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10
= Highest Rating |
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Guest
Review by Troy
Howarth |
While
doing a tour of duty in Vietnam, Andy (Richard Backus) is shot
to death. His grief-stricken parents (John Marley and Lynn Carlin)
are therefore surprised, and delighted, when he returns home
late one night. However, Andy exhibits signs of unusual behavior
and a series of brutal killings seem to be connected to his
return...
After making the ghoulishly
funny, and at times Ed Wood-ian, Children
Shouldn't Play with Dead Things (1972), writer/director
Bob Clark and writer/actor Alan Ormsby re-teamed for this variation
on the classic short story, The Monkey's Paw. While their
prior effort — for all its undeniable entertainment value —
was amateurish and only sporadically effective, Deathdream
(aka Dead Of Night, aka The Night Andy Came Home,
aka The Night Walk) is a determined improvement in every
regard. Extremely well acted, for the most part, and professionally
assembled, it still bears traces of low budget uncertainty but
stands out as an effective bridge between Children
and Clark's next horror picture, the superior slasher Black
Christmas (1974) starring Olivia Hussey and John Saxon.
Ormsby's taut screenplay functions as a commentary on the horrors
of the Vietnam war, but Clark doesn't drill the point into the
ground; it's a sensitively crafted little movie remarkable for
its subtlety. The idea of grieving parents, in effect, wishing
their child back to life harkens back to the short story cited
above but had a special resonance then (as indeed it does now
with young American continuing to die in combat in Iraq) and
dared to address issues that mainstream cinema had not yet fully
embraced.
Andy comes back not as
he left, but he has changed for the worse — true of the real-life,
traumatized soldiers who returned to a life that had changed
forever. A kind of vampire/zombie, Andy is forced to kill in
order to sustain his existence — by draining people of their
blood, via a hypodermic, and injecting the fluid into his own
body. An effective evocation of the drug addictions that ravaged
many vets upon their return to the U.S., Andy's sanguinary activities
also evoke the horrors of George A. Romero's 1976 masterpiece
Martin.
On a purely technical level, the film is competently done in
most regards. Only Jack McGowan's mediocre cinematography betrays
the film's low budget origin. Special effects work, courtesy
of Ormsby and a young Tom Savini, is very effective. While much
of the effectiveness of Children Shouldn't
Play with Dead Things relied on the broad overplaying
of its actors (none more guilty than Ormsby himself), here the
performances are low-key and naturalistic. Though Ormsby felt
he was too old for the role, John Marley — one year after making
cinema history for waking up with a horse's head in his bed
in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather
— gives a potent, low-key performance as Andy's tormented father.
Lynn Carlin is also effective as Andy's deliberately blind mother,
who refuses to see what he has become, while Richard Backus
makes a terrific impression as the zombified soldier. His performance
is all the more effective for being so subtle, relying on a
blank expression that occasionally shows twinges of bloodlust
or rage. Indeed, the film's only major flaw is that one never
gets to see Andy as he was before the change takes place; thus,
it is sometimes hard to sympathize with him. This deficit to
one side, Deathdream stands out
as a solid, mature and at times genuinely creepy slice of 70s
horror cinema.
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Blue
Underground's DVD release of Deathdream
(bearing the onscreen title of Dead Of Night) continues
their tradition of first-rate presentations of obscure B movies.
Long a staple of late night TV screenings, the film fell into
obscurity in the 1980s and hasn't been seen much in the interim.
An '80s VHS release from Gorgon went out of print ages ago, and
apart from overpriced gray market outlets it hasn't been easy
to catch up with the film. BU's DVD rectifies that. The print
utilized looks as good as one can expect. As noted above, McGowan's
cinematography isn't exactly first class. Some scenes are drowned
in light while others seem underlit. BU has done the best job
imaginable in cleaning the film up and making it look presentable,
however. The 1.85 framing looks correct and the image is enhanced
for widescreen TVs. Print damage is negligible, though heavy grain
(a defect of the cinematography, not the transfer) is evident.
The mono soundtrack sounds as good as one can hope, despite inherent
limitations. Dialogue is clear and there is no hiss or distortion.
BU really delivers in the extras department.
In addition to two audio commentaries (one with Clark, the other
with Ormsby), there is an on-camera interview with Backus, a featurette
on Savini called Tom Savini: The Early Years, an alternate
opening credits sequence (this one bearing the Deathdream
moniker), an extended ending sequence (due to print damage a small
section of film is cut from the main feature; this poor quality
clip from the Gorgon VHS is included for the sake of being definitive),
a theatrical trailer and a truly exhaustive collection of poster,
still and behind the scenes artwork. Both commentaries are enlightening,
but Clark is rather a soft-spoken and laid back man and his track
suffers from a few too many lulls; Ormsby's track is the livelier
of the two, though both are worth at least one listen. A hidden
Easter egg accessible on the extras menu shows Ormsby showing
off the fake teeth and creepy contact lenses he made for the film.
7/19/04 |
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