Richard Backus as a Vietnam casualty who returns home under his own power in Bob Clark’s Seventies sleeper, DEATHDREAM.
DEATHDREAM aka DEAD OF NIGHT,
THE NIGHT ANDY CAME HOME 1974, Blue Underground, DD-2.0/MA/16:9/LB/+, $19.95, 87m 49s, DVD-0 By Richard Harland Smith
A transparent Vietnam alle-
gory wrapped in a Watergate-era updating of W.W. Jacobs’ “The Monkey’s Paw,” Bob Clark’s DEATHDREAM is most impres- sive for returning the spectre of the vampire (without actually broaching the V-word) to the provenance of folklore, where the undead lurk not as pomaded dandies in cutaway coats but as loathsome, malodorous things evoking horror and shame in equal proportions. Unlike Jacob’s mutilated mill worker Herbert White, Jr. (wished back to ambulation by his grieving par- ents and all the more fearful for remaining unseen at the story’s chilling finish), DEATHDREAM’s PFC Andy Brooks is superficially able-bodied but patently putres- cent, a time-release revenant
recalling old Gorcha, the pallid patriarch of Alexis Tolstoy’s “The Family of a Vourdalak” (adapted for both Mario Bava’s BLACK SABBATH and Giorgio Ferroni’s NIGHT OF THE DEVILS), in which an entire family tree is poisoned from the roots up by the contagion of bloodlust acquired far from home. During the vampire boom of
the 1970s, horripilations arose from the fatal intersection of old and new worlds (a notion that did not originate with, but was cer- tainly codified by, Bram Stoker). Where DEATHDREAM departs from the standard formula is in reversing the generational equa- tion, making its baby boomer antihero (Richard Backus) the wellspring of a pestilence tracked in from Southeast Asia, where he fought and died for God and country. The fact that Andy re- quires human blood to maintain a lifelike appearance feels less essential in execution than it does as a metaphor of the sobering price of glory; as he degrades, Andy becomes a literal open
wound for the parents (John Marley, Lynn Carlin) who sent him off to war. In identifying its monster as an innocent con- sumed and spat back out by the sins of the father, DEATHDREAM elevates itself above the usual rote succession of attacks, put- ting it in the thoughtful company of LEMORA: A CHILD’S TALE OF THE SUPERNATURAL (1973). It’s hard to say how much influ- ence DEATHDREAM may have had on the subgenre, yet it’s in- teresting that the vogue for vam- pire films in the States began with 1970’s COUNT YORGA, VAM- PIRE (whose eponymous blood- sucker was strictly old school) and ended with George Romero’s MARTIN (1977), whose dispos- sessed steel town orphan es- capes into a doomed fantasy of vampirism. In one of two audio com-
mentaries that accompany this commemorative release of DEATHDREAM, Bob Clark recalls that Christopher Walken had been an early candidate for the pivotal role of Andy; in retrospect,
51
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84
