Deathdream (also known as Dead of Night) is a 1974 Canadian horror movie directed by Bob Clark, starring Richard Backus, John Marley, and Lynn Carlin, and featuring Tom Savini's earliest makeup work.
Andy Brooks is a young man killed in the Vietnam War. When his family is notified, his mother flat-out refuses to accept it. That night, Andy shows up alive and well, and everyone is overjoyed. However, he's incredibly withdrawn, and refuses to go out during the daytime, but is oddly animated at night. Before long people start dying, with their bodies drained of blood...
This film contains examples of:
- Adaptation Expansion: The whole movie is an expansion of the last act of The Monkey's Paw with a bit of What If? thrown in to show what would happen if the family welcomed back their resurrected son.
- All for Nothing: Christine's desperate wish to return Andy brings him back, but it destroys her family and Andy ends up succumbing to his body's decaying in the finale, dying in a hole he dug for himself at the cemetery.
- Ax-Crazy: Andy at the drive in. His body deceleration speeds up so fast that he eats Joanne in the back seat, strangles Cathy's boyfriend Bob, and runs over someone after stealing Bob's car to get away from the staring crowd at the drive in.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Andy ends up killing the family dog, likely because it senses he's no longer quite human and constantly growls at him. He's also in a rage because Charlie brought visitors he didn't want to see.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Christine's desperation for her son to not die leads to him coming back as [[spoiler a vampire or some kind of zombie, or both.]]
- Big Bad: Andy Brooks, a resurrected soldier draining people's blood.
- Blatant Lies: Charlie goes to the police, and in his mental freefall simply decides to cover for Andy by telling them Doc was meeting a soldier that wasn't a local and said soldier killed the doctor.
- Came Back Wrong: Andy was a happy, charming lad in life, but comes back as something withdrawn and not even human anymore.
- Cassandra Truth: Andy's father Charles is the only one who notices something is wrong with Andy, with everybody else refusing to see it because they're so relieved he's home.
- Creator Cameo: Director Bob Clark is one of the cops chasing Andy in the climax, while writer Alan Ormsby appears as the bystander who informs Charles of Doc Allman’s murder.
- Creepy Monotone: How Andy speaks half the time. It only makes it all the more chilling when he tells the doctor, "I died for you, doc. Why shouldn't you return the favor?"
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Andy's antagonistic relationship with his parents and his cold and hermitous demeanor is suppose to resemble the PTSD of returning Vietnam War vets, and draw parallels to the fight between the older generation who supported the war, and the younger generation who opposed it.
- Andy kills Doc Allman and then uses a syringe to shoot Allman's blood into his veins, clearly referencing some soldiers using drugs to self-medicate when they returned home. He doesn't seem to inject the blood of his other victims.
- Downer Ending: Andy's father commits suicide when his mom refuses to let him be put out of his misery. Said mother goes on a high-speed chase with the police, but to no avail, as Andy finally wastes away in a cemetery, the film ending with his mom breaking down over his corpse. The only ray of hope is that she seems to finally come to terms with his death, and is grateful he at least made it back home.
- Driven to Suicide: Andy's father can't handle how much of a monster his son has become, and as a result, commits suicide.
- Exact Words: Christine, after getting notice of his death, says that Andy promised to come home from the war. He eventually honors that promise, but he's not human anymore. Christine gets about a week of having him back before he rots away.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: The Brooks family dog keeps growling at Andy, knowing he's undead. Eventually, Andy strangles the dog to death.
- Face–Heel Turn: Whatever Andy was before the war, he gives up all pretense of being good when he reveals he has no pulse or heartbeat and kills and feeds on the doctor.
- Genre Savvy: Bizarrely, Andy himself in-universe. He goes out alone to the town cemetery, scratches his name, date of birth, and date of death in a worn headstone, and digs a partial hole for himself. Even as he eats people to invigorate himself, he seems to know that it's not going to sustain him forever, and sure enough, shortly after killing Doc Allman, his body begins to decay rapidly during a double date, and eating his own date doesn't re-invigorate him. He goes home, has his mom drive him to the cemetery crawls into his homemade grave and finally dies again as he pulls dirt on himself.
- Gory Discretion Shot: We see Andy get a few stabs in on Allman before the camera cuts to showing Allman's blood spraying the wall as Andy stabs him to death.
- He Knows Too Much: Part of the reason Andy targets and kills Doc Allman is because Allman picked up on the fact that Andy came back to town on the night a truck driver was murdered. He even pointedly asks Andy if he came back by car or truck. Andy pretty much marks him for dinner after he brings that up while interrogating Andy.
- Hope Spot: Doc Allman is on the line with the police right before Andy shows up, but he finds the situation so incredulous that he can't get a word out before Andy kills the phone line.
- Hostile Hitchhiker: Andy's first victim is a trucker who picked him up on his way to his parents' house.
- Mama Didn't Raise No Criminal: Christine refuses to believe anything is wrong with Andy, despite all the contrary evidence. Eventually she does realize he's a vampire, but out of Undying Loyalty helps him anyways.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Charlie goes to the police to give up Andy as the doctor's killer, but then ends up lying and blaming a random soldier instead. When he gets home to Christine, Charlie has one of these as he tells her he's lied to cover Andy's tracks.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero!: Christine's refusal to accept Andy's death magically resurrects him, but brings him back as a distant vampire and because she refuses to see the truth until it's too late, she unwittingly destroys her entire family over Andy.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Zigzagged. Andy is resurrected by the intensity of his loved ones' desire for him to live, and use injections at least once to drink blood instead of biting. He's utterly detached from his emotions, but get much more animated at night. If Andy goes too long without eating he rots away, but eventually even feeding on blood isn't enough to sustain him any longer and he rapidly begins to decay. Also, while he injects Allman's blood, he does rip apart the truck driver, and later Joanne to feed, which is more in line with a vampiric nature, though Andy has no fangs.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: As Andy starts decomposing more rapidly before his double date, he covers up the decomposition to his hand and eyes by wearing black gloves and sunglasses. Zigzagged as the disguise works...At first.
- Sanity Slippage: Both Charlie and Christine go through this as they both come to different terms with the knowledge that Andy isn't Andy anymore. it eventually drives Charlie to suicide.
- Shell-Shocked Veteran: Everybody assumes Andy's just dealing with PTSD, due to his being withdrawn and borderline emotionless barring the occasional outburst of rage. However, it's actually something much more supernatural.
- Shot in the Ass: The town sheriff tells a story about a war buddy of his who bragged about a war wound, which turned out to be from this.
- The Un-Favorite: Cathy Brooks is clearly less liked by their parents than Andy. Most of the time she's ignored, one time Charles hits her for objecting to Andy's behavior, and Christine doesn't even bother to tell her the dog's dead until Cathy goes looking for it. Further, Christine, despairing over Andy's deteriorating condition, outright cries out that she doesn't care about her daughter.
- Wham Line: While we know something is off with Andy, the truth doesn't get hammered home until he confronts Doc Allman in his office and reveals he doesn't have a pulse or a heartbeat before killing him with the line, "I died for you, doc. Why shouldn't you return the favor?"
- Wham Shot: Early in the film, we see Andy go to a graveyard and scratch on a headstone. At the end of the film, as Andy is rapidly falling apart, we find out what he was doing. The camera reveals he's dug a hole and scratched his name, date of birth, and date of death on the front of the old headstone so he has a place to collapse and die.