Deathdream (1974/aka Night Walk; Dead Of Night; The Night Andy Came Home/Blue Underground DVD)

PLEASE NOTE: Blue Underground recently upgraded this film for Blu-ray with a new transfer, more extras and you can read more about it at this link...

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/15099/Deathdream+(1974/Blue+Underground+Blu-ray+w

Picture: B- Sound: C+ Extras: B+ Film: B+

George Romero constantly refutes that his original 1968 classic Night Of The Living Dead is about Vietnam and is correct in saying this, as it reflected so much more than just that, which is the real reason it is a classic. Bob Clark's Deathdream (1974) is a zombie film absolutely concerned with Vietnam, and though it is up there with Romero's series of zombie pictures, it is its own remarkable gem. This scripts original title was The Veteran, then The Night Walker, and concerns young Vietnam soldier Andy Brooks. He is killed in combat, but that does not stop him from coming home. He does not head off the news of his death reaching his family, but when he arrives, they think it is a mistake. If only they understood what kind of mistake was really happening.

When Andy (Richard Backus) comes home, one has to wonder to which home he is coming back to. Having rejected the 'bad news' as wrong, they eat dinner, but as in Hitchcock films, it becomes a moment where everyone lets down their guard. The father (John Marley, underplaying the tired, played out, old father who seems miserable and half alive), the mother (Lynn Carlin) taking over as a de facto family head, forming the casebook example of the unhappily married, miserable, dysfunctional couple. Andy is supposed to be the successor to this misery, including his auxiliary sister (Anya Ormsby, whose husband of the time Alan wrote the screenplay) and more auxiliary dog. With Andy still 'alive' then, there is this second chance to continue this 'happy family' arrangement. That has all kinds of prices, and they are all high, but everyone is going to pay.

This whole family, like Vietnam, is built on a lie. It is the lie that has slowly drained the family or happiness and life. It is this conformity that got Andy to enlist to go to Vietnam, but whether he enlisted or went by draft and did not resist, there he was serving honorably. It first seems he paid with his life, but now he's back. When it is all done, and when healthier outsiders see this family, they realize he might have been better off dead. However, he has transmuted and unbeknownst to them at first, has become a murderous, blood drinking and vengeful against just about everyone around him.

At first, Andy seems like himself, calm and settling quickly back home, complete in his nicely pressed, clean uniform. A respectable figure, a survivor made more so of a survivor by seeming to cheat death up to the false report. This actually creates a further overconfidence on the part of the family, including that it is even more likely they can get back to 'normal' as he is back and normal. Even the equally dysfunctional neighbors get to join in.

Then things change. A person turns up dead, related to truck drivers and a diner, which few understand Andy was even close to. It is amazing how all that respectability puts you automatically above suspicion. Then, Andy reunited with his friends. That is where he starts to become peculiar. My favorite moment is his dawning of oversized sunglasses, which singer Corey Hart will be happy to know he even wears at night. They are the kind that became popular in the Swingin' 1960s, a moment as then-recently dead as Andy. The failure of the counterculture in the long term has already begun, with the Vietnam debacle not even finished militarily.

That becomes the final liftoff of the Horror and commentary that follows. Writers like Robin Wood in his brilliant book Hollywood - From Vietnam To Reagan & Beyond... (reviewed elsewhere on this site) have said that one of the greatest things about this film is in connecting Vietnam and the collapse of patriarchal structures in America, something Kubrick repeats in The Shining (1980), which Wood also liked, but does not link to this film. Though Wood's points are valid, like Tobe Hooper's original 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Kubrick is saying that you do not need a family of insane cannibals to have the horror of The American Family or first or second world family. As compared to Deathdream, you do not need Vietnam or grown kids to have it either. All are classics in one way or another, but Deathdream offers many special and vital moments that even go beyond the genre or some of the typical analysis.

The set up gives the Horror and ideas serious weight that makes Deathdream extremely smart and realistic storytelling, even when the film has shortcomings that are related to its low-budget or even age. To some extent, the film applies as much to the current Middle East situation as it did to Vietnam, a case of history somewhat repeating itself, but the idea and form of the dysfunctional family have changed. Thus, the film is also a great time capsule of the moment with the film saying things few ever had or have about its time. It is also one of the great Horror films, so long overdue for rediscovery like Clark's Black Christmas (reviewed elsewhere on this site) that it is a landmark that no collection can go without. I'll add that the conclusion is as powerful as any Horror film to date.

The anamorphically enhanced 1.85 X 1 was taken from second-generation elements, but looks very good because Blue Underground really cared about this film and the telecine operator went out of the way to do a great job with the elements that existed. Clark once again has excellent scenes and sequences to offer and cinematographer Jack McGowan delivers great shot after great shot for him. The film is credited as being processed by Technicolor, but we could not confirm by the time of this posting if any three-strip dye-transfer prints had been struck. This transfer does not have that kind of color, though the color is good. The lossy Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono is not bad for its age, with clear dialogue and a very effective music score by Carl Zittrer. This is a very engaging combination.

Extras include two audio commentaries hosted by Blue Underground's David Gregory: one with Clark, the other with Alan Ormsby. You also get alternate opening titles, a 10-minute piece on special effects make-up artist Tom Savini's early years making his debut with this film, a stills gallery split into five subsections, the original theatrical trailer that is the long kind that you should watch after seeing the film, a twelve-minutes-long on-camera interview with lead actor Backus called Deathdreaming and an extended ending that works better but was not in good enough shape to add to the feature print. These are all terrific extras, a fine number for a single DVD, which is all the more reason to buy it.

- Nicholas Sheffo