Deathdream

Deathdream (also known as Dead of Night) is a 1974 horror film directed by Bob Clark and written by Alan Ormsby, and starring Richard Backus, John Marley, and Lynn Carlin. Filmed in Brooksville, Florida, it was inspired by the W. W. Jacobs short story "The Monkey's Paw". Plot In Vietnam 1972, American soldier Andy Brooks is shot by a sniper and falls to the ground. As he dies, he hears his mother's voice calling out, "Andy, you'll come back. You've got to. You promised." Sometime later, his family receives notice of his death in combat. Andy's father, Charles, and sister, Cathy, begin to grieve, but his mother, Christine, becomes irate and refuses to believe that Andy has died. Meanwhile, a trucker stops at a diner and says he's picked up a hitchhiker who's a soldier. Hours later, in the middle of the night, Andy arrives at the front door of the family house in full uniform, apparently unharmed; the family welcomes him back with joy, concluding the notice of his death was a clerical error. When the father says the military told them Andy was dead, he replies "I was." The family laughs, thinking this a joke. In the next few days, Andy displays strange, withdrawn behavior, speaking only rarely, dressing in a concealing manner, and spending his days sitting around the house, listless and anemic. At night, though, he becomes inexplicably animated, wandering the town and spending time in the local cemetery. Meanwhile, local police investigate the murder of a local trucker, who was found with his throat slashed and his body drained of blood.