Which is likely why the distributors had such a hard time selling it. Screenwriter and make-up artist Alam Ormsby initially called it The Veteran<\/em><\/a>. Intermediate titles ranged from the vague – The Night Walker<\/em><\/a> – to the prophetic<\/a> – The Night Andy Came Home<\/em> – before settling on Dead of Night<\/em>\u2026 for a while. The grindhouse-friendlier Deathdream<\/em> maintains a comfortable lead on boutique Blu-rays and streaming services to this day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But 50 years on, the film still wilts in the shadow of Clark\u2019s four-month-younger horror masterpiece, Black Christmas<\/em>, and it\u2019s not hard to see why. In place of the latter\u2019s cable-knit winter wonderland, Deathdream<\/em> takes place in Anytown, USA, represented by a Brooksville, Florida, with all signs of tropical life uncannily pruned from frame. Forget glittering tinsel – even the cheeriest scenes in the Brooks house look like they were developed in egg wash. The POV shots are cruder, as if the camera is learning how to walk alongside its reanimated beholder. The characters are glorified types – mom, pop, the chatty mailman – none interesting enough on their own merits to earn tattoos or t-shirts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In every way, Deathdream<\/em> is simply more unpleasant than Black Christmas<\/em>, and that\u2019s down to the source material – W.W. Jacobs\u2019s \u201cThe Monkey\u2019s Paw\u201d for the suburban set, seemingly whittled down to its final finger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In one of the film\u2019s most affecting frames, Christine Brooks rocks alone in the dark, praying to no God but her own maternal force of will and telling Andy he can\u2019t be dead. Two glowing eyes shape out of the black, then cross-fade into headlights of the semi his zombie hitches into town. But as mom\u2019s delusions deepen and pivot to protecting her killer kid, gruff patriarch Charlie angrily, then drunkenly reveals that he made the first wish a long time ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhy is he so different<\/em>? What did he do? Take a vow of celibacy or something?\u201d It does not compute for the World War II veteran why his son is less like him than ever. \u201cWell I went through it, too, but I didn\u2019t come back like that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n If his disappointment isn\u2019t evidence enough, consider Christine\u2019s rage: \u201cI happen to love my son even if you don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Andy that left was a gentle soul, the kind that younger neighbors lined up to demonstrate their karate moves for. The Andy that came back is a volatile, psychosexually frustrated addict literally carving his own headstone. When the family pooch growls at him a little too loudly, he chokes it to death with one hand. The first time he\u2019s alone with his old sweetheart, he springs a sudden leak of pus and kills her in humiliation. And though his vice is blood, there\u2019s no mistaking the way he shoots up and nods out just for a few more hours of passable human resemblance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Although young New York stage actor Richard Backus landed the role of Andy because Bob Clark felt he \u201clooked scary even when I was doing nothing,\u201d beneath the psychopathic chill and mummified complexion, it\u2019s always apparent nobody\u2019s more afraid of Andy than Andy himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Just as often as terror (if not even more so), Clark shoots for tragedy. Forcibly observing Charlie and Christine, played by John Marley and Lynn Carlin in an overqualified reunion from John Cassavetes\u2019s Faces<\/em>, blame and scream and despair and catch each other only by mutual collapse is like watching a house burn down from ember to ash. For the thousands of other monkey paws before and since, good luck finding a single shot as raw as Marley sobbing into Carlin\u2019s lap that he couldn\u2019t give up their boy to the police as she numbly decides through her medicated haze that the whole family will just have to go on the lam.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Whatever you call it, Bob Clark\u2019s serrated eulogy for insomniacs of the American Dream hasn\u2019t lost much of its nightmarish power in the last half century. Because no matter which war is waging or whose futures are paying for it, Deathdream<\/em> lays bare and grisly the invisible cost, asked and answered in two disconnected lines:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI <\/em>can\u2019t believe a soldier would do a thing like that.\u201d “Deathdream” is streaming on Amazon Prime<\/a>, Shudder<\/a>, Tubi<\/a>, Night Flight<\/a>, and several other streaming services<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/deathdream-1024x575.jpeg\")
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\u201cThere are millions of soldiers, dad.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n