Dead of Night (1974)

Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

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 He's withdrawn and rarely speaks, spending his days sitting motionless inside the house.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.

This obscure gem seems to have gone far under the radar, I never even heard of it until very recently. I went into it with no expectations, I frankly didn't think I'd be getting much of anything from a 1972 movie. But it soon proved my ignorance and I ended up loving it, to me it was poignant and engrossing, with a terrific dark ominous tone throughout. They simply can't recreate the kind of compelling atmosphere that some of the better horror movies from the 80s and 70s could command no matter what they try. And I may be new to it, but I think this one has probably improved with age, I think it holds up very well. I like slow-burn horror flicks and while it certainly was, I found it compelling right away and I cared about some of the characters and to me it had a great emotional payoff to it at the end. I love the way that it works on two levels, as a sombre drama of how soldiers can come home mere ghosts of their former selves as it were, and it also has more fantastical shadowy overtones of loss and of learning the hard way to let go of things from the past that are best left buried. Old soldiers never die, they only fade away. It is a little overly vague but I appreciate how the audience is kept in the dark as to the mystery of Andy's 'miraculous' return, it adds to the overall spookiness of the movie. I reckon the story kind of speaks for itself, I mean it's a very classic old horror parable, the dream that turns into the nightmare, somebody hoping and wishing for something such as a person coming back to life so much that it somehow happens, only it's always not what it at first seems to be and not what they wanted, but something dark and unnatural that shouldn't be, and they usually come to realise that they should have stayed dead, the message usually being that if there is something that walks, it isn't them anymore... I thought the acting was really good all around, but I found it was the grim performance of Richard Backus that made it work the most, his character evokes both pity and dread. He knows that he's dead and is no longer the son that his family knew and loved, but a cold emotionless corpse that's slowly rotting from the inside out and that needs blood just to look normal. I found the climax and final scene of the film to be powerful and heartbreaking, with the completely zombified Andy fleeing back to where he belongs and crawling into a makeshift grave and pulling earth onto himself, wanting for it to be over and truly die for good, which he does when his hysterical mother pushes a little dirt onto him herself and finally accepts the truth. I think that was a very effective touch, and I don't know if some people might not have caught that? It was an excellent ending that I found very eerie and saddening. I suppose it's not something that most horror fans haven't seen before, but it does a very interesting and different twist on a zombie story and one that engages on an emotional level. I think it's woefully underrated and deserves to be more well known. Check this one out, it may just surprise and haunt you.

Those horror films that work on an emotional level as well as a visceral level can be quite devastating; Cronenbergs' remake of "The Fly" would be another good example. Here's a story (written by Alan Ormsby) that can work as a metaphor for the effects of the Vietnam War on the young men who fought it. Its characters are thoroughly relatable and sympathetic, and its horror works quite well. Thicky atmospheric and spooky, it benefits from solid acting in all of its major roles.John Marley and Lynn Carlin star as Charles and Christine Brooks, the parents of Andy (Richard Backus), a soldier fighting the war in 'Nam whom they're told died over there. So it's a delight to them when he turns up alive and seemingly well. But all is NOT well, and Andy is definitely not the same person that he was when he went away. The signs don't take long to reveal themselves, and Charles is dismayed over the change in his son, while Christine, still full of love for her boy, tries to deny that anything could be wrong.This is an impressively mature genre effort from the late, great cult director Bob Clark ("Black Christmas" '74, "Porky's") who'd previously guided the more irreverent "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things". It's also historically important for marking the first credit for makeup effects legend Tom Savini. Filmed on location in Florida, it's got some fine suspense and is often genuinely creepy. Savini's effects are good but parcelled out in small doses until near the end. And that ending, when it comes, is a grabber that will really stay with you.Marley and Carlin are wonderful as the parents with the differing feelings and reactions toward their son, and Backus does a fine job of being initially standoffish and growing more and more unnerving as the story plays out. Henderson Forsythe is excellent in support as the concerned local doctor, and various cast members from "Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things" - Anya Ormsby, Jane Daly, Jeff Gillen, and Ormsby himself (who was also a makeup artist on this show) - play other supporting roles and bits.Any fan of the genre is well advised to check this one out. It's simply one of the finer horror films to come out of the early 1970s.Nine out of 10.

I know this is from the 80s and it has the typical bad acting and editing like most horror films at that time. But I did really enjoy this film. Richard Backus plays the creepy Andy in this film. He is dead and he needs human blood to stay alive and young, yet he takes it like heroin which is very strange. There isn't much music at all this film except for an ear piercing scratchy violin whenever something bad is going to happen. So once you heard that violin, you knew something good was coming up. Lynn Carlin plays the mother of Andy and she was a favorite in the film because she would not let anyone take Andy away, even when they found out he was a zombie. She at points gets really annoying on how much she loves her son, but they wanted her to act that way and she did a great job. So this is an interesting take on a zombie film and I cannot stress enough how creepy Richard Backus was. So give the film a change and don't let the fact that it has about twenty movie titles fool you.