son return to them turn into a nightmare as it slowly rips the family apart is perfect drama and every bit of it works. Even better is the fact that we're treated to some really fine performances including both Carlin and Backus as the mother and son. The real standout is Marley who is simply wonderful as the father who knows that the person living with them isn't really his son.DEAD OF NIGHT certainly has some flaws as it's not the perfect movie but, considering the budget, Clark was really able to build a rather dark and twisted tale.
MisterWhiplash
This is technically a "zombie" movie, but it's one that leans more on allegory than most I can think of. It's about a young soldier, played by Richard Backus, who at the very beginning gets shot and killed in Vietnam. And, appropriately, his family gets notice from the army that he died in combat. The father (John Marley) and his daughter (Anya Ormsby) give their response of immediate grief, but the mother, played by Lynn Carlin, is refusing it, it can't be so, no way no how, they're *lying*, in fact. That very same night, the son, Andy, returns home... but as WHAT, you may ask?How did Andy come back to life? No answer, and there's no effort on the part of Bob Clark, the director (one of his very few entries in this genre), and Alan Ormsby the writer (I assume related to the actress playing the daughter by the way), to explain this even in the brief 'radioactivity/satellites/voodoo' or so on. It's meant, I think, to be a pure metaphor for the time: this was Vietnam, of course, when Americans, as well as many more Vietnamese, were being killed by the thousands, and if people did come back they often were never the same again. Andy coming back to the family as a symbolic zombie first - he talks to his 'so happy to see you!' parents and sister in a plain monotone, with Backus looking like you sucked any of the life out of a Montgomery Clift type of actor - and then as a 'real' one, as the horror comes from Andy having to kill people and take their blood (this latter part reminded me of Martin, the Romero film, but that's another story altogether so let's not go there).I think that there's a good amount of, frankly, cheese to this picture. There's a scene where, to show that Andy is fully disconnected from humanity when some local boys come around and the dog is bothering him and them, he picks up the dog (this is after badly testing his 'strength' against one of the boys) and strangles it to death. And while the intention is for it to be a serious moment, it's purely laughable. What does work is that Marley and Carlin - of all things re-teamed as a married couple following the John Cassavetes masterpiece FACES - play it straight and play it all sincerely, and bring real drama out of it (up to a point, to varying degrees for both of them), and that Backus also fully commits and is genuinely creepy and terrifying when he has to be.In the last stretch, especially the last like 20 minutes, it gets progressively sillier, or just more demented or WTF or whatever, as Andy is literally melting away with maggots taking up his innards. It gets to the point where his character is set up on a double date with his sister and he has to put on sunglasses just so everyone else doesn't see how he's melting away, like a literal *walking dead* figure. The message is not exactly subtle, but aside from the grief of a parent over a child, which is made especially clear with Carlin's mother and she is delivering the real goods, yes, even when it goes more bats*** in the final stretch, it's also kind of, well, misogynistic (Marley, the dad, sort of just pushes aside his wife and daughter whenever he feels like it as an excuse of being angry about his son, to the point where he pushes one character off the screen!)Clark and the writer have something noble to say about how families dealing (or decidedly *not* dealing) with grief over their fallen family members, especially with a war as tumultuous and wrong as Vietnam was, and some of it shows. At the same time it's also an excuse to see Richard Backus act extremely creepy and detached for 90 minutes, and while he's certainly not bad at it, he makes it today seem mostly kind of silly. I'm not sure if the filmmakers intended that, but it does make for a highly entertaining sit, especially with a packed audience.
Catharina_Sweden
The problem with this movie, is that almost everybody will realize what's the matter with Andy immediately when he comes back. And also, roughly, what is going to happen next. Because this story is age-old and exists in all cultures: the young soldier who returns from war, although everybody has believed him dead. But he is changed... In the medieval ballads, the most common ending is that he lures or abducts his old sweetheart, and brings her with him to his grave.Because the plot was more or less obvious already in the first minutes, it was a stupid idea to make a full-length feature film of this story. It should have been enough with a 40 min. episode in one of those horror series: for example "Tales of the Crypt" or "Tales of Terror".Still, it was elaborate and well-played with uncommonly good actors, masking, number of actors etc. for such a kind of popular and "simple" horror story.
Paul Celano (chelano)
I know this is from the 80s and it has the typical bad acting and editing like most horror films at that time. But I did really enjoy this film. Richard Backus plays the creepy Andy in this film. He is dead and he needs human blood to stay alive and young, yet he takes it like heroin which is very strange. There isn't much music at all this film except for an ear piercing scratchy violin whenever something bad is going to happen. So once you heard that violin, you knew something good was coming up. Lynn Carlin plays the mother of Andy and she was a favorite in the film because she would not let anyone take Andy away, even when they found out he was a zombie. She at points gets really annoying on how much she loves her son, but they wanted her to act that way and she did a great job. So this is an interesting take on a zombie film and I cannot stress enough how creepy Richard Backus was. So give the film a change and don't let the fact that it has about twenty movie titles fool you.
