LET’S GET PHYSICAL: DEATHDREAM (1974) ****

FORMAT:  4K UHD (REWATCH)

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

(As posted on August 17th, 2007)

Andy (Richard Backus) is killed in Vietnam and his over-grieving mother (Lynn Carlin) “wishes” him back to life. He returns home the next day, but he’s not quite the same. He’s quiet, withdrawn and he spends a LOT of time in his rocking chair. Dad (John Marley from The Godfather) knows something’s wrong when in a fit of rage Andy strangles the family dog. He gets their family doctor (Henderson Forsythe) to do a check-up on Andy and when he discovers he has no pulse or heartbeat, Andy stabs him to death with a syringe and extracts the doctor’s blood and shoots it up. Meanwhile Andy’s sister Cathy (Anya Ormsby) tries to get Andy to go out with his estranged girlfriend (Jane Daly) and they have a double date at a drive-in. It turns out to be a date from Hell as the rapidly decomposing Andy murders his date, strangles his sister’s boyfriend with a drive-in speaker, and runs over some poor kid with his car. The tragic ending where the zombified Andy begs his mother to put him in his grave so he can finally find peace is as heartbreaking as it is creepy.

This is probably Bob (A Christmas Story) Clark’s best film ever. He drenches the film in a spooky atmosphere and knows how to creep his audience out. He brings real dimension to the scenes where Andy’s family unit disintegrates, and the final drive-in massacre is one for the books. Backus is incredibly eerie and ominous as Andy. With his cold stare, incessant rocking and hair-raising line readings, Backus delivers one of horror history’s greatest villains. But he’s really more of a victim. He never asked to come back to life and he’s only dealing with it in the only way he knows how.

Clark doesn’t overdo it with the wartime allegories, but they’re there plain as day (especially the scene where Andy shoots up the doctor’s blood), and they give Deathdream an added depth and dimension countless horror films lack. Alan Ormsby wrote the multilayered and thought-provoking screenplay and also collaborated with Clark on Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things and Deranged. He also provided the excellent make-up effects, along with a young Tom Savani.

AKA: Dead of Night. AKA: Night Walk. AKA: The Night Andy Came Home. AKA: The Veteran. AKA: Whispers. 

QUICK THOUGHTS:

Deathdream is what the kids refer to as a straight-up banger.  It fires on all cylinders and once it takes hold of you, it never lets you go.  I also love how unhinged the many supporting characters are from the talkative mailman to the stuttering line cook to the cop who won’t stop fiddling with the blinds.  Watching it now as a parent, it hits slightly different and cuts even deeper, especially the heartbreaking final scene.  In short, it’s an all-timer from top to bottom. 

4K UHD NOTES:

This was my first disc from Blue Underground, and it’s without a doubt one of the best 4k transfers I’ve seen.  The film simply looks flawless as the nighttime scenes are appropriately dark. but not too dark.  The picture is consistently sharp, and it looks brand spanking new while still preserving the ‘70s drive-in aesthetic.  For horror fans, this will be a must own.