Dead of Night (1974) on Netflix
Word reaches the Brooks family that Andy died in Vietnam, but his mother refuses to accept it. Then Andy turns up at the front door in uniform, apparently unharmed.
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- Netflix3.7/5
- IMDb6.6/106,981 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes83%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1972 Andy Brooks is shot in Vietnam, and as he lies there he hears his mother Christine calling him home. The military tells the family that he died in combat. Christine will not hear of it, while her husband Charles and daughter Cathy mourn. A trucker tells a diner that he picked up a soldier on the road. Long after midnight Andy walks in at the front door in uniform, seemingly fine, and the family decides the death notice was a clerical error. Asked about it, he answers that he was dead, and they laugh at the joke. In the days after he says almost nothing, covers himself up, and sits around the house drained; at night he is animated and roams the town and the cemetery. Police are looking into a trucker's murder.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Dead of Night (1974)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Christopher Walken was considered for the role of Andy Brooks, and Gary Swanson was briefly cast and even appeared in test footage later used on the film's Blue Underground Blu-ray; Richard Backus won the part after the casting director was struck by his intense, quiet stare.
- Bob Clark cast John Marley and Lynn Carlin as Deathdream's parents because of their performances as a dysfunctional couple in John Cassavetes' Faces, unaware the two actors had genuine animosity that bled onto the set.
- Makeup artist Tom Savini, working on Deathdream while also doing Alan Ormsby's Deranged, designed a more elaborate decaying makeup for Andy in the third act, but Bob Clark cut most of it during editing.
