Dead of Night

Andy Brooks is killed in Vietnam. Word reaches his family, but his mother refuses to believe it, and that night Andy comes home. Silent, cold and strange; his family embrace him, the neighbours are delighted, and only his father sees that something is wrong. Andy needs human blood to keep from decaying. Alan Ormsby's screenplay carries the tale of the Monkey's Paw into post-Vietnam American suburbia: a mother wishes for her son's return and the wish is granted. Bob Clark's film treats this not as a monster story but as the impossibility of the returning soldier fitting back into a house; the horror comes less from what the boy does than from the family's insistence on not seeing it. John Marley plays the father, Lynn Carlin the mother and Richard Backus Andy. The film also circulated as Deathdream and The Night Andy Came Home. Who it is for: viewers who like seventies American horror and films that carry war trauma through genre. Who it is not for: anyone expecting technical polish, since the production is low budget and it shows.