Deathdream (1974)

After watching The Revenant, it reminded me of Deathdream, a movie with a similar plot but made 20 years earlier. Both movies ultimately owe a debt to the story The Monkey's Paw, where a family learns a lesson the dangers and tragedy that comes from messing with the plans of fate. In both films, the lesson is even simpler: if you died and come back, nothing good will come of this.

Deathdream concerns a soldier (Richard Backus) who is killed in action during the Vietnam War, but someone still is able to return home to his grieving mother and father (The Godfather's John Marley, who infamously woke up with a horse's head in his bed). As one could guess, things don't go well from here, as Backus needs human blood to continue to survive, and killing family and friends isn't the best way to keep things discreet. Eventually Marley catches on, and decides to stop his son by drinking as much as he can at a local tavern.

All this sounds more exciting than it is, as the movie's slow pace is built mostly on mood and the creepiness of Backus' performance, which is quite good. Director Bob Clark, who went on to direct both Black Christmas and A Christmas Story, keeps the bloods and guts to a minimum, even in the youthful hands of Tom Savini, who made his debut in Deathdream as a special effects artist.

Instead of attempting to be a gore fest, Deathdream is more in keeping with the socially conscious, independent horror films of the 1970s. As allegory, Deathdream succeeds, even if it never rises any further than the Monkey's Paw inspiration used for the  movie's  plot. In the context of war, however, Deathdream shows that the horrors of war can never be erased. Even if fallen soldiers could come back from the dead and return home, they'll just rock obsessively in a rocking chair all day and night, wear sunglasses in doors, shoot human blood into their veins, and treat family pets with complete disrespect. If that's the best we can get from our undead soldiers, then war really isn't the answer.