The Night Andy Came Home
Many horror fans know Bob Clark as the Director of the cult classics Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things and the original Black Christmas. Sandwiched between the two is the often forgotten about Deathdream, also known as Dead of Night or my personal favorite, The Night Andy Came Home.
The story is about Andy, a soldier who was presumably killed in the Vietnam War returns home to his parent's house in the United States. At first, the family is jubilant at Andy's unannounced homecoming and dismiss his death notice from the Army as a mistake. Shortly after, his odd behavior becomes more prevalent and starts tearing the family apart.
While the film was released in August of 1974, it was shot in the fall of 1972. Only months before the United States would pull out of the Vietnam War on March 30th, 1973. The movie was written and shot when a majority of Americans were in support of leaving Vietnam after everyone in the country saw how much of a failure the war was, even though congress kept continuing the needless combat.
The movie takes the concept of war and combat dehumanizing those involved and takes it literally, turning Andy into a zombie/vampire/ghoul hybrid who just sits in his room rocking in his rocking chair. Sometimes Andy will sit in the yard of his parent's home and just stare into oblivion, often showing increased irritability when someone approaches him to talk. There's even a scene where the family dog is barking continuously at Andy until Andy reaches down and strangles the dog with his bare hand in front of the neighborhood children. The family cycle keeps breaking down as the father starts to become angry with how Andy has changed. At the same time, Andy's mother tries to carry on like everything is normal, completely in denial of the fact that her family is breaking down around her. The whole message the movie is sending about what war is happening to the young people of our country is very apparent and can bring those down if they're not expecting a strong political and social message.
While the movie is intense on its antiwar message, it keeps you hooked with the curiosity of what has happened to poor Andy. After seeing him die at the beginning credits, we know that the message from the military isn't a mistake. We're not sure what Andy is, but we know that something supernatural has taken control of Andy, something of which his family is unaware. At night, Andy kills to sustain his body as it slowly decomposes. The tone of the film is very close to that of Pet Sematary, and if someone wanted to, they could ignore a few plot details and use this story as the story of Timmy Baterman in Pet Sematary. This is actually one of the first films Tom Savini worked on as an SFX makeup artist, and it's great to see the early works of the horror master.
If you're interested in seeing what Bob Clark did between Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things and Black Christmas, I say give it a show. If you're not into movies with an antiwar political message, it may not be for you since the film does focus a lot on the destruction of the family unit. However, when the movie gets to the horror scenes, the suspense is there, and the ending leaves you on the edge of the seat, though it may leave some unsatisfied due to not entirely knowing what happened to Andy. Dr. Nerdenstein gives it 3 stars out of 5, check it out!
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