Deathdream is a 1974 Canadian horror film 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. As his family finds out, his mother flat refuses to accept it. That night, Andy arrives and everybody is overjoyed. However, he's incredibly withdrawn, and refuses to go out during the daytime, but is oddly animated at night. Soon, 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.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Christine's desperation for her son to not die leads to him coming back as a vampire.
- Big Bad: Andy Brooks, a resurrected soldier draining people's blood.
- Came Back Wrong: Andy was a happy, charming lad in life, but comes back as a withdrawn vampire.
- 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.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Andy's antagonistic relationship with his parents and his cold and hermitous demeanor is suppose to resemble 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.
- 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.
- Evil-Detecting Dog: The Brooks family dog keeps growling at Andy, knowing he's undead. Eventually, Andy strangles the dog to death.
- 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.
- Our Vampires Are Different: Andy is resurrected by the intensity of his loved ones' desire for him to live, and use injections 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 cannot be killed by normal means.
- 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.
- Villain Opening Scene: Andy being killed in Vietnam.
- The Unfavorite: 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.
