Movie Details
| Title: | Deathdream | |
| Director: | Bob Clark | |
| Year: | 1974 | |
| Genre: | Zombie | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 07.10.05 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (5)
- Black Christmas
- Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things
- A Christmas Story
- Porky's
- My Summer Story
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 07.10.05 | Alamo Downtown | This Screening is part of event: AICN Horrorfest 2005 It's awesome that the same guy can direct a movie like this, Porky's, A Christmas Story, and Baby Genuises. He's like a current-day equivalent of Robert Wise. Anyway, Lars announces that we're moving back to America with Deathdream AKA Dead of Night AKA a pretty good movie made on a budget of like two bucks and free coffee. I finally feel like I belong because, while I haven't seen this film, I've just read about it in my Fangoria's 101 Best Horror Movies You've Never Seen book. It's "on my list." The story, somewhat of a precursor to Jacob's Ladder, is about a GI who gets shot over in the Nam. His family back home gets the dreaded telegram complete with some generic military dude saying sorry. The father is the dude in The Godfather who wakes up with his horse's head in his bed. Surprise Surprise though, Beloved Son Andy shows up late one night, seemingly ok! Hands down the best scene in this movie is right then, when the dad says something like "they even told us that you died hah hah." and Andy replies "I did." What follows is a super long awkward silence, cutting between each character as Andy holds his stone dead ghoul zombie-ish face, then barely a hint of a smile, then maybe what could be a smile, then a small smile, then a completely forced toothy smile and the whole family laughs for like a minute. After that, it's the usual. Andy's actually a ghoul and needs to kill and drink blood to keep his complexion rosy. The mom goes crazy and protects him from whatever while he kills the dog and several people. Finally Andy goes on a double date with his old girl and his sister and her boyfriend and, while the sis and her hunk are going to the lobby to get themselves some treats at the drive-in, he tries to eat his old girlfriend in the backseat. When he gets home, the mother says "I don't care about (sister's name) and takes quickly-decaying Andy on a car chase. Directly before that though comes the second-best moment in the film. Andy and his mom are on the way to the car when a police cruiser screeches up and both cops draw down on them. Cop #1 says something like "Stop!" then cop #2 just shoots Andy in the chest right away. Cut to the two cops, cop #1 looks over at cop #2 like wtf? Just enough of a pause to let the entire theater laugh our heads off. |
