Deathdream
| Deathdream Dead of Night |
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Deathdream film poster in release as Dead of Night
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| Directed by | Bob Clark |
| Produced by | Bob Clark |
| Written by | Alan Ormsby |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Carl Zittrer |
| Cinematography | Jack McGowan |
| Edited by | Ronald Sinclair |
| Distributed by | Quadrant Films |
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Release date
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Running time
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88 minutes |
| Country | Canada |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $235,000 |
Deathdream (also known as Dead of Night) is a 1974 Canadian horror film directed by Bob Clark and written by Alan Ormsby. Filmed in Brooksville, Florida, it was inspired by the W.W. Jacobs short story "The Monkey's Paw".
In Vietnam, US soldier Andy Brooks is shot by a sniper and falls to the ground. As he dies, he hears his mother's voice calling out, "Andy, you'll come back. You've got to. You promised." The voice becomes sinister and muffled as Andy's eyes close. Sometime later, his family receives notice of his death in combat.
Back home, Andy's father, Charles, and sister, Cathy, begin to grieve, but his mother, Christine, becomes irate and refuses to believe that Andy has died. Hours later, in the middle of the night, Andy arrives at the front door in full uniform and apparently unharmed; the family accepts the notice of his death as a clerical error and welcomes him back with joy.
Over the next few days, Andy displays strange and erratic behavior, dressing in an unusually concealing manner and spending his days sitting around the house listless and anemic. Meanwhile, local police investigate the murder of a local trucker, who was found with his throat slashed and his body drained of blood after telling diner patrons that he'd picked up a hitchhiking soldier.
Charles attempts to confront Christine about Andy's erratic behavior, which causes tension between the couple. Christine insists that Charles was too withdrawn and authoritarian toward Andy; Charles counters that Christine made Andy too sensitive by smothering him. Andy continues to display unusual behavior: he attacks a neighborhood boy who attempts to demonstrate his karate skills, then attacks the family dog when it tries to protect the child. At night, Andy becomes inexplicably lively and animated, wandering the town and spending time in the local cemetery. It ultimately becomes apparent that Andy has returned as some kind of vampire or zombie, and as a result, has been using syringes to inject the blood of others into his decaying body to reinvigorate himself.
On a double date at the drive-in with his high school sweetheart, Joanne, his sister and his best friend, Andy begins to decay due to lack of blood. He attacks and kills Joanne and his friend. The other drive-in patrons witness the attack and panic. Andy flees before he can inject his victims' blood. The police pursue Andy, and the chase ends at the graveyard where Andy had been spending his free time. They discover Andy's decayed corpse in a shallow grave beneath a crudely fashioned tombstone. Christine, looking at her son's body, tells the police, "Andy's home. Some boys never come home."
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