RETRO REVIEW: DEATHDREAM (1974)
A family deals with the after-effects of war in BOB CLARK’s DEATHDREAM.
There’s a moment in WILLIAM WYLER’s celebrated 1946 war film, THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES, when one of the returning WWII soldiers, Homer, has pulled up to his family home in a taxi. As he waves goodbye with his now hooked-hand to his fellow service pals, his mother silently notices the metal appendage. She sobs out involuntarily, muffling a gasp, but when someone asks her if she’s alright, she just says “it’s nothing”, not wanting to draw attention to her now-disabled son or her reaction to it. The wars may have changed, but in BOB CLARK’s 1974 Vietnam horror film, DEATHDREAM (also released as DEAD OF NIGHT), we are reminded in more ways than one that, like Plato once said: “only the dead have seen the end of war.”
Smiling through the pain in BOB CLARK’s Vietnam horror tale, DEATHDREAM.
PLOT:
In this heartbreaking rumination on PTSD and the effects of war, grief-stricken suburban parents Charles (JOHN MARLEY, who many may recognize from his role as Jack Woltz, the studio executive who finds the horse head in his bed in THE GODFATHER) and Christine Brooks (LYNN CARLIN) refuse to accept the news that their son, Andy (RICHARD BACKUS), has been killed in Vietnam. When Andy returns home soon after, they are elated, but that elation quickly turns sour when they realize that something is very wrong with their son.
RICHARD BACKUS plays Andy, a solider who returns home from Vietnam with a penchant for blood.
KILLS:
When Andy is shot in Vietnam, he returns home with a bloodlust that must be satisfied. What makes DEATHDREAM so interesting is that Andy appears to be some kind of zombie/vampire hybrid. Though his human body is rotting like a zombie's would be, Andy seems to only need human blood instead of human flesh or brains to survive. In one scene, a doctor who Andy’s dad entreated to help out his troubled son is targeted by Andy as the doctor informs the dad that he has to turn Andy into the police as a suspect in the killing of a trucker. Andy tracks the doctor down to his office. When the doctor asks what he’s doing there, Andy replies, “you invited me, remember?” Adding to the partial vampire theory, when Andy stabs and kills the doctor with a syringe, he then uses it to inject the doctor’s blood into his arm. The blood injection scene is also worth noting because it acts as a sort of allegory to how many vets returned home from Vietnam with crippling drug addictions. The US Department of Defense even reported that by 1971, 51% of soldiers had smoked marijuana, 28% had consumed heroin or cocaine, and 31% had used psychedelics such as LSD or mushrooms. Knowing the staggering statistics of drug and alcohol abuse that plagued Vietnam vets even years after the war ended, it is downright chilling to see that reflected in this scene, where, instead of heroin, blood is Andy’s drug of choice to help sustain his decaying body.
Perhaps the film’s most unsettling and brutal kill not even directed towards a human being. When Andy returns home, the family dog immediately starts barking at him and acting afraid of him (once again, animals in horror films always know what’s up before humans do). The day after his return, the family is enjoying a cookout at the house when some neighborhood kids drop by. When one obnoxious little boy tries to show off his karate skills on Andy, Andy grabs the kid’s wrist, kicking in the family dog’s protective instinct, and the dog immediately starts barking at Andy. Andy proceeds to pick the dog up in the air with one hand and choke the life out of him, all while the neighborhood kids watch in horror. It’s an extremely disturbing and upsetting scene, and it’s really then that we start to realize that Andy is definitely not okay.
Only the dead have seen the end of war in BOB CLARK’s DEATHDREAM.
VISUALS/SFX:
DEATHDREAM marks master SFX legend TOM SAVINI’s first film as a make-up artist, and he does not disappoint, keeping the blood and gore work effective without being over the top. The slow disintegration of Andy’s human flesh case is great, with increasing crags, sags, and lines appearing on his body in a morbid tableau of rotting skin. At the end of the film, we finally see the full extent of Andy’s zombie form, complete with pale blue eyes, open wounds, and rudimentary grunts and growls. Incidentally, Savini would go on to do special effects make-up for the 1974 film, DERANGED, which was directed by ALAN ORMSBY, who wrote the screenplay for DEATHDREAM.
JOHN MARLEY plays a father plagued by guilt when his son returns home with violent tendencies in DEATHDREAM.
PERFORMANCES:
Though this is a horror film, it is first and foremost a portrait of a family dealing with the after effects of war. The performances by the actors have to really count in order to sell the message, and by every measure they do.
As the patriarch of the family, JOHN MARLEY as Charlie crafts an incredible portrait of a father inextricably torn between joy at having his son back and guilt about having to accept what his son has ultimately become. At first, his initial happiness turns to frustration at Andy’s withdrawn nature and strange behavior. He vocalizes this to his wife, asking why Andy is so different, not able to understand why he won’t talk to them or eat with them. The wife, protective of Andy to the bitter end says that he can’t expect things to just snap back to normal. When Andy’s odd behavior starts to escalate, you feel and see the conflict pour out of Charlie as he wrestles between trying to protect his son and turning him in to the authorities. Ultimately realizing his son cannot be helped, and the guilt that - as his father - he feels knowing he played a role in the events of the film, finally breaks him in the most heartbreaking way.
LYNN CARLIN’s journey as Andy’s mom, Christine, is different from the husband’s, but is no less agonizing. Even before Andy is declared dead, there are some very obvious issues of favoritism between her daughter Cathy and Andy. He is very clearly her favorite child and, when he is declared dead, the dad wakes up in the middle of the night to find the mom sitting in the dark with a lit candle saying, “you promised, you’re all right - I can tell you’re alive, you’ll come back” with the sound of this kind of demonic hissing happening in the background. Though it’s not overt, it becomes apparent that the mother is summoning her dead son back through some kind of bargain or promise with dark forces. As this film was based upon W.W. JACOBS’ 1902 short story, “The Monkey’s Paw,” this isn’t a big leap to make, as that story revolved around a couple who obtained a cursed monkey’s paw. The paw grants the owner of it three wishes, but they come with an enormous price for interfering with fate. Of course, when Andy does return, she is thrilled, but even as Andy’s behavior becomes not only strange, but extremely violent, she remains stalwart in her defense of him, and in the process, permanently fractures her relationships with both her husband and daughter. Carlin is fantastic in this, if a little “much” in a few scenes, but hey, it’s how dramas in the 70s were. But, just like JOHN MARLEY, she sells the emotional journey her character goes through and it’s harrowing to see. In the final scene of the film, Andy is decaying rapidly and has the entire police force on his trail. They head to the cemetery, where Andy proceeds to crawl towards an open grave and bury himself in it. The mom cries and says no as she attempts to pull him back out, still not willing to accept that Andy is not only in fact, very dead, but that he wants to stay that way. It’s an absolute gut-punch of a scene and I’d be lying if I said my cold, dead heart didn’t break when I was watching it.
As the living dead soldier Andy, RICHARD BACKUS, is at turns chilling and troubled as a young man not only navigating the effects of one of the longest wars in U.S. history, but also having to reconcile that experience with his now undead form. We, as the audience, unfortunately have no metric to measure who Andy is now against who he was before the war. But when he does return, he seems distant and withdrawn, prone to sudden, seemingly irrational mood swings and changes in demeanor. At first, it seems to be explained away as PTSD, which was still a fairly new concept at that time. It’s important to note that the Vietnam War wasn’t even over at the time of the film's release. It wasn’t even studied in depth until Congress did an investigation in 1983 and found that at the time of the study, approximately 15% of men and 9% of women who were Vietnam veterans were found to still be experiencing PTSD, nearly eight years after the war had ended.
LYNN CARLIN and RICHARD BACKUS in DEATHDREAM.
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS:
Clark made this film between his debut film, CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS (1972) and his horror masterpiece, BLACK CHRISTMAS (1974), and it has sadly become an overlooked horror gem. In lesser hands, the parallels between the zombie/vampire troupe and PTSD could have come off as campy at best and distasteful and discourteous at worst. But Clark has crafted an emotional, yet bloody little film that somehow manages to be an extremely honest and accurate portrait of a family that is torn apart by the ravages of war. Andy is both a villain and a victim, because, though he perpetrates several extreme acts of violence, we recognize that he also is no longer human and no longer the Andy that his family and friends knew and loved. There is such an undercurrent of sadness and dread that runs through this whole film, and yet, it is impossible to turn away, even though you know it is not going to end well for anybody. Maybe only the dead have seen the end of war, but even when the dead come back, the war is not over for them or for their loved ones.
In BOB CLARK’s horror film, DEATHDREAM, a family receives word that their son has been killed in Vietnam.
THE GORY DETAILS:
CHRISTOPHER WALKEN was considered for the part of Andy.
This film and its themes can in many ways be seen as an early reflection of the popular awareness of the effect of combat trauma on soldiers that the Vietnam War helped bring to light. Much of Andy's disposition and symptoms, e.g. sudden violent behavior due to the re-living of traumatic experiences, would later be associated with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, defined by the American Psychiatric Association in the Third Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1980).
BOB CLARK and his associates shot this film back-to-back with CHILDREN SHOULDN’T PLAY WITH DEAD THINGS (1972). Both films were shot on location in Florida with much of the same cast and crew. Clark, ALAN ORMSBY, JEFF GILLEN and other crew members would later reunite in 1974 to make the Canadian-shot horror film, DERANGED.
There was a mishap with the fiery car climax. While RICHARD BACKUS and a stunt driver were speeding through the streets the fire set at the rear of the car got out of control and was sucked into the back seat of the speeding car. Fortunately there was a Plexiglas shield dividing the backseat from the front of the car where the performers were. It startled Backus, who had to stick his head out the window to keep from inhaling smoke. Much to the actor's dismay, director BOB CLARK wanted the scene re-shot with less fire.
MY RATING: 7/10
WHERE TO WATCH:
Tubi, YouTube, Apple TV, Amazon Prime, and Vudu.
