Sure, Bob Clark did A Christmas Story. And he did Porky's. But man, did he make some dark films along the way, like Black Christmas and this one, which totally grabbed me by the throat and kept me thrilled from start to finish.Andy Brooks has been killed by a sniper in Vietnam. Yet as he dies, he hears his mother's voice say, "Andy, you'll come back. You've got to. You promised."While Andy's father Charles (John Marley, who woke up to a horse's head in his bed in The Godfather and starred alongside his wife in this film, Lynn Carlin, in John Cassavetes' Faces) and sister Cathy go through the five stages of grief, his mother is stuck in denial.Yet her unwillingness to accept the truth is rewarded when Andy comes back to their home unharmed.Andy isn't Andy any longer though. He's withdrawn and rarely speaks, spending his days sitting motionless inside the house. Stranger still, the police are looking for a hitchhiking soldier who killed a trucker and drained his blood.Andy's death and rebirth rip open long-festering wounds between husband and wife - Charles never gave his son love, only authority. Christine made him too sensitive. And what of Andy? Oh, he's just attacking a neighborhood kid and killing a dog during the day, then becoming more alive at night, when he goes to the cemetery.Meanwhile, Dr. Phillip, a family friend, tells Charles that he's suspicious of the similarities between Andy's return and the murder of the truck driver. Andy visits the doctor late and night and demands a checkup before killing the doctor and injecting his blood into his body.Christine sets Andy up on a double date with Joanne, his high school girlfriend. In a harrowing scene, she explains how she wrote to Andy but felt like he was gone before he even died, that Vietnam had taken him. As she speaks to him, he starts to decay before her eyes before killing the girl and her friend, then running over someone else as he escapes from the drive-in.Returning home, Christine protects her son from his father's wrath. The man gives up and kills himself as his mother helps him escape the police. Finally, as the police corner them in the graveyard that Andy spends his evenings haunting, they discover his decayed corpse in a shallow grave, his tombstone carved by his undead hand as his mother throws dirt to cover her son.The film takes many of its beats from the W.W. Jacobs story The Monkey's Paw, yet shows the struggles of PTSD at a time that few were able to articulate how the Vietnam War would impact not only soldiers but their families. And thanks to the acting chops of Marley and Carlin, as well as Richard Backus, who played Andy, the film feels incredibly real, despite the unreality of its premise. And it also includes the very first FX work by Tom Savini, a Vietnam vet himself.

Dead of Night (1974) *** (out of 4)Bob Clark's somber horror tale about parents Charles and Christine Brooks (John Marley, Lynn Carlin) who learn that their son Andy (Richard Backus) was killed in Vietnam. A short time later they are shocked to see that Andy has returned home. The mother accepts her son but the father seems to think that there's something not quite right.Clark's DEAD OF NIGHT, also known as DEATHDREAM, is one of the more unique horror films from this era because not only does it work as a horror movie but it's also quite effective as a drama. Obviously being 1974, the Vietnam war was still a hot topic and the film's screenplay by Alan Ormsby perfectly borrows from The Monkey's Paw story while also throwing in a few twists and of course there's the updating of the setting.I think Clark deserves a lot of credit for the visual style and atmosphere that he created for the film. The film really does a great job at capturing this small town and I really loved the dark look that he gave it. Obviously this is a fairly sad story about a dead soldier returning home to his parents and Clark's direction is right on the mark. The story is told in a rather slow fashion but this too really helps build up the atmopshere and the overall look of the film.Another thing that really works well is the drama. Seeing how this dream come true of having their son return to them turn into a nightmare as it slowly rips the family apart is perfect drama and every bit of it works. Even better is the fact that we're treated to some really fine performances including both Carlin and Backus as the mother and son. The real standout is Marley who is simply wonderful as the father who knows that the person living with them isn't really his son.DEAD OF NIGHT certainly has some flaws as it's not the perfect movie but, considering the budget, Clark was really able to build a rather dark and twisted tale.

Not sure if he was a vampire or a zombie - he seemed to be a mixture of both. He looked fine when get got home but needed blood like a vampire, later on his flesh started rotting and he was eating like a zombie. I guess he was more of a vampire in the beginning but as the days went on he turned more zombie - or so it seemed to me.Anyway, it's not a bad film - the mother and father are the ones that made this film! The parents emotions and actions are good in this film. I do wonder about that mother though, she apparently was no longer in love with her husband, treated their daughter like "you're a sweet girl but..." - yea the mother seemed to only really love her son -- I can understand falling out of love with the husband but it seems she would have treated her daughter with the same love as her son. LOL -- maybe it was just me though.Overall I did enjoy watching the film.7/10

There's nothing more disturbing in everyday life than having to deal with someone who doesn't -- quite -- follow the usual rituals of interaction. He gets around all right and looks normal. But when introduced, he doesn't offer to shake hands. The most he can muster up in a vague smile, and sometimes not that. He doesn't say thank you if you give him something. He shows little interest in the usual male proclivities like sports and sex. He's never really happy to see an old friend. He never laughs.That's what the central figure, Richard Backus, is like. His family -- father John Marley and mother Lynn Carlin -- are overjoyed when he suddenly appears at home, since they recently received a telegram that their soldier son had been killed in Vietnam.That, the Vietnam War, I think, is what this story is about. In 1972, the year of this release, the movies still couldn't really touch Vietnam because it was too controversial and studios are ever on the alert for an alienated audience that refuses to buy tickets and gives bad reviews. "Apocalypse Now" didn't show up until 1979, and "Platoon" not until 1986.As in "The Monkey's Paw," Backus' mother wishes him home, and home he comes, but he's some kind of mixture of vampire and zombie who needs the blood of others to delay his decomposition. I suppose his condition is supposed to be symbolic of what was to be called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Beckus' symptoms more closely match one of the common features of schizophrenia -- flattened affect. He simply doesn't show any emotion except for an occasional burst of rage.Towards the illogical end, after he's murdered three people, he turns into a boring monster with a Halloween face. I don't care if it was Tom Savini's make up debut or not. The best horrors are more hinted at than fully revealed. A cockeyed world is more frightening than a world divided into pure good and pure evil. (Cf., "Carnival of Souls" or "The Cat People.") Marley and Carlin are professional and do their jobs well, except that Marley isn't really a convincing drunk. Backus, as the disintegrating ex soldier, isn't much of an actor but he looks the part. A clean-cut lad with a lower jaw that doesn't quite fit the rest of his face and seems to just go up and down when he grimaces or speaks, rather like a ventriloquist's dummy.The director, the late Bob Clark, who appears as the chubby police officer, does the best he can with the script. And both the direction and the script are, in fact, quite good, except for the ghoulish transformation. I worked in one of Clark's later movies, "From the Hip," a rude lump of foul deformity. The movie itself was no good but the director ran a happy set and was one of the least pretentious authority figures imaginable.