DEAD OF NIGHT – The swirling, disembodied voices that beckon soldier boy Andy back from the dead tell you ‘Dead Of Night’ is one of those seventies horror movies where reality is always about to crumble. It’s by Bob Clark, who of course went on to make ‘Black Christmas’, well known for being a proto slasher but more famous in my eyes just for being the one with the creeped out googoo gaga telephone voice. DON is in a lower key, but it’s more affecting. Andy returns from ‘Nam to the family home, where everyone is overjoyed to see him – after all, the ministry told them he was dead. They’re a bit less keen after they realise how much he’s changed. There’s a lot going on behind DON’s façade of B movie efficiency, for it touches on grief, PTSD, addiction, the hypocrisies of the all-American family, the war stuff, the changing times, all of it playing out behind brisk scenes in which melodrama gives way to the shadowy flipside of suburban life (or living death). A subtle example of this happens early on when they’re sat around the dinner table, having a good laugh because everything’s great now their son’s come back from the dead and all, and there’s just something about their grins that seems too wide, too toothy… I don’t think they even used lens effects, it’s just the way the bombardment of that incessant, fake, bad dream laughter skews your perceptions. Later, the film takes us into more overt grindhouse territory – it’s never all that graphic, but scenes of Andy prowling the night, his half-lit face putrid and wild eyed, have an EC type urgency to them, as does the bit where he flips out and decides to strangle the family pooch in front of a load of screaming kids (!) The burden that any horror film must carry is to deliver on expectations, to shock or amuse in all the right places, and ‘Dead Of Night’ does not shirk its duty. But the tone is not one of gleeful mayhem. The overriding feeling is elegiac, I’ve always felt that there’s just something really sad about it; keep those tissues handy for the end, when he crawls convulsing to the grave in his mother’s arms - what a downer! Hackneyed though its ‘Monkey’s Paw’ barebones may be, ‘Dead Of Night’ is one of the drive-in era’s most thoughtful entries, and its ghoulish air conceals quite a powerful emotional core.
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