![]() ![]() ![]() Deathdream is very near the top of the rotting heap of zombie films, saturated with atmosphere and melancholy as Andy’s condition tears his family apart and leaves them mourning anew. You know a movie is great when all you’ve got is nitpicks at internal logic. So how does his body circulate the blood? Eh, who cares. This brings up a minor lapse in logic: Andy needs to inject himself with fresh blood, but it’s established that, in his condition, his heart no longer beats. I do wish Andy’s newly acquired bloodlust pushed him to commit more grisly violence, but I suppose if he got too messy, all that precious rejuvenating blood would have been wasted. Dream, who goes by the name Morpheus, is the second most powerful of all of the Endless, in part because his realm contains aspects of his siblings while being its own unique division. There are many good scenes with characters who loved Andy languishing in quiet despair while he either coldly refuses to return their long-displaced affection or does something heartrendingly cruel and foreign. For someone who’s worked in so many disparate genres, Bob Clark is a supreme manipulator of tension and so much of this movie is spent tautly waiting for Andy’s next move. The film is laden with bursts of crazed emotion, accentuated by jolts of piano and piercing strings, all juxtaposed by Andy’s dead calm. Deathdream makes its way at a leisurely pace, but Clark and Ormsby use that time to build a disquieting fortification through Richard Backus’ emotionally detached and creepy performance, John Marley as Andy’s paranoid and distraught father, and longtime Clark collaborator Carl Zittrer’s absolutely unnerving score. This setup is hardly what you’d expect from a zombie movie and that’s why it’s so great. Although it’s never explained why Andy is now in the condition he’s in, it’s obvious as soon as he shows up on his family’s doorstep, after they had received notice he was killed in action, that something is terribly wrong. In terms of its uncompromisingly bleak vision, Deathdream is a film of its time, conceived in 1972 and released in 1974, when American horror films reflected. Deathdream is about one Andy Brooks, who’s killed in the Vietnam War, yet makes his way back home again right as rain - as long as he’s got fresh human blood to keep him from decaying. Movie Info Despite her husband's (Christopher Reeve) doubts, a woman (Marg Helgenberger) reaches out to her dead daughter with a psychiatrist's (Fionnula Flanagan) help. But before any of that, he and writer Alan Ormsby made two intriguing low-budget zombie flicks: Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things (1972) and this. He’s responsible for a classic holiday horror movie ( Black Christmas, also released in 1974), a classic sex comedy ( Porky’s, from 1981), and a classic Christmas movie ( A Christmas Story, from 1983). Starring: Richard Backus, John Marley, Lynn CarlinĪvailable on: Blu-ray/DVD (Blue Underground)ĭirector Bob Clark had a fascinating career. ![]()
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