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It’s been a fairly commonplace activity over the last few years to compare our current troubled era with that of the late-sixties/early-seventies, with special attention paid to discussion of parallels (and to what degree they are or are not justified) between the Iraq and Vietnam wars. In that context, it is interesting to consider the way popular culture has dealt with those conflicts, with particular reference to genre offerings.

This is by way of making a bit of a case study of Deathdream (AKA , The Night Andy Came Home,Dead of Night and The Veteran), a 1972 horror film directed by the late, lamented Bob Clark. The film was a bit of a first in a couple of respects. From a genre perspective, it marks the beginning of Tom Savini’s make-up career. But it was also, it seems, the first film to directly deal with the domestic cost of the Vietnam war. It tells the story of a young solider killed overseas, but who nevertheless comes home, thanks to his mother’s intense desire for him to do so. She refuses to recognize anything is wrong with her son, and at first, things seem relatively okay. But decay gradually sets in, as do murderous impulses. You see, he must drink blood in order to avoid disintegration. His father realizes what’s up, but is too weak to do anything about it, and his mother is in total denial. Much has been written about the film’s critique of the patriarchal nuclear family, but of more interest here is the movie’s depiction of the costs of untenable beliefs, and of the damage war does to the home front. 1972 was pretty early for such subject matter. The mainstream of Hollywood wouldn’t really deal with these issues until some years after the war, and so here is another prime example (among so many) of a low-budget horror picture blazing the controversial trail.