Deathdream
Director: Bob Clark
Year Released: 1974
Rating: 3.0
Richard Backus returns from Vietnam pale and affect-less - after his parents were informed he'd been killed - but he doesn't eat, can't sleep and rocks in his chair all day. Chilling, metaphorical film about American guilt - Backus' animated corpse can only sustain itself on the blood of others that he kills as revenge for being sent to die - that confronts the WWII generation and its 'glorifying victory' (the mailman, Backus' gung-ho father John Marley) and manages to work as a horror film as well. Not surprisingly, Cronenberg's equally symbolic and complex horror films (Shivers and Rabid) were being made at the same time.
