Deathdream (aka Dead Of Night) (1974) ***1/2
It's kind of amazing that Deathdream (aka Dead Of Night) was released just a few months prior to Bob Clark's classic holiday slasher Black Christmas (review), but the former was sitting on the shelf for some time because according to Wikipedia it was filmed in the fall of 1972.
Deathdream is notable for being only the second screen credit for makeup/special effects wizard Tom Savini. His work here makes great use of a small budget and honestly looks better than some of what he did later on in the '70s (the '80s were where he really shined). Carl Zittrer provides the same type of jarring and dissonant score work that he did for Black Christmas, and some of the cues and techniques are almost identical but slightly less effective here. Similarly there are other parallels and techniques that director Clark mirrors from his other—more famous—1974 film, including the way he uses humor to balance the bleak content and oppressive tone.
I've seen Deathdream three times now and it's gotten a littler better with each viewing. It's a very well-made slow burn post-war PTSD allegory disguised as a vampire/zombie movie. It's never quite explained what caused the main character's condition and the film is all the better for it.
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