''Deathdream'' (also known as ''Dead of Night'') is a 1974
horror film
Horror is a film genre that seeks to elicit fear or disgust in its audience for entertainment purposes.
Horror films often explore dark subject matter and may deal with transgressive topics or themes. Broad elements include monsters, apoca ...
directed by
Bob Clark
Benjamin Robert Clark (August 5, 1939 – April 4, 2007) was an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. He is best known for his work in the Canadian film industry throughout the 1970s and 1980s, where he was responsible ...
and written by
Alan Ormsby
Alan Ormsby (born December 14, 1943) is an American director, screenwriter, make up artist, actor and author.
Film career
Ormsby began work in feature films with the Bob Clark-directed '' Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things'' (1972), which ...
, and starring
Richard Backus
Richard Backus (born March 28, 1945) is an American actor and television writer. He has been nominated for four Daytime Emmy Awards for writing and one for acting.
Biography
Richard Backus was born in Goffstown, New Hampshire on March 28, 1945 ...
,
John Marley
John Marley (born Mortimer Marlieb, October 17, 1907 – May 22, 1984) was an American actor who was known for his role as Phil Cavalleri in ''Love Story'' and as Jack Woltz—the defiant film mogul who awakens to find the severed head o ...
, and
Lynn Carlin
Mary Lynn Carlin (née Reynolds) is an American former actress. She is best known for her debut role in the film ''Faces'' (1968), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award.
Life and career
She was born in Los Angeles, the daughter of so ...
. Filmed in
Brooksville, Florida
Brooksville is a city in western Florida and the county seat of Hernando County, Florida, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 7,719, up from 7,264 at the 2000 census. Brooksville is home to historic buildings and residence ...
, it was inspired by the
W. W. Jacobs
William Wymark Jacobs (8 September 1863 – 1 September 1943) was an English author of short fiction and drama. His best remembered story is "The Monkey's Paw". He was born in Wapping, London, on 8 September 1863, the son of William Gage Jacobs ...
short story "
The Monkey's Paw
"The Monkey's Paw" is a horror short story by English author W. W. Jacobs, first published in the collection '' The Lady of the Barge'' in 1902.
In the story, three wishes are granted to the owner of The Monkey's Paw, but the wishes come with ...
".
Plot
In
Vietnam
Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...
1972, American soldier Andy Brooks is shot by a sniper and falls to the ground. As he dies, he hears his mother's voice calling out, "Andy, you'll come back. You've got to. You promised."
Sometime later, his family receives notice of his death in combat. Andy's father, Charles, and sister, Cathy, begin to grieve, but his mother, Christine, becomes irate and refuses to believe that Andy has died. Meanwhile, a trucker stops at a diner and says he's picked up a hitchhiker who's a soldier. Hours later, in the middle of the night, Andy arrives at the front door of the family house in full uniform, apparently unharmed; the family welcomes him back with joy, concluding the notice of his death was a clerical error. When the father says the military told them Andy was dead, he replies "I was." The family laughs, thinking this a joke.
In the next few days, Andy displays strange, withdrawn behavior, speaking only rarely, dressing in an concealing manner, and spending his days sitting around the house, listless and anemic. At night, though, he becomes inexplicably animated, wandering the town and spending time in the local cemetery. Meanwhile, local police investigate the murder of a local trucker, who was found with his throat slashed and his body drained of blood.
Charles attempts to confront Christine about Andy's erratic behavior. Christine insists that Charles was too withdrawn and authoritarian toward Andy; Charles counters that Christine made Andy too sensitive by smothering him. Andy continues to display weird behavior: he attacks a neighbor boy who attempts to demonstrate his karate skills, then kills the family dog when it tries to protect the child. Charles witnesses the killing, tells his wife that their son is crazy, and then goes to the bar, where he tells his friend, a doctor, what Andy did.
Charles brings the doctor home, and he offers Andy a free checkup. The doctor asks Andy questions related to the truck driver, suspecting him of being the one who killed him. The doctor later tells Charles about the truck driver and says he needs to inform the police about the suspicious coincidence of Andy's return. Andy visits him at his office in the middle of the night, angrily demanding a checkup, but the doctor can't detect a pulse or heartbeat. Andy tells him, "I died for you, Doc. Why shouldn't you return the favor?" He attacks and kills the doctor with a syringe, then uses it to inject the doctor's blood into his arm. It's clear that Andy is some kind of
vampire
A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the Vitalism, vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead, undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mi ...
or
zombie
A zombie (Haitian French: , ht, zonbi) is a mythological undead corporeal revenant created through the reanimation of a corpse. Zombies are most commonly found in horror and fantasy genre works. The term comes from Haitian folklore, in whic ...
who needs the blood of others to reinvigorate his decaying body.
The next day, Charles learns that the doctor was killed and becomes convinced his son is responsible for the deaths. When Christine tells him that Andy is on a double date with his high school sweetheart, Joanne, his sister, and his best friend, Bob, Charles gets his gun and goes looking for them. At a drive-in cinema, Andy visibly decays due to lack of blood. Cathy and Bob briefly leave the car to go get more popcorn. Joanne attempts to strike up a conversation with Andy, but when Andy's decay becomes more visible, he attacks and kills Joanne. Cathy and Bob return to the car to find Andy in a raged frenzy and attacks the two. Andy strangles and kills Bob and attempts to run over Cathy with the car. A stranger shoves Cathy to the side and is hit by Andy and killed. Andy flees in the car before he can inject his victims' blood.
Andy returns home, where his mother protects him from his father. Charles, stricken with grief, commits suicide when he sees the monster his son has become. As Christine is driving Andy away, he is shot twice by police, and their gunfire sets the car on fire. The police pursuit ends at the graveyard where Andy had been spending time. They discover his decayed corpse writhing in a shallow grave beneath a tombstone on which Andy had scrawled his own name and the dates of his birth and death. Christine sobs as she tries to cover the corpse with dirt. Her car explodes, and she tells officers, "Andy's home. Some boys never come home."
Cast
Production
Filming took place in
Brooksville, Florida
Brooksville is a city in western Florida and the county seat of Hernando County, Florida, United States. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 7,719, up from 7,264 at the 2000 census. Brooksville is home to historic buildings and residence ...
,
in the fall of 1972, under the
working title
A working title, which may be abbreviated and styled in trade publications after a putative title as (wt), also called a production title or a tentative title, is the temporary title of a product or project used during its development, usually ...
''The Night Walker''.
[ ] Cinematographer Jack McGowan said that Clark, who hailed from
Ft. Lauderdale, Florida
Fort Lauderdale () is a coastal city located in the U.S. state of Florida, north of Miami along the Atlantic Ocean. It is the county seat of and largest city in Broward County with a population of 182,760 at the 2020 census, making it the tenth ...
, generally preferred filming in the state, and that they chose to shoot the film in Brooksville because of its nondescript small town America look.
Filming lasted three months, with the shoot presenting certain logistical issues, such as finding locations for cemetery scenes and avoiding Christmas lights during the holidays.
Much of the film was shot at 312 South Brooksville Avenue.
Release
''Deathdream'' debuted on August 30, 1974, in
Tampa, Florida
Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and ...
.
Critical response
On review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, ''Deathdream'' holds an approval rating of 83%, based on 12 reviews, and an average rating of 6.72/10.
In a contemporary review, Chuck Middlestat of the ''
Albuquerque Journal'' deemed the film a "light-weight spooker that starts off pretty slowly but builds into a good nail-biter in the last half-hour," but noted the dialogue as weak, adding that "the actors... do as well as they could with sophomoric lines." Dorothy Smilianich of the ''
St. Petersburg Times
The ''Tampa Bay Times'', previously named the ''St. Petersburg Times'' until 2011, is an American newspaper published in St. Petersburg, Florida, United States. It has won fourteen Pulitzer Prizes since 1964, and in 2009, won two in a single ...
'' felt the film only worked when taken as an allegory of America's involvement in the Vietnam war, stating, "Rarely in films is a message as obvious or stridently political. War turns men into monsters, who, like the archetypal Frankenstein, may turn and destroy their creator." She added that Clark "contributes nothing new to the genre but he well understands the techniques for building terror."
In a retrospective review,
Glenn Erickson
Glenn Erickson is an American film editor and film critic. A graduate of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, he started in the film industry in 1975 as an editor of low-budget films and later worked in minor technical crew capacitie ...
of ''
DVD Talk
DVD Talk is a home video news and review website launched in 1999 by Geoffrey Kleinman.
History
Kleinman founded the site in January 1999 in Beaverton, Oregon. Besides news and reviews, it features information on hidden DVD features known as ...
'' wrote, "The reason ''Deathdream'' works is its superior dramatic staging. The actors are excellent, especially John Marley and Lynn Carlin, both honored for their roles in
John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes ( ; December 9, 1929 – February 3, 1989) was an American actor, film director, and screenwriter. First known as a television and film actor, Cassavetes also helped pioneer American independent cinema, writing and dire ...
' ''
Faces
The face is the front of an animal's head that features the eyes, nose and mouth, and through which animals express many of their emotions. The face is crucial for human identity, and damage such as scarring or developmental deformities may affe ...
''. Clark stages the domestic scenes with a fine simplicity and what we remember the most is the looks of bewilderment on nicely-framed faces." Paul Corupe of ''
DVD Verdict'' wrote, "''Deathdream'', the second collaboration by director Bob Clark and screenwriter Alan Ormsby, is a marked artistic and technical leap forward from the pair's overrated debut feature, ''
Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things
''Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things'' (also known as ''Revenge of the Living Dead'', ''Things from the Dead'', and ''Zreaks'') is a 1972 comedic horror film directed by Bob Clark. It later became a cult classic. This low-budget zombie f ...
''. A modern spin on the classic 'be careful what you wish for' theme, Ormsby's screenplay balances a pointed
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...
allegory with pulpier aspects—a 'shock' ending, distinct moments of morbid comic relief and beyond-the-grave retribution ripped from the pages of a 1950s horror comic."
In ''The Zombie Movie Encyclopedia'', academic
Peter Dendle
Peter Dendle is a professor of English at Penn State Mont Alto, teaching classes on folklore, 20th and 21st century representations of the Middle Ages, Old and Middle English (language and literature), and the monstrous (in film, folklore, and s ...
wrote, "Though not very lively and ultimately anti-climactic, the movie sustains a calculated mood of off-centered awkwardness from start to finish, and is buttressed by strong acting and plausible dialogue." Glenn Kay wrote in ''Zombie Movies: The Ultimate Guide'' that ''Deathdream'' is "one of
lark'screepiest and most thought-provoking works".
Home media
Blue Underground
Blue Underground is an American company specializing in releasing authoritative editions of cult and exploitation movies on Blu-ray Disc and DVD.
It was originally formed as a shell company to oversee 'making of' documentaries during founder ...
DVD released a special edition of ''Deathdream'' in 2004.
In 2017, Blue Underground released a
2K resolution edition on
Blu-ray
The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...
.
Special features include an audio commentary by Bob Clark,
an audio commentary by Alan Ormsby,
the featurette ''Tom Savini: The Early Years'',
the featurette ''Deathdreaming: Interview with Star Richard Backus'',
alternate opening titles, extended ending sequence,
trailers, and a poster and still gallery.
Unmade remake
In August 2003,
Oliver Hudson
Oliver Rutledge Hudson (born September 7, 1976) is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Adam Rhodes in the CBS comedy series ''Rules of Engagement'' (2007–2013), Jeff Fordham on the ABC musical drama series ''Nashville'' (2013–20 ...
and John Stalberg purchased remake rights to the film and optioned for
Eli Roth
Eli Raphael Roth (born April 18, 1972) is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor. As a director and producer, he is most closely associated with the horror genre, having directed the films '' Cabin Fever'' (2003) and ''Hoste ...
to direct. In February 2006,
Dark Lot Entertainment acquired the rights to ''Zero Dark Thirty'' written by ''
The Grudge
''The Grudge'' is a 2004 supernatural horror film directed by Takashi Shimizu, written by Stephen Susco, and produced by Sam Raimi, Robert Tapert, and Takashige Ichise. A remake of Shimizu's 2002 Japanese horror film '' Ju-On: The Grudge'', i ...
'' scribe
Stephen Susco
Stephen Susco is an American screenwriter, producer, and director. He is best known for writing horror films such as ''The Grudge'', ''The Grudge 2'', and ''Texas Chainsaw 3D''. His directorial debut film, '' Unfriended: Dark Web'', had its premie ...
with
John Stalberg Jr. slated to direct. In December, it was reported that the film would serve as a remake of ''Deathdream''. By June 2008, financing fell through, leading to
Michael Douglas
Michael Kirk Douglas (born September 25, 1944) is an American actor and film producer. He has received numerous accolades, including two Academy Awards, five Golden Globe Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and the AF ...
'
Further Films
Furthur Films is an American independent film and television production company. It was founded by actor Michael Douglas on November 19, 1997. The company is based in New York City but has offices located in Universal City, California.
In May ...
taking over producing duties from Dark Lot.
Paul Solet
Paul Solet (born June 13, 1979) is an American film director, film producer, writer and actor.
Early life
Paul Solet was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and attended Cambridge Rindge and Latin School class of 1998.
Solet attended Emerson C ...
would later take over as director in July 2010, and revised Susco's script, with production gearing up to take place by the end of the year.
No further updates on the project have been made.
References
External links
*
*
*
Bibliography
*
{{Bob Clark
1974 films
1970s supernatural horror films
Canadian supernatural horror films
Canadian independent films
English-language Canadian films
1970s English-language films
Films based on short fiction
Films based on works by W. W. Jacobs
Films set in Florida
Canadian vampire films
Vietnam War films
Canadian zombie films
Films directed by Bob Clark
Films shot in Florida
1974 independent films
1970s exploitation films
1970s Canadian films